Sopa de Lima
warming but light and refreshing for weird warm fall
Now that the New York weather overnight became a more typical fall temperature, I found the energy and enthusiasm for a soup. Thank you to everyone sending me such excellent soup memes, please keep them coming.
My Mexico City flight alert inspired me to make a tortilla soup, or at least find out what an authentic tortilla soup might be. (We will not discuss authenticity, I am absolutely going to bastardize whatever is authentic about it to fit my own needs!) After the last time I went to Mexico City, I bought My Mexico City Kitchen by Gabriela Cámara and that is where I went first, and ended up at her recipe Sopa de Lima. I think of tortilla soup the way I think of vegetable soup or a vegetarian chili—I add whatever I have laying around to it. Sopa de Lima is pared back, and I mostly followed it, but I did add a delicata squash I had laying around. Also, I don’t really add tortillas to thicken it (as far as I understand it, that’s a mole thing?). I did buy fancy Sobre Masa tortillas and fry them myself though. And you know I usually don’t make stock separately and often use Better Than Bouillon but today I did make my own stock in two steps. Thank you Foster Sundry for the pound of chicken necks! However, lol, it only made half as much stock as I needed for the soup.
Loved this soup! It’s light and fresh and tart. No big adjustments or changes from me! I’d make this soup again as written. Frying the tortilla strips took a little longer than written (I also didn’t keep a great eye on the temp), and loved the combination of orange and lime juice at the end. I didn’t look very hard for epazote so I subbed fennel and cilantro at different steps. Because I made the stock, I didn’t poach the chicken breasts in the soup step but in the stock step. If you use pre-made stock, this is definitely a quick weeknight soup.
Sopa de Lima from My Mexico City Kitchen by Gabriela Cámara
Caldo Pollo
1 onion, sliced
1 fennel bulb, halved
1 big ass carrot, chunked
2 celery stalks, chunked
3 cloves garlic
2 lbs chicken breasts (ideally bone-in, skin-on)
1 lb chicken bone extra bits (I got necks)
2 bay leaves
1 tbsp salt
8 cups water
Add all the ingredients to a pot and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer, let simmer for 20 minutes, and remove chicken breasts. Keep cooking the stock for another 40 minutes on a gentle simmer. If you use bone-in breasts, once they cool, shred the chicken and put the bones back in the stock.
Strain through a colander.
Sopa de Lima
olive oil
1 cup diced onion
2 garlic cloves, sliced
3-4 chopped roma tomatos,
epazote sprig (or cilantro sub)
2 L stock from Caldo Pollo / supplemented by other stock
6 corn tortillas, cut into strips
vegetable oil for frying
shredded chicken breast from Caldo Pollo
1 lime, zest and juice
1/2 orange juiced
radish, avocado, diced white onion, cilantro for garnish
In Dutch oven or soup pot, heat enough oil to coat the bottom of the pot over medium heat. Add diced onion, then garlic, and saute until the onion is translucent. Add the chopped tomatoes and let it come to a boil.
Add the epazote/cilantro and stock, and season with salt. (I added some diced delicata squash here, which I liked, and you could add another vegetable here too but its definitely not necessary). Simmer while you make the tortilla strips. If you didn’t immediately make stock before, poach the chicken breasts here.
Put a paper bag or paper towels over a plate or wire rack. Heat the vegetable oil in a large high sided pan. It should be 350 degrees. It is ready when a tortilla strip dropped into the oil immediately bubbles around the edges. When ready, add the rest of the tortilla strips and cook for 2 minutes, stir and flip, and cook for 2 more minutes. They will get light golden and start to curl and stiffen. Remove with slotted spoon to paper towels to drain and cool. Take oil off heat!
Back to the soup—stir in the shredded chicken breast. (If cooking the chicken in step 2, remove, allow to cool enough to handle, then shred and add back in). After a minute or two, turn off the heat. Stir in the juice of 1 lime, the zest of that lime, and the juice of 1/2 an orange. Add salt if it needs it.
Make your bowl of soup—-top your bowl with the tortilla strips, cilantro, diced avocado, diced white onion, and/or radish.