Although it’s summer there’s something about soup that makes a girl feel like she’s at home with her mom. In preparation for getting my wisdom teeth out, I decided to learn to make some easy-to-eat foods so that when my mom has to leave me on my own, I won’t starve!
I started with a recipe that my mom has been making for years. Now, it isn’t the most gum-friendly soup, but it’s one that I love and I figured if I had something that I could at least recognize, I wouldn’t feel so slow and stupid when I woke up.
The name of the soup is Mexican Rice Soup and it is absolutely delicious; the best part about it is that generally there is a whole other serving after you have the first meal so you can freeze a bunch for later.
First you are going to get the ingredients:
A whole 4-5 lb fryer chicken
2 carrots
1 whole onion
A cup and a ½ of rice
1 avocado
1 lime
Cilantro
Your favorite kind of tortilla chip!
Let’s get started: first cut up the onion and carrots into quarters. Then fill a stockpot with water and put the whole chicken and the vegetables in it. The water needs to be just above the chicken. When you are done bring the water to boil and then let it simmer for 90 minutes. You are essentially making your own chicken broth and you get to use the chicken again later for the recipe!
After you have let the chicken and water simmer, take the chicken out. The meat will be so tender that you should be able to just tear it off. Pick apart the chicken and then set aside the meat for later. You can then strain the vegetables out of the broth and then place it back into the pot. Put the rice in the stockpot, with the broth, for about a half hour letting it soak up the broth and get fat. Once that is complete you can place the pieces of chicken back into the pot and let them soak for a while. You don’t want them to be cold.
Once that is done, you have a soup, but it’s not over! Ladle out an even amount of rice and broth and however much chicken you want into a bowl. Then cut up the avocado and cilantro and throw them into your bowl. You can make it look pretty but you’re going to be eating it anyway! Cut the lime in half and sprinkle some juice on top of the soup.
Once that is done, if you would like to put tortilla chips on your soup, now is the time. I always like to use Have a Chip Tortilla Chips, they are DELICIOUS and have a little hint of soy sauce on some of the chips. If you haven’t tried them, you simply must.
In the photo you can see that some cheese and salsa has been added, my soup is currently brewing and I usually leave those out, but you can experiment however you’d like!