What do you do when your oven and stove break unexpectedly? Aside from not being able to cook much of anything, you end up being creative about meals.
This is what happened to us immediately after I pulled my Grandmother’s apple cake recipe out of the oven for Rosh Hashanah dinner. The oven would not turn off … at all! And because we had to turn the electricity and gas off to the oven, so went the stove. The story ends happy because we got a brand new oven/stove range. I had no idea there were stoves that had rapid boil settings!
While we were oven and stove-less for more than a week, I relied on the crockpot quite a bit for dinner since there are only so many take-out and frozen entrees one can eat. (And no, we don’t have a grill.) One of the items I made was Mexican Chicken Soup. This soup was essentially a “throw whatever I have into the crockpot dinner” and it tasted so good! Here is the rough recipe of what I did to make this crockpot soup concoction.
Mexican Chicken Soup
1 pound of frozen chicken breasts or tenders
1 cup frozen corn
1 can black beans (drained and rinsed)
1 can diced tomatoes (drained and rinsed)
6 – 8 cups of chicken broth
1 1/2 tsp. chili powder
1 tsp. cumin
1/2 tsp. red pepper flakes
1/2 tsp. black pepper
1 tsp. Kosher salt
Dash of Lawry’s seasoned salt
Left over tortilla chips (crushed)
Mexican cheese blend
Avocado (optional)
Throw all these ingredients into a crockpot with the exception of the chips and cheese. Cook on low for about eight hours. Since my chicken was frozen, I needed more time. If your chicken is defrosted, you can probably get away with six hours. When it’s nearly done cooking, shred the chicken and leave it in the crockpot to cook a bit longer.
Ladle yourself a big bowl of soup and top with crushed chips, cheese and avocado if you’re into that. The soup is really good on its own too. I think the key is the Lawry’s seasoned salt. It just adds something tasty to the soup.
Enjoy this tasty soup for yourself … even if you have a functioning stove and oven range.