Soup People – Tortilla Soup
Some people are soup people. Take my grandfather, for example. He ate soup as a first course at dinner every day, even in the middle of the summer. That’s a soup person. My father-in-law also loved soup. He would eat soup as a full meal every day if he could. In his last year I brought frozen containers of homemade soup every time we visited so my wife’s parents had quick, easy meals. I sent chicken soup with big pieces of chicken. I brought split pea soup, thick and rich with savory bites of ham. I delivered beef barley soup, hearty and filling, with chunks of carrot and braised meat. It made him very happy.
My daughter is also a soup person, but her focus tends to be brothy soups. When we are in Philadelphia and visit my favorite Chinese restaurant, Lee How Fook, everyone else is focused on main courses. But my daughter always gets a big bowl of chicken noodle soup that she keeps to herself. She loves chicken soup with matzo balls. And a big bowl of spicy Asian noodle soup is our dinner at least once a month during the winter. But her favorite is tortilla soup.
When you order tortilla soup at a Mexican restaurant, you don’t know what you’re going to get. Sometimes it is thick with cream and other times it is spicy with big pieces of chicken or vegetables. The variations are endless, with only one common ingredient: tortillas. The tortilla soup I make is simple, with very few ingredients. It is a basic chicken broth, flavored with a quick-cooked tomato, onion, garlic purée. It becomes the hearty center of a meal (perhaps with a dish of guacamole on the side) when it is topped with fried tortilla chips and grated cheese.
My daughter requests tortilla soup about four times a week. While of course I don’t prepare it that often, when I do make it I double or triple the recipe, and fry a big pile of tortilla chips, so that she can eat it as leftovers all week long. It makes her very happy. If you have soup people in your life, give them soup. Try this tortilla soup, which is easy to make and will satisfy their slurpy soupy needs.
Tortilla Soup
This recipe originated from one in Mexican food scholar Diana Kennedy’s The Tortilla Book, but I have modified it slightly over the years. I usually serve it with just fried tortilla chips and cheese, but the original recipe calls for fried and crumbled pasilla chilies and sprigs of the herb epazote. Bite-size pieces of avocado and a little bit of cilantro would also make excellent additions.
Of course tortilla soup needs tortillas. I make my own tortillas from masa harina and serve them when we have refried beans. I make lots of extras and cut or tear the leftover tortillas into bite-size pieces and fry them for a few minutes in vegetable oil to make chips to add to the soup. If it’s too much work to make your own tortillas, try frying store-bought ones. While I have never tried them, already fried, store-bought tortilla chips are too salty, and I suspect they would just disintegrate once they hit the warm soup.
About 45 minutes, 4 servings
12 tortillas, cut or torn into bite-size pieces
2 cups vegetable oil
6 cups chicken broth
1 28 oz. can whole peeled tomatoes, drained
⅓ of a medium onion, roughly chopped
1 clove of garlic, roughly chopped
8 oz. cheddar cheese, grated
3 pasilla chiles, fried and crumbled (optional)
4 sprigs epazote (optional)
1 avocado, peeled and cut into bite-sized pieces (optional)
4 sprigs cilantro (optional)
- Heat the oil in a saucepan or skillet on high until very hot. When you drop in a piece of tortilla, it should sizzle immediately. Fry all of the tortilla pieces, in batches, until they are crisp. As each batch finishes, put the tortilla chips into a paper towel-lined bowl and set aside for serving.
- Put the drained tomatoes, onion, and garlic in a blender and blend to a purée.
- Heat the broth in a large heavy pot.
- Heat one or two tablespoons of oil (use the oil in which you fried the tortillas) on high in another heavy pot or skillet. When the oil is hot, add the tomato purée and fry for three minutes, stirring constantly. If the oil is the correct temperature it will boil and hiss and spit hot tomato purée while you are stirring, so be careful.
- Add the purée to the warm broth, stir to mix, and simmer for 5 minutes. Taste and adjust seasonings if necessary.
- Divide soup among four bowls and add tortilla chips and cheese. Top with pasilla chiles, epazote, avocado, and cilantro, if using.
