Mexican Chili Pepper Soup

I begged a fellow swim team mom to introduce me to the Mexican lady she knew. God bless nice people everywhere. We all ended up getting together, sharing an omelet, and then Azminda Cancino Garcia taught me how to make this ingenious soup! Click at right for the story, recipe, and how-to-photos from our cooking session.

Photo: Tim Greenway

The Story

Mexican Chili Pepper Soup

Not a good cook? No problem.

By Lindsay Sterling

Well into her 30’s with two kids and a husband, Azminda was still being ribbed by her father for being a bad cook. “You need to learn,” he said in Mexican Spanish, “You won’t always have your mother and your sister to do it for you!” Last year, his warning came true. The company Azminda’s husband worked for, Unum in Mexico City, asked him to transfer to its office in Maine. Because the kidnapping of children for ransom had become so frequent where she lived and the police force so corrupt, the Juarez family decided to go. Azminda left the fresh roses growing in the garden all year long, her job as an economist, her mother and sister’s amazing cooking, and her beloved (and affordable!) house helper Conchita, and got her family settled in an apartment in Yarmouth, Maine. Then she set out to learn English and run the family household. Her mother sent key recipes.

Just a year later, Azminda couldn’t believe she, the black sheep of the family cooks, was about to give a newspaper reporter a cooking lesson – in English! But I insisted. Four years into my quest to learn and pass on a favorite dish from every country in the world, Mexico, our immediate neighbor, had eluded me. Her nervousness, however, did raise a suspicion: perhaps my stroke of uncanny luck was coming to an end. After walking into the kitchens of over fifty people from foreign countries, mostly who I met circumstantially in check-out lines of non-culinary places like office supply stores, I was bound to come upon a dish that was not worthy of broadcasting in the media.

But then she said, “But you don’t have to be a good cook to make this. That’s what my mom said. It’s easy.” Even though I suspect a not-good-cook in Mexico still makes better food than a not-good-cook in the United States, I was relieved. An easy dish from Mexico that even a not-good-cook can do? That’s food media blockbuster material!

The recipe she taught me was caldo tlalpeño, her husband’s favorite, served typically in Mexico for the main meal of the day, around two or three o’clock. This soup is ingenious. It’s basically a chicken soup with chunks of chicken meat and potato, but the broth is this amazingly appetizing translucent red color, and there are various floating chili peppers on top. First you cook skinless chicken pieces covered in salted water. Then you soak mild but colorful guajillo chili peppers in water to soften them. “The package says ‘guajillo’ here,” Azminda instructs, “but it’s spelled ‘uhajillo’ back home.” You blend the chilis in a blender with a little water, which turns brilliant red. Then you pour the chili-water through a strainer into the chicken broth, which turns the soup broth its lovely color and flavor. Then you mix in chicken bouillon. “In Mexico,” she says, “We use chicken bouillon a lot – for every food.” Finally, you add a couple rinsed whole dried habanero and chipotle peppers, which look really gnarly and cool and ensure a dynamic spice level for eaters.

Soon a whole chili pepper isle unfolded on her dining room table, thousands of dried chilis of about a dozen different varieties. I’m thinking either my theory is right about not-good-cooks from Mexico or Azminda became a great cook in a year. “Ancho makes color and a little taste. Arbol – only for heat. Pulla is great color, medium spicey, picoso. Japones, hotter….”

copyright Lindsay Sterling 2012

The Recipe

Mexican Chili Pepper Soup

caldo tlalpeño

As Azminda Cancino Garcia, from Cuarnabaca, Mexico, taught Lindsay Sterling in Yarmouth, ME March 2012

Serves 6

Cooking time: 1 hr

6 pieces skinless chicken, legs and thighs

1 tsp salt

5-6 dried guajillo (uhajillo) chilis (substitute any large, mild, red dried chili)

1 1/2 cups white rice

6 red potatoes, cut into 1/2 inch cubes

6 tomatillos, peeled of the papery layer and halved

1 1/2 chicken bouillon cubes

2 dried habaneros, rinsed (optional)

2 dried chipotle peppers, rinsed

1/2 cactus pear, skin trimmed off and flesh cut into 1/2 inch cubes (optional)

1 Tbsp epazote (optional)

6 lime wedges

6-12 tortillas and 2 cups frying oil (vegetable, corn, or peanut) or a bag of tortilla chips

In a soup pot, cover chicken with 3 inches of water, add 1 tsp salt, and turn on medium heat. Simmer until chicken is cooked. In the meantime, break the tops off the peppers and shake the seeds out (to discard). Soak skins in water to soften, about ten minutes. Cook rice separately by directions on package. When chicken is cooked through, add potatoes. Into a blender add tomatillos, chili peppers, and 1/2 cup water and blend until smooth. Pour chili-tomatillo mixture through a mesh strainer into the soup broth, and discard the solids left in the strainer. Rinse dried chipotle and habanero peppers and put them in the soup whole. Add cactus pear, bouillon, and epazote. Taste, and add more bouillon or salt if it tastes less than awesome. Heat oil in pan large enough to fit tortillas and line a platter or sheet pan with paper towels. Once oil is hot, add 1 or 2 tortillas at a time. Flip each after a couple minutes. When they are golden brown and stop bubbling, remove from oil and place on paper towel. Do the rest of the tortillas. Sprinkle all with salt. Serve soup with lime wedges, fried tortillas (or tortilla chips) and rice. Alternate bites of soup with bites of tortilla chip.

Copyright Lindsay Sterling 2012

See How to Do it

Mexican Chili Pepper Soup

We, in the United States, have a lot to learn about chili peppers. Look at all these different kinds she cooks with! In this soup, she used three varieties - guajillo, dried chipotle and dried habanero. She said her family of four goes through all these chili peppers (thousands!) in about a year. Azminda: "Every chili has a different taste." "If I don't use chili I think the food no have taste."

These are the guajillo or uhajillo peppers, soaking. They're mild but brilliantly colored!

These (below) are what we in the U.S. call tomatillos. They're like little green tomatoes with like a green paper tent around them. She called theses

in Mexican Spanish tomate.

Blend the chilis and the tomatillos together with a little water in the blender. (Once the chicken's done, add quartered potatoes to the broth).

And pour the mixture through a strainer into your pot of chicken and cooking broth.

Rinse dried habanero peppers and add them whole to soup.

And rinse dried chipotles (cool texture!) and add them whole to soup.

Now peel the skin off this cactus pear, and add the flesh of it to the soup. It looks like raspberry sorbet inside. Sweet, like mild watermelon. In Spanish: xoconostle.

Add 1 1/2 bouillon cubes.

This Photo: Tim Greenway

All others: Lindsay Sterling