Tasty Tuesday: Crock Pot Jalapeño Popper Soup

Eaters and readers, welcome!

Want an almost effortless way to spice up your life?  In the kitchen, no less?  Yes?  Then you have to try this Jalapeño Popper Soup recipe. Which I keep typing as Jalapeño Pooper Soup.  If you see that typo as we continue, just know this soup contains no poop!  Attribute any typos to old fingers and a desperately-overdue mani.  This soup is loooong on flavor and short on effort.  Don your sombrero and serape then meet me in the kitchen.  Best of all, it doesn’t have to be Cinco de Mayo to enjoy this soup…I made it on May 7th!

Let’s Get Cooking:  Jalapeño Popper Soup

For most of the recipes I have shared for The Blended Blog’s “Tasty Tuesday” link-up, I’ve asked you to grab your crock pot.  This soup is no exception but can also be prepared on the stove.  So a crock pot is not required to mix up this savory soup.

I had printed this recipe off the Internet but somehow didn’t pin it.  Oh, the horror!  Wanted to be able to direct you to the original recipe.  Or at least where I found it.  So had to scurry around to find it online for you.  Check it out:  from Closet Cooking via my Pinterest board “Souper Chili and Stews”, here.

The ingredients are pretty standard fare in most kitchens…at least in most cocinas in far west Texas. Take a look.

How many of these ingredientes do you have hangin’ around?

The Recipe

• 4 slices bacon, cut into 1 inch pieces (no ruler needed, just break it into bits…and I used turkey bacon)
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 onion, diced  (used about a half onion)
• 4 jalapeño peppers, diced  (PC is very gringo so I used 2)
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped (or 1)
• 4 cups chicken broth or vegetable broth
• 2 cups chicken, cooked and diced or shredded
• 1 (15 ounce) can white beans
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 cup corn (used frozen)
• 4 ounces cream cheese, room temperature (or cold and definitely lower fat or fat-free version)
• 1 cup aged cheddar cheese, shredded

Directions

• Cook the bacon until crispy, set aside and pour off the excess grease.
• Chop onion and garlic.
• Remove seeds from jalapeños, chop.
• Heat the olive oil in the pan over medium heat, add onion and jalapeño peppers (I tossed in some green pepper for fun)
• Cook until tender, about 5-7 minutes.
• Add the garlic and cook until fragrant, about a minute.
• Add the broth, bacon, chicken and beans and simmer for 15 minutes, seasoning with salt and pepper to taste.
• Add the corn, cream cheese and cheddar cheese and stir it in until the cheeses melt.

OR, if cooking in the crock pot:

• Cook the bacon until crispy, set aside and pour off the excess grease.
• Chop onion and garlic.
• Remove seeds from jalapeños, chop.
• Heat the olive oil in the pan over medium heat, add onion and  jalapeño peppers (I tossed in some green pepper for fun)
• Cook until tender, about 5-7 minutes.
• Add the garlic and cook until fragrant, about a minute.
• Place broth, chicken and veggies into crock pot
• Cook on low for 6-10 hours or high for 2-4 hours before adding additional ingredients
• Add beans, corn, cream cheese and cheese and continue to cook until cheese has melted

I added a few springs of fresh cilantro to my bowl.  The original recipe suggests adding crumbled tortilla chips on top.  I have prepared another similar soup to which I added thin slices of flour tortillas (cut almost like noodles).  Allow the flour tortillas to cook while the cheese melts.  They kind of become southwestern ‘dumplings’.  And tend to thicken the soup a bit.

Dinner is Served

Fixed this Sunday after a day of working in the yard.  Offered to fix some homemade Panamanian-style corn tortillas to go with it but PC was happy with Saltines.  Or, as he calls them soup crackers.  You can tell from the picture above that this is a hearty chowdery-stewy soup with a fairly thick broth, lots of chicken and flavor in every spoonful.

The original recipe says it makes 4 servings but we probably had more like 6 servings the size of the bowl in the picture below.  When I plugged the ingredients into Weight Watchers, it gave me a total of 8 points per servings.  Give or take.  Using fat-free cream would lower the point count.  I used low-fat cream cheese for my calculations.

PC has asked that we get back to ‘soup diet’.  So I am going to be preparing several soups over the next few weeks.  Will probably be back to share some of them here with you.  But now it’s…

Your Turn

First of all, do you guys eat heat in your house…jalapeños and other assorted peppers?  As delicate as PC’s digestive tract can be, he does like jalapeño poppers and I have made them several times.  When he mentioned going back to ‘soup diet’, I read off the names of several soups I had the ingredients to make and he chose this one.

When I was looking for this recipe on Pinterest today in order to share the original link with you, I found another Jalapeño Popper Soup recipe that sounds interesting.  It calls for cauliflower which I would have to sneak past PC.  But would be worth trying.  Find it here.

Do you have soup night (week, month) at your house?  What do you serve with soup when it is your main course?  I always feel like I am short changing PC when I just ladle up a bowl of broth and call it din-din.  But I am never sure what else to serve with it.  And if we are doing a soup DIET then maybe we only have…soup?

Linking-up with all the great cooks at The Blended Blog and some of our sweet readers over there. Please run by to check out Andrea’s Chocolate Chip Scotcharoos.  Thinking they sound like the perfect side for my Jalapeño Popper Soup.  Whatcha think?

Thank you, my sweet eaters and readers, for joining me today.  Hoping to feature another Library Convention Fashion Find on the blog tomorrow.  Would love to have you stop back by.

Hugs and kisses,