Here in Southern California Mexican food is as common as burger and fries, but for real authentic Mexican restaurant, head out various street downtown LA.

During my visit to all their street, I enjoyed some great Mexican recipes from the crunchy bit taquitos, at Cielito Lindo to the soft carne soft with tacos at the La Noche Buena. I ended my visit with some home made dusted in cinnamon and sugar. They're the ultimate portable dessert.

One of the dishes that I enjoyed most is the tortilla soup, which can be made several ways. So we make our chicken tortilla soup, now let’s get started in this easy tortilla soup recipe. If you have left over chicken or leftover turkey, making Mexican tortilla soup is a great way to use up your leftovers for the second meal. Alright, I've got plenty of great meat, I can peal off of this to use for this recipe. And make sure you only get the meat. You don’t want any chicken fat. Chicken fat is not good in the flavor to part of it. Just want to some bite pieces. After I diced up the cooked chicken, it's time to get the recipe of the ingredients together.

For the soups toping, you got to want some avocado, some cheddar cheese, couple of corn tortillas. You're also going to need two table spoons of butter, two celery stocks, two carrots, half an onion, little small bunch of cilantro, two cloves of garlic, quarter teaspoon of cayenne pepper, half teaspoon of dried oregano. And to spice this up you can go with one table spoon of ground cumin, one tablespoon of chilly powder. That’s what we’re going to do today.

If we like a smoky flavor, you can dice up one chipotle pepper in place of the cumin and the chilly powder. You also need a can of tomato sauce. It's 15 ounce can, followed by our chicken broth which I have two quarts here. You dice the onion, slice the carrots, and dice the celery. Now, it’s giving a rough chop to the cilantro and let’s pre-heat our soup pot on medium high and then we’re going to add the butter and melt that down and then we’re going to add our Mirepoix, which is a French term for carrot, celery and onion. Stirring our left has cooked down for about three minutes. After three minutes I'm going to add the garlic and the cilantro and stir for about a minute. And we’re going to add the chicken and the spices. Stir that around for another minute and were going to add the tomato sauce. And cook the chicken real good. And now I'm going to add the tomato sauce. We’re going to bring it to a boil and were going to cook for couple minutes and it will kind of thickens up and I’ll show you want it looks like. After it simmers and bubbles for a good two minutes, it thickens up a little bit now let’s add the chicken stock.

After adding the stock, bring the soup back to a rapid boil and set it on simmer for at least 30 minutes. While the soup is simmering, let’s ahead and slice up or tortilla, the avocado and grate the cheese. I have my deep fryer, pre-heated to 375 degrees. We’re going to drop in some strips here, crisp them up. If you don’t have a deep fry, you can use a pan with some oil but I highly recommend getting a deep fryer. They work great for little projects like this.

Alright, remove the strips after about a minute and a half to two minutes and let them sit there and drain. The last thing we do before we dished up is we give a little taste test and you may have to add a little bit of salt. I usually add no more than a teaspoon. Let’s dish up, oh man this smelled great. Let’s place some tortillas strips down, followed by some grated cheese. It's where avocado, right on top like that and we’ll stick a few more tortilla strips up right in here.

Well, if you're looking to make a Mexican soup, I recommend this recipe. My wife just tried it and said it's the best tortilla soups she's ever had. Thanks for tuning in, delicious.