I don't eat fast food very often, but the other day I was in a hurry and I had a bowl of Qdoba's "tortilla soup". Damn tasty stuff, so I decided to try making my own.
Luckily somebody pointed me at the original, Sopa Azteca, and suggested ("Why not copy someone better?") that I try Rick Bayless' Sopa Azteca. I made his Slow Cooked Pork Stew with Tomatiloes, Mushrooms and Potatoes a couple months ago and it came out great:
...so his Sopa Azteca sounds like a good bet.
The following is somewhat adapted for my new toy, the Instant Pot. While it came out great, this sort of dish doesn't really exploit the Instant Pot's pressure cooker strengths. It really excels for making "low and slow" or braised dishes. But it came out pretty good anyway.
In reading up on how to cook with the Instant Pot, I noticed most of the stuff online kinda glosses over the specifics of pressing the buttons and so forth. It's not rocket surgery, and the Instant Pot has a ton of safety features, but considering all the wacky/scary stories about pressure cookers that I've heard, I would have preferred some more specific and detailed examples. So I made sure to include good photos of that on this page.
Start off by putting the Instant Pot in saute mode. This is a general tip I read somewhere, to just start by hitting the "Saute" button to warm up the Instant Pot while you prep the ingredient. In this case I actually am going to use the saute mode, to the onions and garlic.
Note that the timer says "30", meaning it'll shut off saute mode automatically after 30 minutes. I guess that's one of the many safety features.
Saute a diced white onion and three cloves of minced garlic.
Toast the dried pasilla negro chile over an open flame.
Careful it doesn't catch fire!
Rough chop the chile to make it easier for the spice grinder to grind it up.
The (sorta) ground chile and a teaspoon of epazote. The epazote gives it a distinctive sort of (pleasantly) sour taste.
Get ready to blend the tomatoes. I couldn't find fire-roasted tomatoes, but I definitely want to try those next time, I think it'll increase the smoky flavor.
Add the ground pasilla negro.
And blend...
Now add the sauteed onion and garlic.
And blend... I used the button labeled "liquidate". The final soup was smoother than the Qdoba tortilla soup. I'm not sure if that's the way it's supposed to be, but I'm half tempted to make it a bit chunkier next time. Either by not blending so much, or by adding some unblended tomatoes and onion late in the process.
Pour the blended tomatoes, pepper, onion and garlic into the Instant Pot, then add the two quarts of chicken broth and the teaspoon of epazote.
I used the chicken broth to rinse the blender out and get every last bit of tomatoey, peppery, oniony, garlicky goodness out of it.
I have to confess here, I used Better Than Boullion. This was a quick meal.
Speaking of quick, I turned on my electric kettle when I started cooking, then used the boiling hot water to make the broth. That sped things up, because it enabled the Instant Pot to get up to steam temperature much more quickly (we'll get to that in a couple more steps).
Here's a shot I took later, of the markings on the Instant Pot steel liner/inner pot.
This is important, so pay attention: The Instant Pot steel liner does not have a proper "max fill" line.
It has markings for volume, marked in cups on the left and liters on the right. It says "Max" at the top, but That's the wrong amount Also, annoyingly those cups are not eight ounce cups, they're using the little plastic measuring cup that comes with the Instant Pot (dang Canadians! :-) ).
When you're using pressure cooker mode, you need to make sure there's room for the steam. Remember those wacky/scary stories about pressure cookers? Mostly because of problems like this.
For food like this soup, which doesn't expand as it cooks, that's 2/3 full. For food that does expand as it cooks, like rice, oatmeal, lentils, etc, that's 1/2 full. You have to figure out for yourself what 2/3 or 1/2 means. There are two ways to do it.
The hard way, which is what you do when, like myself, you didn't think ahead and do it before you put the food in the pot, is to look at the visible markings on the pot (again, the "cups" markings are not 8-ounce cups) and figure it out.
The easy way is to check your Instant Pot's volume on the label on the back, near where the power cord plugs in, calculate 1/2 and 2/3 of that, then measure out the right amount of water, pour it into the pot, and see what level that comes up to.
We now return to your regularly scheduled soup:
Put the lid on the instant pot and twist it a couple inches to the right (clockwise) to lock it on.
Make sure the lid Pressure Release is set to "Sealing", not "Venting".
Here's a close up. That little metal dot to the right will pop up when the Instant Pot is up to pressure.
I find that when it's in "Saute" mode, I have to press the "Off" button first, then press the "Manual" button. Maybe I just haven't figured out the right way yet.
Press the "Manual" button. The default time is the last setting you used, which in this case was 6 minutes for making hard-boiled eggs.
As a side note, hard-boiled eggs aren't exactly rocket surgery, but of the eight dozen eggs made in the Instant Pot so far, every single one of them has been ridiculously easy to peel, in most cases the entire shell coming off in one or two pieces. Those cartons were from three different shopping trips too, so it's not simply a batch of magically-easy-to-peel eggs.
The best explanation I've read is that the suddeness of the heating keeps the thin inner membrane from bonding with the egg white.
It's also possible that the pressure cooking process does something funky with the CO2 in the egg white (which is the usual reason why some hardboiled eggs are difficult to peel): The science of hard boiled egg peeling
Hit the "minus" button once to bring the cooking time down to 5 minutes.
I'll leave it at the current pressure setting, which is "high". I have no real idea what either of these settings should be, but I googled on "tortilla soup" and "instant pot" and found a few recipes that said 5 minutes. And five minutes seems like a reasonable amount of time, from what I've learned so far about pressure cooking.
And now the Instant Pot beeps and displays "On" for a few minutes as it heats up and the resulting steam slowly brings the pot up to pressure. Since the Pot was warmed up in "Saute" mode and the broth was made from near-boiling water, it only takes two or three minutes this time.
The Instant Pot beeps again to indicate that it's up to pressure and the pressure cooking stage will now commence. It switches to showing the countdown of time left to cook. Whoops, guess I didn't press that "minus" button fast enough, it's still showing 6 minutes.
I went back to my computer to work and 6 minutes later the Pot beeped again, indicating it was done. I took another five minutes to finish what I was working on. As you can see, after the pressure cooking stage, the pot automatically switches to "Lo" mode. It also keeps track of how long it's been in that mode, in this case 5 minutes.
I used a spatula to turn the Pressure Release to "Venting". You'll see why in a minute.
And here comes the steam. I think that with some practice I'll be comfortable turning the release by hand, but it's very sensitive. Any jostling of the release lets loose a little gout of steam.
It takes about 2 minutes for the Instant Pot to finish venting. Or you can let it cool down naturally, which I've heard takes around 20 minutes. I let it vent for a few minutes.
Nine minutes since it finished pressure cooking, the steam's all vented, time to open it.
It looks delicious, but there's one thing missing...
Meat makes everything better. Especially when it's leftover slow-smoked pork, by my good friend John.
Let's eat!