Stephen and Sarah's Tortilla Soup Recipe

Stephen and I love to cook together. Early in our relationship, probably 60% of our dates involved either learning together how to cook in my shared college kitchen, much to the dismay of my suite mates, or making a mess in his parents kitchen on nights they allowed us to experiment making dinner for them. As we grew in love together we also both adapted an incredible desire to try new things and take on all kinds of foodie challenges. Now that we are married, it is rare that we ever have the same meal twice. With work, Stephen doesn't get to join me in the kitchen as often. But, with his current occupation, he is always coming home with fresh produce grown locally that I have never heard of and we set to work learning about new techniques and different tastes. (Most recently we discovered Kabocha Squash. So yummy!) To wrap this all up, I decided a while back that I wanted to document some of our adventures on a cooking blog, but life happened at accelerated paces as it always seems to do, and the project got pushed to the side. But, here we are, attempting to make a new start.

I myself am a self-proclaimed cooking blog junky and many things I post on here will be taken from other, much more experienced, culinary magicians. I am learning more and more about healthy food and have grown a huge appreciation for making as much from scratch as possible.

For my first post though, I wanted to share a recipe that Stephen and I created together. It was probably one of the first meals we ever made and it was taken from a very vague recipe a friend had given me. It had a bunch of ingredients but no measurements or directions on when to add them! So from that list we tried and tasted to get some ideas of our own, added some ingredients and garnishings (is that a word?) and without further ado I now present our Tortilla Soup Recipe. Enjoy!

Stephen and Sarah's Tortilla Soup (Makes a large pot)

Ingredients:

• 3 lbs 80/20 ground beef
• 3 cloves minced or crushed garlic
• 2 green bell peppers, chopped
• 1 large white onion, chopped
• 1/2 red onion, chopped
• 1 can (for all of the times I write "can," I just mean regular size) diced garlic & oil tomatoes
• 1 can diced Italian tomatoes (one with mixed herbs garlic, basil, etc)
• 5-6 cans beef broth
• 1 can tomato sauce
• 1 BIG can of black beans
• 1 can of kidney beans
• 1 can of pink beans
• 1 T of cumin (more or less, depending on your taste)
• 2 t of turmeric (more or less, depending on your taste)
• 2 packets of taco mix seasoning
• 2 cans of whole kernel corn
• 5 (or more, depending on how much you like the spicy) dashes of Tabasco Green Pepper
• Juice of 1 whole lime
• 6 diced fresh Roma tomatoes 

     For Garnish:

• 1 bag of hearty Mexican restaurant-style tortilla chips
• Sour Cream
• Regular Tabasco (if needed)
• Ripe avocado slices
• Grated/shredded Mexican cheese

Directions: (Really simple. Aside from chopping a couple things, soups are pretty stress-free.)

In a large skillet, brown the beef together with the garlic and onions until the pink leaves the meat. It's ok if the peppers are not cooked through. They will cook down in the pot. Add the browned meat, garlic, and peppers to a large soup pot. 

Then basically just add the rest of the ingredients prior to garnishing and simmer for as many hours as you would like. The more the better. 

When ready to serve, garnish. Enjoy!