green chile chicken soup

Following the success of last week's chili (and five leftover jalapeno peppers) I thought I would try to make a chicken version. I knew that I didn't want to just repeat my beef recipe and substitute chicken--I wanted to make something new, a green chile soup to give the chicken recipe its own identity.

I started by roasting my own 4.5 pound chicken.


Once it was rested I deboned it, separated the chicken breasts to save them for later. All the other little pieces of meat were ready to go.

I ended up using the entire 4 cup package of chicken broth. But I started with maybe 1.5 or 2 cups, all the chicken pieces and 4 jalapenos.


Then I added a diced onion, 5 cloves of garlic, 3/4 cup of hot green salsa, and a little oregano. That's it.

Then I let it cook for about 3 hours on low. Easy peasy.


Time to serve.


I went into this expecting the chicken version not to be as good as the beef, and it wasn't. It wasn't bad at all. But it was sort of one note--jalepeno. It wasn't too spicy, but not a very complex taste.

I suppose this ends up looking more like tortilla soup (minus the tortillas) than a chili, but I'm not entering this in a chili contest. I don't care what you want to call it. But the liquid definitely wasn't as thick as last weeks, not thick enough to coat a chip or spoon.

But it is a lot tastier than the tortilla soup that was served at the ISR Cantina.