Barbecue Soup

My mom came back from a trip to the Outer Banks last month, raving about some soup she'd had there. Apparently it was good enough to warrant a scouring of the internet for the recipe that could copy such gastronomical bliss, and (lucky for me) she was successful.

Listed as "Get a Husband Stew," it makes the prodigious claim of being the soup with the power to change your marital status. That, sir, is no small boast. And if that wasn't enough to rouse my interest, Mom said that while she didn't get any more husbands after fixing this soup, it certainly did delight and thrill the husband she had already acquired.

She dubbed it "Barbecue Soup"--maybe on account of not wanting any more husbands--and she changed the recipe a bit from what she pulled off the web and then when I copied it from her I did things ever-so-slightly different. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit, though I can't guarantee the husband-attracting effects if you deviate from what I've got below:

3 tablespoons olive oil
1 pound ground pork
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 cup diced sweet onions
4 stalks celery, finely diced
1 cooked rotisserie chicken
3 14-ounce cans of petite diced tomatoes
4 cups water
1 cup ketchup
1/2 cup hickory smoked barbecue sauce
dash of tabasco sauce
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon Kosher salt
1 green bell pepper, diced
1 10-ounce bag of frozen corn kernels
4 potatoes, diced
2 bay leaves

Saute the ground pork in the olive oil, breaking up the meat with a spoon until it's browned and cooked through.  Add the garlic, diced onion and celery (which I dice very small because I can't stand big hunks of celery. It's a thing with me) and continue to saute over a medium heat, cooking until the onions are soft and translucent.

While that's cooking, remove the skin from the chicken (heh, as if we're counting calories or something) and shred the meat.  Add it, along with the cans of diced tomatoes, water, ketchup, barbecue sauce, hot sauce, salt, pepper, bell pepper, corn, potatoes and bay leaves and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and let it simmer until the potatoes are done, about 20 minutes.

Go ahead and adjust the salt, pepper and hot sauce if needed--and I'll warn you, it's very thick.  The original recipe called for 1 cup of water but it's easier to keep things from burning if there's more liquid in there and I like things soupier as it is.  It's great with a side of biscuits. Or really anything--you could serve raw squid eyeballs on the side and it would still be a fabulous soup!