My Year In Soup-Week 13

I had never heard of fideo until I moved to San Antonio-I loved it! Being a soup person, I tried "Fideo Soup" at a local Mexican restaurant and enjoyed that too! I was thrilled when a version of the recipe was posted in the newspaper a while back and had saved it to make.

Macaroni Soup (Fideo Soup)

Source: San Antonio Express-News
Makes 6 servings.
Approximate nutritional values per serving: 130 calories, 3 g protein, 13 g carbohydrate, 7 g fat, 10 mg cholesterol, 320 mg sodium.


Ingredients:
• 4 slices bacon
• 3/4 cup fideo noodles OR dry macaroni
• 1 clove garlic, finely minced
• 1/4 cup minced onion
• 2 1/2 cups chicken broth (OR, substitute or vegetable broth or water)
• 1 (8-ounce) can tomato sauce
• 1/4 teaspoon crumbled, dried Mexican oregano

GARNISHES:
• Cotija cheese OR parmesan
• Chopped cilantro

1. Fry bacon in heavy-bottomed saucepan until it is crisp. Drain on paper towels and pour off all but 1 tablespoon bacon fat.
2. Pour macaroni (or fideo/vermicelli) into pot and turn heat down to medium. Fry macaroni, stirring it, until most of the pieces have turned to a light color (all of them don't need to change color).


3. Add garlic and onion and cook about a minute longer, stirring. Add water or broth, tomato sauce and oregano. Stir and let soup come to a simmer, cover and turn the heat down so it won't boil over. Simmer until macaroni is tender.


4. When macaroni is tender, chop bacon and add to pot.

5. For Optional Garnishes: Add cheese and/or cilantro to each serving, as desired.

My notes:

• Mmmmmmmm. This was such a good and filling soup for lunch!
• I did note that the soup was pretty generic until I added the bacon-wow! It REALLY added flavor.
  
• The cotija cheese was new to me and I really liked it! It is on the salty side though, so between that, the canned chicken broth and the bacon, I completely omitted the salt from this recipe.
• I'm a cilantro person and to me, it really pulled all the flavors together and made the soup taste great!!