Souper Sunday: Southwestern White Chicken Chili

This holiday season my family got together to celebrate early for Thanksgiving and to do some serious shopping. We were also celebrating my cousin's birthday and wanted to have a big meal together without slaving over the stove for hours.

We decided to have baked potatoes and soups! My aunt took dibs on chili and I pondered for several days what my soup of choice would be, afterall, it needed to pair nicely with a baked potato. I came across a recipe for white bean chili, made some changes and discovered this little gem. I can honestly say this is one of my new favorite soups.

When my staff came over last week, I made this soup again and it was a hit. I hope you enjoy as much I did!

Ingredients:

4 tablespoons olive oil

2 onions, chopped

6 cloves garlic, minced

3 (14.5 ounce) cans chicken broth

1 (18.75 ounce) cantomatillos, drained and chopped

2 (16 ounce) can diced tomatoes

3 (7 ounce) can diced green chiles

1.5 teaspoon dried oregano

1.5 teaspoon ground coriander seed

3/4 teaspoon ground cumin

6 ears fresh corn

3 pound diced, cooked chicken meat

3 (15 ounce) cans white beans

salt and black pepper to taste

I made soup to feed 16 comfortably and had plenty leftover. Divide everything above by three if you are feeding a family of four.

A quick look at our ingredient list.

Boil your chicken breast and place in the refrigerator to cool so that you can easily shred.

Chop your onion and garlic. I used a food processor to chop mine fine and quickly. Add your onion and garlic with olive oil in your stock pot. Cook until translucent. If you are cooking the same amount as me, I would use the largest stock pot you have.

Add your chicken broth, spices, green chilis, tomatillos and canned tomatoes to your onion/garlic mixture. I also added a pinch of sugar at this stage. A hint on the tomatillos...these are odd little boogers and dicing them is not as easy as you would think because they just fall apart. I ended up holding two at a time in my hands over the pot and squeezing the juices and pulp out but discarding majority of the actual skin of the tomatillos. Either way you choose to add them, diced or squeezed, will work just fine.

While your flavors are marrying in your pot, remove your chicken from the refrigerator and shred with your hands. Some people put their chicken in a food processor and this is fine but I think it shreds the chicken too fine. I don't like chunky chicken or super fine chicken so I hand shred mine.