A New Take On An Old Favorite

One of my favorite puzzles in life is figuring out to take leftovers from one meal and transform them into something new and delicious for another meal.

Yesterday, I found myself looking at about 2 pounds-worth of leftover Slow Cooker Cilantro Lime Chicken*, trying to figure out what to do with it. We’d already used a pound of it as meat for fiesta nachos. Back when we weren’t keeping a Whole 30, we would use the meat for soft tacos and then use the leftovers to make Tex-Mex Chicken Soup (inspired by Tex-Mex Turkey Soup). Since this soup contains sour cream, corn, and beans, I knew we had to try a different recipe.

I searched the web for “paleo mexican chicken soup”, and immediately found a winner: Paleo Commfort Foods’ Chicken Tortilla-less Soup. I figured, since our chicken was already flavored with salsa and spices that we could skip the part of the recipe that talks about fixing the chicken. I was primarily interested in using the recipe to figure out  how much broth to use and what other vegetables to add. It served as a great inspiration for the soup I actually made.

Paleo Mexican Chicken Tortilla-like Soup

(Whole 30 compliant, Serves 8)

Ingredients

• About 2 pounds of leftover Slow Cooker Cilantro Chicken
• 4 cups of chicken stock or broth
• 3 tsp (6 cloves) of garlic, minced
• 1 TBSP granulated onion (or 1 medium onion, diced)
• 28 oz. fire roasted diced tomatoes
• 2 poblano peppers, seeded & diced
• 2 jalapeno peppers, seeded & diced
• 1 serrano pepper, seeded & minced
• 1 orange bell pepper (red or yellow would work too). seeded & diced
• 1 cup fresh cilantro, chopped

Procedure

1. Chop up all of your veggies and aromatics.
2. Put all of the ingredients in a large pot (12 c. or greater) and stir to combine.
3. Bring the soup to a boil, then reduce heat and allow to simmer for 30 minutes before serving.
4. Enjoy!

I thought about some other flavors that we might add the next time. I think carrots would be a good addition because they’re sweet like corn. I’m also debating yellow squash.

* – When Adam and I fix Slow Cooker Cilantro Lime Chicken, we don’t use taco seasoning packets because of the extra, unnecessary stuff in most of them. Here’s what we do. The only difference now that we’re on the paleo diet is that we use salsa that doesn’t have any sugar in it. Tostitos medium is a good one. Trader Joe’s has a few good ones as well.