3 15 ounce cans cannellini beans, separated (keep the cans separate for now, you’ll do one thing with two of them and something else with the third) See Note 4.
2 10 ounce cans diced tomatoes with green chilies (such as Rotel)
Or: 1-2lbs chicken breast with rotisserie seasoning mix drizzled with olive oil cooked in the air fryer.
juice of 1 lime
more salt to taste
Tortilla strips or chips, for serving
Prep
Chop the onion. Swim goggles are 100% effective against onion crying for me.
Mince the garlic.
Puree 2 cans of cannellini beans in a blender until smooth.
Measure out the herbs and spices into a small container such as a small bowl, ramakin, or the butter dish you stole from your favorite steakhouse…
Open all the cans but do not drain any of them.
Shred or chop the chicken. See Note 5.
Instructions
Heat canola oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add chopped onion and minced garlic. Let saute for about 5 minutes until onions become translucent. Stir in cumin, oregano, and salt.
Add pureed beans, remaining can of cannellini beans, 2 cans diced tomatoes with green chilies, cream-style corn, whole kernel corn, black beans, and shredded chicken to onion mixture in pot. Do not drain any cans of their liquid. Stir to combine.
Bring to a boil then reduce heat to medium to simmer until heated all the way through.
Add juice of 1 lime and season with salt to taste before serving. Serve with tortilla strips or chips.
Notes
Remember, soup is flexible and forgiving. So if you’re missing a can of something, want a little more of something else, or just want to skip an ingredient entirely, it will usually have no significant negative effect on the final product.
Olive oil is one of the few truly safe cooking oils out there. Many/most are seed oils that use unhealthy processing methods. Extra virgin olive oil is for finishing, when you will actually taste it directly such as on a salad or a garnish. When cooking with it, non-virgin or regular cooking olive oil is much more cost effective since you won’t be tasting it anyway. Cooking olive oil is generally more of a golden or yellow color whereas extra virgin is usually more green.
Sea salt is healthiest because regular, iodized, and kosher salts lack all of the other 60+ minerals and trace elements that sea salt provides. Many of these are essential and some of those have no other significant source in other foods (especially modern ultra-processed foods). Celtic salt and pink salt are okay and provide the same as sea salt since they’re just sea salt that has formed into rock, but they aren’t necessary or even better. Also, many pink salts are getting lower and lower in quality due to limited sources of pure pink salt. So many are mining areas that include contaminants of high amounts of other elements and minerals that could be harmful or even toxic. So I personally do not use pink salt.
Separate indicates that you won’t be using the entire amount of the ingredient at one time. You’ll use some at one point and the rest at another. This is also common when some will be cooked and some will be a garnish.
When shredding chicken, you can just put it all (minus bones) into a stand mixer such as a KitchenAid and use the whisk attachment. This shreds the chicken in seconds instead of doing it manually.
Pickled and preserved peppers are generally much milder than their raw form. And almost all the heat’s in the seeds.
Beans are very good for swapping. So if you already have a different type of bean, feel free to use them. The only issue I can think of is if you use something dark such as kidney beans, that will change the color of the base of this soup since the liquid in this soup is the pureed beans, not a broth like most soups. So that might look weird, but the taste would still be good.
Medium heat on my electric stove is between 4-6 out of 10.
A simmer is basically a baby boil. You should see bubbles popping consistently, but it shouldn’t be more than a ring of gentle bubbles.