Homemade soup, with just a bit of help from Central Market.

Our Tortilla Soup Kit is so easy and yields a soup so delicious you may imagine you're at a restaurant.

Here's your shopping list: 

• CM Tortilla Soup Kit
• 3/4 cup tortilla chips, lightly crushed
• 8 cups of vegetable or chicken broth (homemade chicken broth when possible, please.)
• chicken, about 2 cups, cooked and diced or shredded.
• shredded cheese (okay, I admit that I added this ingredient on my own. Seriously, though - what's tortilla soup without threads of lightly melted cheese clinging to your spoon? Hmmm...and sliced avocado, too...)

The pre-packaged kits are loaded with already cut onions, garlic, tomatoes, peppers and spices. Fresh cilantro and limes for garnish are included, too.

The recipe directs you on how to simply saute the ingredients, stir in the broth to allow the flavors to simmer to create the soup, and even gives serving directions.

One kit yields approximately eight 1 Cup servings - and with the cheese, avocado, tortilla chip topping, just one cup can be quite hearty - so this one pot meal can become tonight's dinner, tomorrow's lunch, Saturday's snack, etc...

My personal kitchen tip on this is to use a CM Rotisserie chicken.  For all the chicken you get when you pick the bird clean, plus the dark meat from the wings you might not normally eat and the bits of breast you can't always cut off the bone, this soup is perfect. Put it all together and toss it in the soup during the last minutes of heating and you're ready to go.   Toss the finely chopped cilantro on top of the soup and squeeze the lime into the broth to complete the authentic flavor.

We do have whole chickens on special this weekend, so pick up a kit, too, and whatever you don't eat after you roast your chicken can go right into the soup.  

Other garnish ideas:

• dollop of low-fat sour cream
• paper-thin slices of jalapeno
• Pour soup in mug. Layer a tortilla chip or two, full-size, on top of the soup. Cover the chip with a slice of Monterey Jack or Colby that just reaches over the mug's edges. Flash-broil it in the oven (put the soup mugs on a cookie sheet before doing this one) to give it a gooey, crisp cheese coating. This is sort of the Mexican version of the way a traditional French onion soup is served.
• Prep the soup, pour into a mug, and cover over the top with a flour tortilla that's been filled with melted cheese and folded over just once, quesadilla style. (This is the lazy man's version of the previous suggestion.)
• Crumbled bacon (why not?)
• Pico de gallo

With so many options for shifting the flavor profile just a bit, it won't taste like the same soup twice.