Don’t we all need a quick and easy dinner recipe? This is one of our favorites! It’s a Vegetarian Tortilla Soup, made with pantry ingredients and full of fiber and protein. This recipe for veggie tortilla soup is satisfying, hearty, and filled with black beans and corn! Enjoy it piping hot in the winter or warm in the spring and summer months.
What is Tortilla Soup?
Tortilla Soup is a Mexican-inspired soup made with a tomato base and filled with Southwestern flavors like cilantro, jalapeño, and onions! It’s usually made with chicken, but we chose black beans instead. One of our favorite things about this vegetarian soup is that it's topped with tortilla strips (hence the name) and is one of those classic weeknight meals that reheat beautifully.
Vegetarian Tortilla Soup Ingredients
Even though this is a vegetarian soup, it’s still filling, nourishing, absolutely delicious, and packed with so much flavor! We made it with onion, jalapeño, black beans, corn, tomatoes, and fresh cilantro. We topped it with crunchy homemade tortilla strips, tangy cashew sour cream, and creamy avocado. The crunchy tortilla strips give it the perfect texture next to the creamy avocado, hearty black beans, and tangy cashew cream!
How to Make Vegetarian Tortilla Soup
This process is so simple that it’s perfect for lunches or weeknights! Heat the olive oil, then add tomato paste and spices and let them cook for a few minutes. They’ll be nice and fragrant! Add in onion and jalapeno, then the rest of the ingredients, and simmer it until all the flavors have come together into this easy tortilla soup.
How to Make Homemade Tortilla Chips
Our favorite addition to this soup is the tortilla strips for topping! Use your favorite tortillas. We love using 100% corn tortillas because, but you can use any tortillas you have on hand. If you want to keep this soup gluten-free go for the corn tortillas.
Cut tortillas into strips
Season corn tortillas with olive oil, chili lime, and chili powder and place them on a large baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
Bake until they’re browned and perfectly crunchy.
Tortilla Soup Toppings
Half the fun of a tortilla soup night is the toppings! We love to put a bunch of options on the table and let everyone dress their bowl how they want. Choose cashew sour cream if you would like to keep this tortilla soup vegan
- Tortilla strips
- Cashew Sour Cream
- Fresh avocado
- Cilantro
- Slices of lime
- Yogurt
- Regular Sour Cream
- Jalapeño Slices
- Fresh Tomatoes
- Shredded cheese ( regular or vegan)
More Vegetarian Soup Recipes
- Lentil Soup with Moroccan Spices
- Turmeric Ginger Vegetable Soup
- Roasted Butternut Squash Soup
- Creamy Corn Soup with Basil and Pine Nuts
- Tomato Rice Soup
- Creamy Vegan Sweet Potato Soup
- Super Creamy Tomato & Roasted Eggplant Soup
- High Protein Vegan Lasagna Soup
If you enjoyed this recipe, it would help us tremendously if you left us a star rating in the comments below or on the recipe card. Do you have any questions about the recipe? Do you need a swap for any of the ingredients? We are here to help, just leave us a question in the comments below.
Vegetarian Tortilla Soup
- Total Time: 40 minutes
- Yield: 8 cups
- Diet: Vegetarian
Description
This recipe for veggie tortilla soup is satisfying, hearty, and filled with black beans and corn! Enjoy it piping hot in the winter or warm in the spring and summer months.
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 2 tablespoon tomato paste
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 large onion, diced
- 1 large jalapeño pepper, diced small - (see note #3)
- ¾ teaspoon cumin
- 1 teaspoon prepared chili powder (see note #2)
- ½ teaspoon chili lime
- 1-28 ounce can of crushed tomatoes - (see note #4)
- 1 - 15 ounce can of black beans (with the water)
- 1 ½ cups frozen corn kernels
- 2 tablespoon chipotles en adobo (use less, if you want less heat), alternatively, if you prefer no heat use 2 teaspoon of smoked paprika.
For the tortilla strips
- 10 small 100% corn tortillas
- 2 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
- 1 teaspoon chili lime seasoning (see note #1)
- 1 teaspoon chili powder seasoning
Instructions
- Heat the olive oil in a soup pot. Add the tomato paste and salt and cook over medium-high heat for 2 minutes, stirring frequently, until the tomato paste darkens in color
- Add the onion and jalapeño, and cook for about 5 minutes, adding about ¼ cup of water at a time to prevent them from burning
- Add the cumin, chili powder, chili lime, crushed tomatoes, black beans, corn, chipotle en adobo (or smoked paprika), and 2 cups of water. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat to low, cover the pot, and simmer for 20-30 minutes.
- Taste the soup and add more of the soup seasonings to your liking.
- While the soup cooks prepare the tortilla strips
For the tortilla strips
- Heat the oven to 375ºF. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper (you might need to use 2 baking sheets, so the tortilla strips bake in a single layer.)
- Stack all the tortillas on a cutting board. Make ½" slices horizontally and vertically, until you get bite-size tortilla strips
- Place the cut tortilla strips in a large bowl, add the oil and the spices, and mix well, so all the tortilla pieces are coated with the oil and spices.
- Arrange them on the baking sheet and bake for 8 minutes. Turn off the oven and leave the tortilla chips in the oven until the oven cools. This will crisp them up.
Serve soup hot or warm and top with tortilla strips and your choice of toppings:
- Tortilla strips
- Cashew Sour Cream
- Fresh avocado
- Cilantro
- Slices of lime
- Yogurt
- Regular Sour Cream
- Jalapño Slices
- Fresh Tomatoes
- Shredded cheese ( regular or vegan)
Notes
- Since the chili lime seasoning contains salt we did not add any more salt when making the tortilla strips.
- In the US, chili powder is generally a blend of spices that does include chilies but also has cumin, garlic powder, and herbs that dampen the heat of the chilies. In other countries, chili powder is could be made only from chilies. Keep this in mind when using chili powder outside the US, or your dish will come up really spicy.
- If you don't want to use a jalapeño pepper, you can use a small bell pepper
- If you want your soup to have a smokey flavor, fire-roasted tomatoes instead of crushed tomatoes.
- Prep Time: 10
- Cook Time: 30
- Category: Soup
- Method: Stovetop
- Cuisine: Mexican
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 ⅓ cups
- Calories: 262
- Sugar: 4.7
- Sodium: 747
- Fat: 9.1
- Saturated Fat: 1.4
- Unsaturated Fat: 7
- Trans Fat: 0
- Carbohydrates: 40.7
- Fiber: 9.3
- Protein: 8.5
- Cholesterol: 0
Crushed tomatoes are not listed in the ingredients. How many cups do I need to add.Debbie
Crushed tomatoes are not listed in the ingredients. How many cups do I need to add.
Vicky and Ruth
Sorry about that. It's 1-28 ounce can of crushed tomatoes. Thank you for letting us about the missing ingredient. We just updated the recipe. Let us know how you like it!
Lynda
you list this ingredient in the post but not in the recipe, where does it go?
Chipotle en Adobo
Vicky and Ruth
We are so sorry, Linda. We added the chipotles en adobo to the list of ingredients and it's added when we say: add the rest of the ingredients. Thank you for bringing this to our attention.
DIANN L MCBEE
I tried to print, but it leaves big gaps on the page -- ends up using three pages, of which a lot is blank. Seems waste of paper? Maybe your website designer can look at and make more printer friendly?
Vicky and Ruth
I am sorry you are having trouble. It's not happening on my end, and we specifically made that the ads will not print on the recipe card. Can you give me more information on how you are trying to print (steps) and browser and maybe email an image of how the recipe printed on your end. mayihavethatrecipe @ Gmail . com
Susan g
The soup is delicious! Maybe the canned puree I used (Tuttorosso) is thicker than you use. Since I had also added some green and red sweet peppers, it looked like a stew! I added liquid from the beans I had cooked until it looked 'right' -- about 10 oz. for the halved recipe. I thought the lime juice listed at the end was a good tweak, and my husband also added yogurt. And thank you by being clear about what you mean by 'chili powder.' It took me years to learn that chile powder is just chiles.