Sopa Aguada de Fideo Capitalina

Ingredients

Equipment Needed

• •Wide, heavy 4-quart pot or cazuela
• •Cast iron comal or heavy skillet for charring the tomatoes
• •Blender
• •Wooden spoon for toasting the fideo

Instructions

1. 1

   Toast the fideo

   Melt the lard in a wide, heavy pot over medium heat. Add the dry fideo straight from the package. Stir constantly with a wooden spoon. The pasta will turn from pale yellow to gold to a deep amber over four or five minutes. Do not walk away. Toasted fideo is the entire point of this soup. Pale fideo gives you a flat, starchy caldo. Properly toasted fideo gives you the nutty, browned-butter flavor that defines a sopa aguada capitalina.

   If a few strands go too dark, pull the pot off the heat and pick them out. One burned strand can turn the whole caldo bitter. No me vengas con atajos: this is not the step to rush.
2. 2

   Build the tomato base

   While the fideo toasts, char the romas, the quarter onion, the garlic, and the serrano on a dry comal over medium-high heat. Turn them until the skins blister and blacken in patches, about eight minutes. The char is flavor. A raw tomato salsa makes a thin caldo. A roasted tomato salsa gives the soup its body and color. Transfer everything to the blender and blend until completely smooth.

3. 3

   Fry the salsa into the fideo

   Once the fideo is amber, push it to the sides of the pot to make a small well in the center. Add the diced onion to the well and let it soften for one minute. Pour the blended tomato salsa directly over the toasted fideo. It will hiss and sputter. Stir to coat every strand. Cook for three to four minutes, stirring often, until the salsa darkens from bright red to a deeper brick color and the fat begins to separate around the edges. This frying step is what makes a Mexican sopa aguada different from any other pasta soup. The raw tomato has to lose its sharp edge before the broth goes in.

4. 4

   Add the caldo and epazote

   Pour in the chicken caldo. Add the epazote sprigs and the salt. Bring to a gentle simmer, never a hard boil. Hard boiling turns the fideo to mush and clouds the caldo. Cook uncovered for eight to ten minutes, until the fideo is tender but still has a slight bite at the center. Taste for salt. The caldo should be assertive, not timid. This is the broth that has to wake up an entire comida corrida.

5. 5

   Serve at the table

   Pull the epazote sprigs out, or leave them in if your family fights over them like mine did. Ladle the sopa into deep bowls. Each diner crowns their own: a generous swirl of crema, a handful of crumbled queso fresco, three or four slices of avocado, a wedge of lime, and a warm tortilla on the side. Eat it the moment it hits the table. Sopa aguada de fideo is meant to be the first thing on the comida, the dish that tells your stomach to get ready. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.

Chef Tips

• •The caldo de pollo matters more than you think. A homemade broth made from a chicken carcass with onion, garlic, and a few peppercorns turns this into a serious soup. Bouillon cubes give you a salty, one-dimensional caldo that tastes like Knorr, not like your grandmother's kitchen. If you cannot make broth, find a Mexican brand at the mercado, not a generic supermarket box.
• •Fideo comes in different cuts: fideo No. 0 (very fine), No. 1 (medium), and fideo cortado (the short cut). For sopa aguada in CDMX, the medium fideo is standard. The short cut is for sopa seca. Do not substitute spaghetti broken into pieces. The texture is wrong and Italians and Mexicans will both be insulted.
• •Epazote has no real substitute. It is the herb that turns this from pasta in tomato broth into a Mexican soup. Look for it fresh in Latin markets or grow it on a window sill. Dried epazote is a compromise but it works. Do not use cilantro. That is a different soup.

Advance Preparation

• •The tomato salsa base can be charred and blended one day ahead and refrigerated. The toasted fideo and the salsa-frying step are done the day of, because the fideo will turn to mush if cooked and held.
• •Leftover sopa de fideo thickens overnight as the pasta absorbs the broth. Loosen with a splash of caldo when reheating, and never microwave it past a gentle warm or the fideo turns to paste.

Frequently Asked Questions

Nutrition Information

1 serving (about 500g)