Kickass Chicken Tortilla Soup

This is a very loose recipe that can be tailored to your tastes and outfitted with all manner of accessory food but we'll get to those in a bit. All credit goes to my wife for developing it.

Ingredients, more or less:
medium white onion
tomatoes, canned, chopped
fire roasted green chilis
roasted garlic salsa
better than bouillon soup base
chicken breast, pan seared and then shredded
Chalula hot sauce
cheese, grated
avocado, cubed
tortilla strips, recipe below

Pan sear the chicken with the onions and some of the fire roasted green chilis. Once the chicken is cooked, put it aside and continue cooking the onions and green chilis and add the tomatoes. Let it all come up to heat and then add the bouillon and water. Simmer for a while, add as much roasted garlic salsa as you like and continue to simmer. Add the hot sauce to taste, we like the Chalula brand.
The longer it simmers, the better the flavor will be and your house should smell insanely good by now. The cheese, avo, chicken and tortillas should be put in bowls buffet style

Ladle up a bowl and add any or all of the cheese, avocado, chicken and tortilla strips. I usually add a couple more dashes of Chalula here too. You can add whatever else you like that might appeal to you, we go with these because they work for us. Try whatever you like and let me know how it goes.

The truly best way to do this recipe is to make your own tortilla strips. Its surprisingly easy and the results make for awesome snacking material even outside use in the soup.

Tortilla Strips
6-8 inch white corn tortillas, the more the better, trust me
vegetable oil
salt
seasonings

Stack the corn tortillas five or eight deep and cut them into strips, don't worry about the curve on the edges. Heat up an inch or more of vegetable oil in a sauce pan and use a wok scoop to deposit and remove the rapidly cooking strips. Lay them on paper towels to cool and drain a little extra oil. Make sure to hit them with some salt (or whatever seasonings you fancy) while they are still hot. Once they cool, they are awesome in the soup and easily worth the little bit of extra time to make them. Oh and make alot more than you think you'll need because people will scarf them like mad.

The beauty of this recipe is that you can use whatever cheese you like, we usually use a medium cheddar but I will use Cabot Extra Sharp every so often for a different kick. The Better Than Bouillon is also swappable with whatever broth you prefer. The tomatoes could be fire roasted as well. Really, anything in the recipe can be changed around and tweaked to your particular liking though the garlic salsa seems to be a really key ingredient in making the whole thing come together so well. We use the Roasted Garlic Salsa from La Mexicana from Nob Hill (Raley's) specifically.

The soup also improves with age, as in, it gets even better if you make extra and eat it the next day or the day after. Just don't add any toppings until you've reheated and you'll be amazed at how complex and just downright awesome the soup is. I wish I had some pictures to share, maybe when I reheat a bowl tomorrow I'll add one.