Our Easy Chicken or Beef Enchilada Soup Recipe

We like to experiment to try to copy our favorite restaurant dishes without a lot of fuss.  Many of our easy family recipes for comort food like one-dish casseroles or Tex-Mex options  (Chicken Taco Soup,  Tamale Pie, Vegetable Beef Soup, Chicken and Rice Casserole, Cabbage Roll Soup, Chicken Tortilla Casserole, Verde Carnitas Soup, Chicken Chalupa Casserole, Chicken and Rice Soup, and of course all the desserts too) are popular on this blog, so I keep adding new ones.  The easy recipe below makes a large pot of soup, perfect for a family or dividing into multiple ervings for meals. It takes about an hour with preparation and stirring.  Since we were going for easy, we used mostly medium flavored products to make it taste like restaurant-style soup without adding and measuring various spices.  You may use a mild version or a hot version of the canned products depending on the flavor you prefer.  See the notes at bottom of recipe before making chicken other variations or trying your own alterations.   The soup will look thin at first, but will slowly thicken as it cooks due to thickening agent in step 2.  

Shirley's Easy Chicken (or Beef) Enchilada Soup

Ingredients:

1 Tablesspoon olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1 cup corn masa or fine corn meal
2 cups water (or less)
1 can 10 oz diced Rotel tomotaoes (mild)
1 can 10 oz enchilad sauce (medium)
1 jar 15-16 oz con queso/nacho cheese (medium)
4 cups chicken (or beef) broth
1 lb of cooked meat 

Optional for topping(s):

Chopped cilantro
Sour Cream
Avocado chunks (or dollup of guacamole)
Fine Shredded cheese
Slightly Crumbled tortilla chips

Steps:

1. In large pot, saute onions in oil.
2. In medium bowl, wisk together masa/meal with water until no lumps remain to create a thickening agent. Then pour into pot with onions.
3. Add remaining ingredients, except chicken, to pot.  Continue stirring until all blended together and masa mix not longer tries to separate and stick to sides.  
4. Add chicken and let cook until soup thickens and bubbles.  Stir occasionally to prevent sticking to pot and burning. 
5. Serve with desired topping(s) on each bowl.  
6. Store remaining soup in refrigerator or freeze into single portions for later.

Notes:  

• For chicken version, use chicken borth and canned chicken divided with a fork or pre-cooked shredded skinless/boneless chicken breast.  If you want beef, substitute beef broth and cooked hamburger meat (aka ground beef).  I have not tried it with Mexican sausage or ground sausage, so if you do let me and my readers know how that works.
• If you think the soup is too spicy the first time you try it, you can dilute the spice a little by stirring a tablespoon of sour cream into the serving bowl of each person who considers it too "hot".  
• Most enchilada soup recipes on-line use a 16-oz Velvetta cheese block cut-up and allowed to melt into the other ingredients during the stirring process.   I was going for easy. so I used a pre-melted jar and it still tasted the same to me, but you can use Velvetta and see if the flavor is different.