Chicken Tortilla Soup
There’s a chain of casual dining restaurants in the Midwest called Max & Erma’s, and when visiting my brother in Ohio I discovered their sinfully good Chicken Tortilla Soup. I came home desperate to find a knock-off recipe, but since much of their soup’s deliciousness presumably comes from creamy cheese and fried tortilla strips I was doubtful I was going to find one that could be lightened up. Luckily, I stumbled across a recipe on food.com that used a lot of cream based soups and I knew I could easily substitute the light versions. The recipe originally served 15 but I halved it and made a few other changes/substitutions. It turned out great. It’s creamy and has just the right amount of kick for me. I never would have guessed I could get so close to the restaurant flavor using canned soups, but it’s really similar!
2012 Update: This was originally one of the first recipes I posted, and as it’s perfect for Fall football-watching, I wanted to encourage readers to dig through the archives and make it this season. The problem was that the photos I took of it back in December 2010 were just plain awful. I decided to make it again and take new photos, and while I was at it, I tweaked the recipe a little to improve it overall. After receiving a few reader comments that the soup was too thick, I thinned it out a bit by adding a cup of water which made it enough for 8 servings. This allowed me to add tortilla strips to the recipe while keeping it at only 4 Green, 3 Blue or 3 Purple myWW Weight Watchers SmartPoints and 160 calories per cup. To view your WW PersonalPoints for this recipe and track it in the WW app or site, click here!
This is a great recipe for football season and also for potlucks, because you can easily heat the soup up in a crock pot rather than on the stove top. I brought it to work back in 2010 for just such a potluck and it was a huge hit. Don’t forget to check out my Easy Slow Cooker Shredded Chicken post- the perfect way to make shredded chicken for this recipe!
Chicken Tortilla Soup
Ingredients
- 6 oz cooked chicken breast, shredded or chopped
- 1 cup water
- 1 (15 oz) can fat free, low sodium chicken broth
- 1 can Campbell’s 98% Fat Free Cream of Mushroom Soup
- 1 can Campbell’s 98% Fat Free Cream of Chicken Soup
- 1 can Campbell’s 98% Fat Free Cream of Celery Soup
- 1 can Campbell’s Healthy Request Cheddar Cheese Soup
- ½ can of Rotel Tomatoes & Green Chiles
- ½ cup chunky salsa, I used Medium
- ½ onion, chopped
- ¼ cup fresh cilantro, chopped
- 2 garlic cloves, minced
- ½ teaspoon red chili powder
- Salt to taste
- Pepper to taste
- 12 tablespoons of tortilla strips, the type found in bags by the salad toppings – I prefer New York Texas Toast brand in Chili Lime, but Fresh Gourmet also sells something similar
Instructions
- In a large pot, combine all ingredients except the tortilla strips and stir until mixed. Bring to a boil and then simmer covered for one hour. When serving, sprinkle 1.5 tablespoons of tortilla strips over each cup of soup.
Notes
4 per serving (P+ calculated using the recipe builder on weightwatchers.com) Adapted from Food.com