I can see the headline.... "Novice pregnant chef rushed to hospital for jalapeno mistake"

Here in Texas, you can buy fresh jalapenos at the supermarket all year long in the produce section, right there next to the carrots and celery. Fresh jalapenos are about 100,000 times hotter than the kind that you find in a jar back on the East Coast, and I’d never even seen one until I moved here. Now, they’re a staple in our diets and I can’t get enough! Oh, and they’re really good for you too!!

A friend of mine asked me for a good Mexican soup recipe, so I replied with my “safe” chicken tortilla recipe, not knowing the level of spice she wanted or her access to fresh jalapenos … can you get fresh jalapenos back East?

- 2 chicken breasts, baked and broken into pieces (I season them with a little chili powder or taco seasoning before baking), you can also get the Tyson already-cooked fajita chicken
- 5-6 cans or 3 boxes chicken broth (I usually buy 3 boxes and use about 2 ½, depends on how watered-down you want the spice)
- 1 large jar medium salsa
- 1 can diced tomatoes w/ green chilies (do not get the ro-tel brand, it is nasty)
- 1 can black beans, rinsed and drained
- 1 can mexi-corn (green giant makes this, it’s multi-colored corn), rinsed and drained
**side note – if you’re watching your sodium, make sure you rinse the canned beans/corn very, very well, the more you rinse off the liquid they were canned in, the less sodium you’ll get in your final soup**
- Chili powder
- Red pepper flakes
- Salt & pepper
- shredded cheddar or Monterrey jack cheese, sour cream
- Tortillas for tortilla strips, 1tbsp or so of canola oil

With the chicken, I find if you cut it up in perfect cubes with a knife, it doesn’t soak up the flavor as well as if you just break it into bite-sized bits with your hands so I typically just pull the breasts apart and some is in chunks, some a little shredded.

Just put it all in a big stock pot and let it simmer for at least an hour, the longer it simmers, the more the spices mingle and the spicier the soup gets, I love eating it the next day bc it’s so much better than the day I make it; I use a lot of chili powder and a good 2-3 shakes of red pepper flakes in mine bc I like it spicy but you can use however much to tailor to how spicy you want it. I’ll start everything else in the pot so it’s already hot when the chicken is ready to go in rather than wait on the chicken to start the soup. I like to give it a good stir every 20-30minutes or so to make sure all the little bits at the bottom make it through the broth for an even flavor.

You can buy flour or corn tortillas, I prefer corn, and I’ve found the easiest way to cut them into strips is with a pizza cutter: slice each tortilla into long thin strips then slice across cutting the tortilla in half (or quarters, depending on what size you buy); just warm a little canola oil in a skillet, very little oil, then fry up the tortilla strips until crispy and drain on paper towels. I like to throw a handful or two into the soup so they soak up the flavor, then use a few on top to garnish with the sour cream and cheese. The sour cream and cheese will also cut down some of the spiciness, so if you like spicy and others don’t, make the soup as spicy as you want and just put more sour cream in their bowls than in yours.
Well, she let me know that there was this fabulous place she used to go in Baltimore with Mexican soup so hot, it’d make her nose run, so I explained it was probably the type of chilies they put in their soup. You can certainly spice this soup up to the extreme simply by using a hot/spicy salsa and a super hot chili powder. But the absolute best way to spice this soup up while being flavorful is to use fresh jalapenos. (if you use fresh jalapenos, use a can of plain diced tomatoes without the green chilies)

If you can, buy two fresh jalapenos, the brighter/darker the green, the better the flavor; remove the seeds and dice them very, very finely. You do not want to be the person with a big chunk of jalapeno on your spoon, which is one spicy bite! You’ll want to be very careful not to touch your eyes or nose after dicing them until you’ve washed your hands a good dozen times (thanks Dan for teaching me this lesson). The easiest way to remove the seeds is to slice off the stem, slice in half length-wise and use a spoon to scrape out the guts, that way you’re limiting direct contact with your hands.

The last time I used fresh jalapeños, I had the teenie tiniest little papercut on my finger and it burned for a solid 4-5 hours even after I was done and had washed my hands a bunch of times!!! So be very careful if you use them.

After explaining all of this to my East Coast friend, I think my description of working with jalapenos scared her a little bit. In her response, she said she was going to try it based on my original recipe rather than go all out and make it super hot. Her direct quote was: I can see the headline... "Novice pregnant chef rushed to hospital for jalapeno mistake"