Paleo Mexican Chicken Soup

It's always important to eat healthy and to nourish your body. Being preggers, I'm even more conscious of what I eat.  I definitely want our little Peanut to grow healthy and strong.  One of the best things to eat is bone broth.  Rather than buying canned chicken broth, it's super easy and super cheap to make it yourself. 

With it being summer, I'm not too terribly in the mood for super thick stews, but more brothy soups.  I've always loved Chicken Tortilla Soup, however, the way I always used to make it was filled with corn, beans, tortilla chips, and cheese.  Being pretty much paleo now, I can't really eat the corn, beans, or tortilla chips.  So.... I decided to create this recipe for Mexican Chicken Soup!

Paleo Mexican Chicken Soup



My baby bump is so big that I can't hide it from the camera anymore...
 you can see the black bump at the bottom of the picture! sorry :)



* 1 whole free range chicken

* 1 tbs fat (bacon fat, butter, olive oil) - I used bacon fat

* 1 red onion, minced

* 2 cans of diced tomatoes

* 1 zucchini

* 4 tbs minced garlic

* 1 jalapeno

* 1 poblano pepper

* 1 red pepper, diced

*1/2 cup of chpped mushrooms

* 1 small can of diced green chiles

* 2 tbs ground cumin

* 1 tbs paprika

*1 tbs chili powder

* 1 tbs. garlic powder
* * 1 tbs dried oregano

The first thing I did was chop up all the veggies and garlic. I wanted to cut all of my veggies up pretty small.  You can definitely leave some of the veggies in bigger chunks, but when I eat soup, I like having a little bit of a bunch of different veggies on my spoon.  But, if you're one of those people who likes big chunks, go ahead and leave big pieces of them in the soup!   

Once all of the veggies were cut, I but the bacon fat into a big soup pot and turned the heat to medium.  Once the fat was melted, I threw the veggies into the pot and let everything start to soften. 

Notice that I left the jalapeno in big chunks.  I wasn't sure how spicy everything would be, so I left them big enough to pull out just in case!

Next, I put the whole chicken into the same pot as the veggies.  Make sure you take all of the organs and stuff like that out of the chicken!  I did season it a little bit withsome salt and pepper, but that's it! After I put the chicken in, I filled the pot with regular old water.  You are essentially making your own chicken stock.

I then stirred up the veggies a tiny bit so that they weren't squished under the chicken.  Then, I covereed it all up with the lid and turned the heat to medium high.  Once the soup came to a boil, I turned the heat down to medium low and let it simmer for a few hours.  If you want, I'm sure that you could throw the whole thing into a crock pot and leave it for a few hours. 

After the soup simmerred for a few hours, the whole chicken should be thoroughly cooked.  I took the chicken out of the pot (very carefully!!!) Then, I let the chicken cool because it was super hot after being in soup for hours!  

Once the chicken was cooled, I shredded all of the whole thing.  This was the part where the dog sat drooling and staring at me for a while.  :)  Once it was all shredded, I threw it back into the pot with the diced tomatoes.  At this point, I had a pretty nice chicken and vegetable soup, but I wanted the yummy Mexican flavors... so I added in the spices - cumin, chili powders, oregano, paprika, and garlic.   I let everything simmer for a little bit longer so the flavors would have a chance to meld together.

So here's the soup!  The whole thing was sooo flavorful!  I garnished the whole thing with some chopped up avocado. It wsa delicious.   I thought it was great and will definitely be making it again.  It was full of vegetables, chicken, and all of the great nutrients of the bone broth.  I loved it and hope you do too!

Enjoy,

Jenn