My Hot Southern Mess

I made this recipe as written, cooking over medium heat until "it bubbled and then for 10 more minutes. I wasn't sure what to do with the lettuce so assumed to put it on the side. As written, this is very tomato-y and has the tinned tomato taste. It tastes nothing like any mexican rice, tex mex or traditional, that i've ever had. To salvage the meal for my family I added ground turkey, placed in a 9x13 dish and topped with cheese and baked. After baking with my small tweaks the dish turned out pretty good and my family liked it. I can understand the differences in the reviews from those that made it as written and those that changed the cooking instructions. As written, the recipe needs improvement.

I made this recipe as written, using reduced sodium chicken broth and "regular" cube chicken bouillon. I added pepper, but not salt due to the sodium content already in the soup. I am not sure if using the Knorr bouillon would have made a difference, but as written this soup was very salty. The chili powder and cumin was a nice addition to the chicken soup, but I couldn't get past the saltiness. My family wouldn't even try it.

This was a little too sweet for my taste.I added sauerkraut to serve with it or in it.

I made this nearly as written, I subbed cooked frozen tortellini for fresh/refrigerated and omitted the mushrooms. I also doubled the recipe. I ended up with an uneven ratio of sauce to pasta as written. After taking my pic I had my daughter go to the store and buy another bag of frozen tortellini (19oz) and it was the perfect ratio. Flavor-wise this recipe is heavily dependent on the sauce you use and could use some tweaks to up the flavor. Finally, the cheese doesn't need doubling when the recipe is doubled and we would skip the cheddar in the future for something like parmesan. My family rated this a 3.5-4.5.

I have another recipe that is a variation of this one but I really like the lemon, thyme addition which provides a nice little tang to the dish! Keeper for sure.