How to Make Hominy Soup with Chicken
The other day I talked about roasting a couple of chickens, one for that night's meal and the other for something else later in the week. The first night we ate part of one chicken as our main meal with a few side dishes, the next night I used the leftovers from that chicken to make my Penne with Chicken & Peas in Cream Sauce.
The day after that I needed to do something with the other roasted chicken so while looking through my February 2007 edition of Bon Appetit, I found a Chicken and Hominy Soup recipe in their "Fast Easy Fresh" section and it was fast, easy and delicious.
A couple of changes I made to the recipe were substituting crushed tomatoes for the canned petite tomatoes and using regular paprika instead of smoked paprika. If I had those other ingredients on hand, I would have used them and they may have given the soup a different flavor but my version came out just fine.
This is one of those meals that can be made into a shortcut meal by purchasing a store-bought roasted chicken. I use them all the time if I'm not in the mood to cook and they really aren't too costly especially if you can get two meals out of one chicken and use the bones to make chicken soup.
One of the keys to this recipe is once the meat is removed from the chicken, take your time and shred the chicken meat by hand. It will be tempting to quickly cut the chicken up with a knife and I'm sure the taste will be the same but you'll loose something in texture and mouth feel. This is a much better recipe if you take the time to shred the chicken by hand.
The recipe also suggests serving with tortilla chips, avocado and/or sour cream as toppings. All great suggestions, but trying to lose a few holiday pounds, I opted not to. If I were serving this to guests as a starter or even a main course with a salad, I would definitely serve the side toppings.
📖 Recipe
Chicken and Hominy Soup Recipe
Ingredients
- 3 tablespoons olive oil
- 3 bunches green onions sliced
- 4 teaspoons ground cumin
- 2½ teaspoons paprika
- 10 cups chicken stock
- 14½ ounces crushed tomatoes
- 1 roasted chicken meat removed and shredded
- hot pepper sauce to taste
- 45 ounces hominy in juice white or golden
- 1 cup fresh cilantro chopped
- salt to taste
Instructions
- Heat your soup pot over medium-high heat, add oil and when hot, add the green onions, cumin and paprika. Sauté for about 5 minutes and then add the chicken stock, tomatoes WITH juice, chicken meat and a teaspoon or two of hot pepper sauce. You can add more of the hot pepper sauce toward the end if you want it spicier but it's easier to add less now than suffer from adding too much.
- Using a food processor or blender, puree the hominy with juice until smooth. Add the hominy to the soup and bring it all to a boil. As soon as it comes to a boil, lower heat and simmer for 15 minutes.
- Add the cilantro, taste and adjust with salt and hot pepper sauce. One thing you might not realize is it is very difficult to adjust seasonings when the soup is as hot as it is at this point. Over a certain temperature, you taste buds are not that effective.I recommend you either wait until the soup cools down a little before adjusting the seasonings or have salt and pepper or hot pepper sauce on the table and let the individual eating the soup make the adjustment. Just be sure to tell them it may need salt.
Deneen
I can't wait to try this!
Jon Bloomfield
I live in the U.K and had never heard of hominy so I did a bit of research on the internet and found it on a website and it said it was dried maize (corn). Would normal tinned sweet corn be o.k to use because it's been quite cold recently and this sounds like it would warm me up on these cold dark evenings.
RG
You can use canned sweet corn and I'm sure the recipe would be good but it would not have the flavor or consistancy when using hominy. The hominy gives this soup a very different flavor and worth trying to find some.
Phyllis Torers
I justed wanted to say that the tortilla soup was very delicious. It was so easy to make. I give the tortilla soup a 10+. My family really enjoyed it. thank you.
RG
Thank you Phyllis. It is one of my favorite recipes when the temperatures start going down. Glad you enjoyed it.
Rose Blanco
It certainly is nice to obtain new suggestions for dishes combined with straightforward approaches to create them. My partner and I put together this dish for our supper a few days ago. All the family loved it, I'll be cooking it regularly from now on.
Thanks Rose for sharing your results. - RG
C. R.
Nice chicken recipe.
Thanks - RG
Brent
I want to make this tonight but I don't understand.
PUREE the hominy?
Why not whole?
And since I'm tripling your recipe, I may not wait for a reply and puree half my frozen nixtamal and leave the other half in the soup.
I like all your other touches here.
Hi Brent, so how did your soup turn out? Why puree the hominy you ask? I guess because that's the consistency and texture they were looking for. If that's not how you like it, don't puree it and if you like the results. If not, you can always puree afterwords. Think of recipes as guides but they are not absolutes unless you are baking and then it is much more critical to follow the amounts exactly. - RG
Brennen White
My favorite soup of all time! Thank you, Thank you, Thank you! I try to make at least once a month. It's even better the next day and even better the next!