Tortilla Soup With Pantry Ingredients in 30 Minutes

This is the soup I make when the fridge is empty and nobody wants to hear about it. Everything in it comes from cans, jars, and the back of the freezer, and it still tastes like it took effort. I have made it with rotisserie chicken, with a drained can of chicken, and with no meat at all, and the beans carry it either way.

Prep time: 10 minutes · Cook time: 20 minutes · Total time: 30 minutes · Serves: 4 generously, 6 with plenty of toppings

What you’ll need

• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 medium yellow onion, diced (or 2 tablespoons dried minced onion)
• 3 garlic cloves, minced (or 1 teaspoon garlic powder)
• 1 tablespoon chili powder
• 2 teaspoons ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
• 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1 can (4 ounces) diced green chiles, undrained
• 1 can (14.5 ounces) fire-roasted diced tomatoes, undrained
• 1 can (15 ounces) black beans, drained and rinsed
• 1 can (15 ounces) pinto beans, drained and rinsed
• 1 cup frozen corn
• 4 cups chicken broth (or vegetable broth)
• 1 tablespoon tomato paste
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste
• 2 cups shredded cooked chicken, optional
• Juice of 1 lime, or 1 tablespoon bottled lime juice
• 4 corn tortillas, cut into thin strips (or a few handfuls of tortilla chips)

For topping, whatever you have: sour cream, shredded cheese, avocado, cilantro, sliced jalapeños, hot sauce.

How I make it

1. Heat the oil in a large pot or Dutch oven over medium heat. Add the onion and cook 5 minutes, until soft and just starting to color at the edges. If you’re using dried onion instead, skip ahead and add it with the spices.
2. Add the garlic, chili powder, cumin, smoked paprika, and oregano. Stir constantly for 45 seconds. The spices should smell toasty, not bitter. This is the step people skip, and it’s the difference between soup that tastes like chili powder and soup that tastes like chili.
3. Stir in the tomato paste and cook another minute, scraping the bottom. It will darken slightly.
4. Add the green chiles with their liquid, the tomatoes with their liquid, both cans of beans, the corn, the broth, and the salt. Stir and bring to a boil.
5. Reduce to a simmer and cook uncovered for 15 minutes. If you’re adding chicken, stir it in during the last 5 minutes so it heats through without going stringy.
6. While the soup simmers, fry the tortilla strips. Heat about 1/4 inch of oil in a small skillet over medium-high, fry the strips in two batches for 1 to 2 minutes until golden, and drain on paper towels. Salt them right away. If that’s more than you want to deal with, crush tortilla chips over the bowls instead. Nobody will notice.
7. Off the heat, stir in the lime juice. Taste and add salt. Ladle into bowls and pile on the tortilla strips and whatever toppings you’ve got.

The lime is not optional

Everything in this soup is canned, which means everything in it is a little flat and a little sweet from sitting in a can. Acid fixes that. A full lime’s worth of juice stirred in at the end, after the pot comes off the burner, wakes the whole thing up. If you only have bottled, use a tablespoon and taste before adding more, since bottled juice is sharper and less fragrant.

If there’s no lime in the house at all, a splash of apple cider vinegar works. Start with a teaspoon.

Making it taste like it simmered longer

Three things do most of the work here. Fire-roasted tomatoes instead of plain, because the char reads as depth. Tomato paste bloomed in the oil, which adds body that a thin broth-and-can soup otherwise lacks. And toasting the dry spices before any liquid hits the pot.

If you want it richer still, drop in a parmesan rind while it simmers and fish it out before serving, or stir a tablespoon of masa harina into a half cup of the hot broth and whisk it back in. The masa thickens the soup slightly and pushes the corn flavor forward, which is what tortilla soup is supposed to taste like. It isn’t necessary. I make it without most of the time.

Swaps for what you don’t have

This recipe is built to flex. I’ve never once made it the same way twice.

• No green chiles: use 1 diced fresh jalapeño with the onion, or a few spoonfuls of salsa verde, or skip them and add extra chili powder.
• One kind of bean only: use two cans of whatever you have. Kidney beans work. So do chickpeas, though they taste more like a different soup.
• No frozen corn: a drained can of corn is fine. Add it with everything else.
• No broth: water plus 4 teaspoons bouillon base, or water plus an extra half teaspoon of salt and a parmesan rind.
• Canned chicken: drain it well, flake it, and stir it in at the end. It’s a perfectly reasonable Tuesday.

If you want to start from raw chicken, use two boneless skinless breasts. Drop them into the pot whole after step 4, simmer 15 to 18 minutes, then pull them out, shred with two forks, and return the meat to the pot. Chicken is done at 165°F (74°C) at the thickest part, and in a pot of simmering soup that happens faster than people expect, so check at 15 minutes rather than guessing.

Slow cooker and Instant Pot

For a slow cooker, do the onion and spice toasting in a skillet first. I know that’s an extra pan, but dumping raw chili powder into a slow cooker gives you a dusty, raw-tasting soup four hours later and there’s no fixing it. Everything else goes in the crock together: low for 4 hours or high for 2. Add the lime at the end.

For a pressure cooker, sauté on the sauté setting through step 3, add the rest, and cook on high pressure for 5 minutes with a quick release. The beans are already cooked, so you’re only building flavor.

Toppings, ranked by how much they matter

Crunch first. Fried tortilla strips or chips are the point of the soup, and soup without them is just bean soup. Then something cool and fatty: sour cream, plain Greek yogurt, diced avocado, or a handful of shredded Monterey Jack. Then something fresh: cilantro, sliced scallion, raw white onion if you like it sharp.

Set the toppings out in small bowls and let everyone build their own. It also means picky eaters can have a plain bowl with cheese and nobody has to negotiate.

Storing and reheating

The soup keeps 4 days in the fridge in a covered container, and it genuinely tastes better on day two. Store the tortilla strips separately at room temperature in a paper bag or they’ll go soft and sad. Reheat on the stove over medium until it’s steaming through, about 6 to 8 minutes, or microwave a bowl for 2 to 3 minutes, stirring once. It will have thickened in the fridge, so loosen it with a splash of broth or water.

It freezes well for up to 3 months, with one caveat: freeze it before you add dairy toppings, and if you’ve added avocado to a bowl, that bowl doesn’t go in the freezer. Thaw overnight in the fridge and reheat gently. Add a fresh squeeze of lime after reheating, because that brightness is the first thing to fade.