Excellent!! I used smoked/spicy Polish sausage as my husband isn't overly fond of andouille sausage. Didn't have fresh herbs, so just used dried instead, worked fine. Fried three large chicken quarters with the skin on, this gave me plenty of grease with which to make my roux. Before adding the chicken to the pot I removed the skin and used my hands to tear it into chunks. Adding file powder at the end adds quite a bit of flavor, I would recommend using it, even though it is an optional ingredient. Thanks for this recipe, I'll be making it again.

Reviewed On: Mar. 1, 2010

A nice place to start. For the most part I started out following the directions. I did replace the bell pepper with diced canned chilies as I didn’t have a pepper on hand and thought the mild chilies were in keeping with the ‘Fiesta’ theme. I also used hominy in place of the corn, just personal preference. When the soup was done I did a taste test and although good, it simply didn’t shout FIESTA, I personally prefer a more spicy and robust flavor. I proceeded to add cumin, oregano, fresh minced garlic, original Rotel tomatoes and a wedge of jalapeno pepper. I removed the jalapeno and discarded after the soup had simmered a bit. I also increased the amount of broth. I made my own chicken stock and added the rice directly to the pot. I had made lobster stew for my husband and made this soup for myself, as he doesn’t care for hominy. For lunch we were having leftovers, hubby took a taste of this soup and fell in love with it, had to heat him a bowl! Said he liked the hominy in this dish! What a shock! Give the hominy a whirl, its bland flavor compliments the spicy flavors and the chewy texture makes for a nice comfort food. A definite keeper with the changes.

Reviewed On: Feb. 22, 2010

Tasty, although I did make the following changes: I omitted the salt, bacon and mixed veggies, used small frozen peas in place of the snow peas an increased the amount of soy sauce. I also added scallions and fresh minced garlic. I think the addition of some chopped onion would be good as well. The egg can be cooked at the same time the rice is cooking. Simply push the rice to one side, drop in egg and scramble, then mix all ingredients together. My husband commented several times at dinner how good the rice was. Thanks for the recipe!

Reviewed On: Feb. 22, 2010