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Tacos are my favorite food, so when my friend Amanda mentioned I should expand my horizons with a vegetarian tortilla soup, I was up for the challenge. Between the rich spice blend, slight kick from the peppers, and variety of toppings, I knew this new healthy soup creation was gonna be a winner.
Ingredients in Vegetarian Tortilla Soup
This flavorful soup is made with a rainbow of vegetables seasoned to perfection, my favorite kind of meal! Let’s highlight a few of these rawesome ingredients:
- Avocado oil: Healthy fats can easily be added to soups when using them to sauté veggies. Avocado or olive oil are great choices for this recipe.
- Tortilla chips: Since this tortilla soup is vegan, the tortilla chips have a unique purpose. They are actually softened in the soup, then blended all together to become a delightfully creamy meal. You can also use them as a crunchy topping when serving.
- Yellow onion: I love the pop of flavor in yellow onions and use them in most of my cooking.
- Poblano + Jalapeño peppers: I use one of each in this healthy tortilla soup recipe because poblanos bring just a bit of heat but an earthy, smoky flavor while jalapeños do pack a spicy punch. If you are sensitive to spice then omit the jalapeño altogether.
- Vegetable stock: Once I learned how to save my vegetable scraps and turn them into homemade stock, I no longer buy it from the store. If using store-bought, make sure it doesn’t have any additives and check the amount of sodium.
- Cilantro: Fresh herbs are naturally medicinal as well as provide excellent flavors. If cilantro isn’t your favorite herb then swap it with parsley.
- Bay leaves: These unique leaves add a lovely floral and thyme flavor to foods, yet you don’t eat them. Just toss in 1-2 leaves to a soup pot then remove before serving (or in this case, remove before blending).
Ingredients Swaps
- If onions aren’t your thing, then swap the onion out for 1 cup of leeks.
- If you don’t want any spicy peppers, swap the 2 peppers out for 1/2 red or orange bell pepper.
- You can also cut back on the spices as you taste test, to find the perfect amount of spice for you. I roll with the spice train, so I often add a bit more than this vegetarian tortilla soup recipe recommends, yet you can add less too!
- If you don’t want the corn tortilla chips or need to cut back on the sodium they bring, opt for a salt-free chip, or a good plantain chip. Trader Joe’s has a wide variety of plantain chips that I’ve been working through, and they’re all good!
How to Make Vegetarian Tortilla Soup
- In a large stock pot, heat avocado oil over medium heat. Add the onion, garlic, poblano pepper, and jalapeno pepper, and cook for five minutes. Sautéing the onion, garlic and peppers is so important to the depth of the flavors in this soup.
- Add spices and cook for five more minutes. Add stock, tomatoes, bay leaf, salt, cilantro leaves, and tortilla strips. Bring to a simmer. Cook, uncovered, for 30 minutes, remove bay leaves. The tortilla chips help turn this vegetable soup into a creamy dish. Adding them during the cooking stage helps them soften before blending.
- Puree the soup with an immersion blender. If you want your soup to be thicker, add more tortilla strips.
- Drain corn. Ladle soup into bowls and add toppings.
How to increase protein
Try adding black beans, cashew cream (or a ground turkey or shredded chicken option if you aren’t vegetarian). This will increase the protein without affecting the flavor.
Vegetarian Tortilla Soup Toppings
One reason soup makes a great family meal is that it’s super easy to customize with toppings. If you’ve got a kid who needs cheese on everything, then use this soup as the base and let ’em go wild! This soup is perfect for the chip lover too, just grab your favorite chips and dip away. Here are some recommended toppings for my vegetarian tortilla soup recipe:
- Freshly squeezed lime juice
- Diced jalepeños or hot sauce
- Cashew cream or sour cream
- Crumbled tortilla chips
- Cilantro
- Diced avocados
- Sweet corn
- Cooked, drained black beans
Really, the possibilities are endless. If you like it on tacos then you’ll probably like it in this tortilla soup.
Common Questions
Use vegetable stock and skip the meat to make a vegetarian tortilla soup. Traditional tortilla soup uses chicken broth and shredded chicken breast. You can also skip the cheese and sour cream if you’re vegan and use a cashew cream.
I love a creamy soup, and this one is no different. After sautéing the vegetables and simmering on the stove with tortilla chips, I use an immersion blender to puree the contents of the soup pot. The tortilla chips help thicken the soup nicely, without having to add any dairy products.
Depending on whether you like your soup spicy or on the sweeter side, there are a variety of great toppings for this soup. I use fresh chopped jalapeños, sweet corn, cashew cream, cilantro and a squeeze of lime juice.
Batch Cooking Tortilla Soup
Because soup often takes a lot of ingredients and time to make, I almost always make extra. I then freeze the leftovers in single-serving containers (usually Souper Cubes). This way, I can easily reheat and have a nutritious, hot lunch in the days and weeks to come.
Depending on your family size, double or triple this tortilla soup recipe. Your future self will thank you for the pre-prepped meal!
More Healthy Soup Recipes
I love soup, and chilly nights have me whipping up loads of different recipes. Soup doesn’t have to be boring, and it doesn’t need meat to be flavorful! Here are some more soup recipes:
Seriously, it’s hard for me to find a soup I don’t love. What is your favorite soup recipe? I’d love for you to leave a comment to let me know. Don’t forget to rate this healthy vegetarian tortilla soup recipe after you’ve tried it!
Vegetarian Tortilla Soup
Ingredients
- 1 cup tortilla chips
- 1 tbsp avocado oil
- 1 yellow onion diced
- 1 poblano pepper diced
- ½ jalapeño pepper
- 3 garlic clove crushed and chopped
- 2 tsp smoked paprika
- 1 tsp ground cumin ground
- 1 tsp chili powder
- 4 cup vegetable stock
- 2 cup diced tomatoes canned
- 1 bay leaves
- ¼ cup fresh cilantro
- 1 tsp sea salt, unrefined
Toppings
- ¾ cup corn kernels canned
- 1 avocado diced
- 2 cup tortilla chips
- ¼ cup fresh cilantro leaves only
Instructions
- In a large stock pot, heat avocado oil over medium heat. Add the onion, garlic, poblano pepper, and jalapeno pepper, and cook for five minutes.
- Add spices and cook for five more minutes. Add stock, tomatoes, bay leaf, salt, cilantro leaves, and tortilla strips. Bring to a simmer. Cook, uncovered, for 30 minutes, remove bay leaves.
- Puree the soup with an immersion blender. If you want your soup to be thicker, add more tortilla strips.
- Drain corn. Ladle soup into bowls and add toppings.
Helpful Tools
Notes
- You can also use a regular blender, and carefully puree in batches.
- To tone down the spice, omit the jalapeño.
- Make a day ahead for an even better flavor.
I am cooking out of order because I haven’t gone to the market yet and I am trying to clean out the veggies before they go by. This is another soup that I added a bit of chicken for for my husband. Also I didn’t have tortilla chips so I used hemp noodles. I also used more of the hot garlic. This is a very good recipe and I made enough to add some to the freezer.
Sounds delish, Helyn!
Another winner for me! I love the flavor combination of spices.
Meant to give it 5 stars but it posted before I did that!
Thanks so much for the five stars, Becky!
So glad you think this one was a winner too, Becky!
Warm, spicy, fragrant, smoky, filling and HOT! This soup was a joy to make, instructions were clear and I had most of the ingredients to hand already. I chose to add a few extra chips to make it thick and hearty. The perfect starter for taco Tuesday!
Perfect for Taco Tuesday is right, K.B.! Especially when the weather finally cools down!
Meh!
Thanks for the feedback on the Tortilla soup, Ingrid!
This is a decent base recipe, and I enjoyed the soup, but couldn’t help feeling like it was missing something flavor wise for me.
Loved this one! I wanted more flavor in the broth so I used Edward & Sons Not Chick’n bouillon cubes. I also wanted some texture so I only pureed half of the soup. Yum, Yum!
This soup has a kick that’s too strong for me. Or maybe the chili powder that I chose was too hot.
But, this soup brings new flavor to my taste buds experience. I like it.
Easy to make and very delicious! My favorite ingredients brought together for a wonderful warm you up feeling on a cold day.
Milder than I thought Which is how I planned it. I liked the taste, nice flavor. But would not be my first choice to make.
Yum!!!
This is our favorite. So flavorful. Some may find it spicy, but we used fresh peppers from our garden and could adjust the spice level to our taste by using a variety of them. One Serrano was enough for us.
The soups get better everyday! I used the whole jalapeño and added lime juice, corn and black beans. I recommend adding just the spices at first to the sautéed veggies. Cooking the spices dry with the veggies, just a little, really wakes up the flavor.
I like your recommendation, Sue! I did that too!!
Good flavor, but I think I prefer my tortilla soup with corn and beans.
Loved this soup, I even made homemade tortilla chips! Thank you.
Definitely will make this again! Yum
Love the flavors of this soup. Great on a cold day.
I loved the flavors in this soup. Served with some crusty bread.
After the 4 alarm Thai soup, I expected this one to be really hot and spicy too. I was pleasantly surprised. The peppers even cooked into a nice flavor. I enjoyed it without pureeing. I will try it that way tomorrow. This was the first soup I made using my first ever homemade vegetable stock. It turned out pretty good.
I look forward to trying chicken or tofu in some of my left over soups.
Not too bad, but felt like something was missing. Left chunky instead of blended. Next time will use less paprika, more cumin and some oregano and let simmer longer than 30 min.
I really love that this soup has a little spice and a lot of flavor. The chips add a great texture and this soup is really delicious.
This one’s a keeper thoroughly enjoyed this soup! Thank you @simple green smoothie
Fantastic! I’ve never had a blended version of tortilla soup but I’ll do it again. Added chips, corn and more cilantro when serving, great mix of flavors.