I ordered the this soup at a Tex Mex joint in Houston and totally fell in love. Determined to recreate it in my teeny NYC kitchen and think I got pretty close. This is quickly becoming one of my favorites and I will likely be making this a lot, especially if the winter stays this cold.

You can improvise and add or substitute any of the ingredients here. Next time I think I’ll try to add daikon to the soup.

Ingredients for Chicken Broth

• Chicken — (I like to use a mix of drumsticks and thighs with bones but no skin)
• Carrots
• Celery
• Corn
• Onion — (I prefer yellow/Spanish onion for cooking)
• Thyme
• optional: Saffron

Ingredients for toppings/garnish

• Tomatoes
• Onion — (I prefer red onion for garnish)
• Avocado
• Jalapeño
• Corn — cook briefly in chicken soup, remove and cut off kernels
• Cilantro
• Rice — cook in rice cooker with slightly less water
• Optional: lime

Instructions

1. Boil water and drop in chicken pieces. Cook for 1 hour. In the meantime, drop in whole corn, let cook, remove and cool. Cut off kernels to be used for garnish later.
2. Cut carrots, onion and celery into large chunks. Add carrots, onion, celery, thyme and dash of pepper into the pot. Cook for at least another hour.
3. While the broth is cooking, prepare the toppings/garnish: chop the tomatoes, red onion and jalapeño into small pieces. Finely chop the cilantro. De-seed and cube/slice/chop avocado (do this last as avocado oxidizes).
4. When the broth looks ready, scoop out the chicken and carrot. De-bone and hand shred chicken meat into small pieces.
5. Pour the remaining soup through a sieve to retain the clear broth. Add chicken and carrots back in and reboil. Flavor with salt and pepper.
6. Scoop out a bowl of hot broth with chicken and carrots. Serve with toppings/garnish on the side.