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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 cups tortilla chips
- 1 tbsp avocado oil
- 1 yellow onion diced
- 1 poblano pepper diced
- ½ jalapeño pepper
- 3 garlic cloves crushed and chopped
- 2 tsp smoked paprika
- 1 tsp cumin ground
- 1 tsp chili powder
- 4 cups vegetable stock
- 2 cups diced tomatoes canned
- 1 bay leaves
- ¼ cup fresh cilantro
- 1 tsp sea salt
Toppings
- ¾ cup corn canned
- 1 avocado diced
- 2 cups 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.
Equipment
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.
This tortilla soup recipe was delicious! One of my favorite recipes during a Vitamix demo years ago was tortilla soup. This recipe is obviously more involved than that introductory flavor bomb. It’s amazing. I’m so happy to experience this ten day soup challenge. I’m feeling the healthy outcome!
I added black beans and corn also….we like it a bit chunky. So good….the spices were just right for my husband. Another keeper. Thanks!
After yesterday’s spicy soup. This made the soup seem smooth. This is very spicy I had to swap the cilantro for parsley and we are not fan’s of tortilla chips. I wound up making ditalini and scraping the chips. This was a little too much work and swapping on the fly. My husband whined about his mouth burning half the night. Hey, he didn’t have to eat it. No this will not stay in my repertoire. Although my may like it, it didn’t fit our tastes.
I love the flavor of this soup! I added black beans and corn to the soup and only blended half of it so it would be chunky. I would definitely make it again.
Love the idea of adding corn to this soup! That would also cut some of the heat the others have mentioned,
I’m glad so many are loving this soup. It wasn’t one of my favorites as I have the most whimpy mouth I know of on the spice scale. Our caregiver, however, thot it was great!
So delicious. Pretty spicy with what I added 🙂 Nice dark color. Thanks for the tip on adding the cashew cream. Helped tone it down. So so good!
This is a good soup but according to my daughter “a little too spicy for a comfort food.” We didn’t even add the peppers.
Great Soup Totally enjoyed it. I used sweet potato crackers, could not tell they were in it. Toned down spicy. Like mild soups, want to flavor everything not the spice. Thank you
Not a hot person. So really decrease the jalapeño and poblano peppers. Added black beans to increase protein aspects.
My husband thought it tasted great but it was too spicy for me. That can be easily remedied. I also thought four cans of coconut milk was too much so I substituted some almond milk. Overall a tasty soup
Good flavor, made with frozen corn instead of tortilla chips, added black beans at the end
This was super tasty!! We did add chicken breast for some extra protein. We poached it as the soup simmered for 30 minutes, letting the chicken pick up some of the flavors of the soup. We pulled the chicken out to purée the soup. After shredding the chicken, we added it back to the soup. Delicious!!
Very good soup. Easy to prepare and well worth the time. I did add a little extra “flavor”, jalapeno, to the soup just to up unctuousness.
I will make this soup every week.
This is my favorite soup of the challenge so far. It was so quick and easy to put together! It’s also very forgiving if you need to make substitutions. I wasn’t able to buy single poblano or jalapeno peppers so I substituted half an orange bell pepper for the poblano and some jalapeno pepper slices from a jar. It was perfect! Just the right amount of heat. I felt like 1 cup of corn wasn’t enough so I doubled that.
We topped it with some fresh cilantro, tortilla chips, diced avocado, a squeeze of lime juice and a dollop of cashew cream.
It was a flavor explosion in my mouth. Husband loved it and had seconds!!! This is going to be a regular in our house. 🙂
Pretty good. I never thought to blend tortillas into the soup! Fresh corn from the farm and some avocado…good!
This might be my favorite soup from the soup challenge! It’s got such a robust flavor! I love the heat! It’s there but not overwhelming. I cooked this last night. It tasted really good last night, but letting the flavors sit for a day made it even better! And It is quite filling! I added cashew cream to up the protein. I would definitely make this one again. Maybe next time, dip plantain chips into it. Yum!