Mexican chicken & rice soup

For Dane Camp ("This soup is AMAZING!") and Katlincita (who shares my love for mexican food, and especially with limes).

This is a soup inspired by some of the tasty "caldos" that I have enjoyed. It's pretty much your basic chicken soup, but with a few differences to give it a "Mexican" style flair (in my opinion)...

Cook the chicken--boil and/or simmer it together with some chopped carrots, celery, onion, spices, etc to give it flavor (and this will be the base for the soup).

Tips: If you wish to follow Mexican "caldo" style more closely, you would generally chop the components much more coarsely (large pieces of chicken, carrot, etc) and the chicken would be cooked on the bone & with the skin if at all possible. Because I am not authentically Mexican (debatable... just kidding), I prefer to chop the veggies to bite-size, and to remove the bones & skin from the chicken, AFTER it is cooked in the broth (so we keep the flavor from the bone & skin) & shred the chicken to bite size. The taste remains, and the soup has a little less fat and is not so messy to eat. It is, however, a little more work and mess for the cook to remove, sort, & shred the chicken... but the end result is worth it (and remember: the tastiest Mexican cooking takes time and a little effort!). (tip: pour the soup through a strainer--broth into a pot/container, then shred & sort what is left in the strainer.) Two vegetables that I might add toward the end would be cabbage or zucchini/squash.

After the chicken is cooked & you have saved the broth, shred the chicken as desired. Add in spices & vegetables to taste if you have not done so already.

now come the few touches that take this soup from average to memorable.

1. Tomato Rice

2. Lime juice

For the rice--cook some ordinary white rice. You will use broth (bullion is fine) to cook it instead of plain water, to give it its own "Mexican rice" flavor to contribute to the soup. It's best to use A. tomato bullion B. chicken bullion with tomato flavor or C. chicken broth/bullion with diced tomatoes or tomato juice added.

When the soup and rice are finished (and the limes are sliced), serve this way: scoop some rice into a bowl, ladle the soup over the top as desired, and squeeze as much lime juice as you like over the top. To me, this irresistible little tang is the best part!!!

Pretty simple! Now all you need are some tortillas on the side... ;)