Southwest Style Cream of Chicken Soup

Cream of chicken soup with attitude! I found this in an old Sunset cookbook I bought at a flea market.

• Ready In: 1 hr 55 mins
• Serves: 6

Ingredients

• 1  whole chicken
• 7  cups water
• 3  small onions, cut into quarters
• 2  medium tomatoes, peeled and cut into wedges
• 1⁄2 teaspoon  crushed  dried hot red chile
• 1⁄2 teaspoon ground cumin
• 2  cups  whipping cream
•  salt, to taste
•  fresh ground pepper, to taste
• 1⁄2 cup fresh cilantro stem

Directions

1. Rinse chicken, pull off and discard lumps of fat.
2. In a 6-8 quart pot, combine chicken, water and onions. Bring to a boil over high heat; then reduce heat, cover and simmer until meat pulls easily from bones, about 1 hour. Lift out chicken and let cool. Shred meat and set aside; discard skin and bones.
3. Boil broth over high heat, uncovered, until reduced to 4 cups. Pour broth through a wire strainer and set aside. For that last part, don't do what I did and pour it through the wire strainer right down the drain because then you just went through all that for nothing. Also, if your husband is holding the strainer, don't pour it over his hand because he'll get kind of upset -- did that one time too.
4. Anyway, return the onions left in the strainer to the pot, along with the tomatoes, dried red chiles and cumin; stir over medium heat until tomatoes mash easily (don't use your fingers, a big spoon works well -- learned the hard way), about 10 minutes. Add broth, cream and chicken and bring up to a boil. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
5. Ladle into bowls and top with cilantro.