Chicken Tortilla Soup

4.91 from 131 votes

A smoky, comforting chicken tortilla soup with fire-roasted tomatoes, chipotle, black beans, corn, and shredded chicken, topped with crispy tortilla strips, avocado, cheese, and lime.

Prep Time10

Cook Time30

Total Time40

Course: Soup, Dinner, Lunch

Cuisine: Mexican, Tex Mex, Southwestern

Servings: people

Author: Gaby Dalkin

Equipment

Ingredients

2 teaspoons olive oil
1 onion roughly chopped
3-4 cloves garlic roughly chopped
1 jalapeno pepper stem and seeds removed and roughly chopped
kosher salt and freshly cracked black pepper
¼ teaspoon dried oregano
¼ teaspoon cumin
½ teaspoon ground chipotle pepper
1 14- ounce can fire roasted tomatoes and green chiles
3 cups chicken stock
¾ cup black beans
¾ cup frozen corn
1 cup shredded rotisserie chicken

Toppings:

shredded cheese - Colby Jack / Monterey Jack / Pepper Jack your choice
quartered limes
cubed avocado
cilantro
sliced green onions
2 small corn tortillas cut into thin strips
sliced jalapenos

Instructions

Heat a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add the olive oil, onion, garlic, and jalapeño, and sauté until the onion is translucent and the jalapeño softens. Season with the salt, pepper, dried oregano, cumin, and chipotle pepper. Stir to combine and cook for 1-2 minutes until the spices toast.
Add the fire-roasted tomatoes and the chicken stock, and bring the mixture to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and simmer for 30 minutes.
Using an immersion blender, blend the soup ingredients until smooth. Taste and adjust salt and pepper as needed. Add the black beans, corn, and shredded chicken, and continue cooking until everything is heated through.
Divide the soup into 4 bowls and top with cheese, avocado, cilantro, and crisp tortilla strips. Add extra lime juice if desired and/or jalapeño slices. Serve immediately.
To make the tortilla strips: In a small skillet, heat the vegetable oil over medium-high heat. Once hot, add the tortilla strips in a single layer, frying quickly for about 30-45 seconds, flipping them once to ensure both sides get crisp. Remove the tortillas once crisp with a pair of tongs and transfer them to a paper towel-lined plate to dry.

Notes

- Why blending the broth makes all the difference. Most tortilla soups are a brothy tomato base with everything floating in it. This one works differently, and the difference is the whole reason it tastes like the Café Terra Cotta version I grew up on.
- Blend the base before you add the good stuff. After the tomatoes and stock have simmered for 30 minutes, the immersion blender turns the onion, garlic, jalapeño and tomatoes into a smooth, almost velvety broth. That’s what gives the soup body without any cream or flour. Then the chicken, beans and corn go in, so you get a silky broth with real texture in every spoonful instead of a thin soup with chunks of onion in it. If you don’t have an immersion blender, ladle the base into a regular blender in two batches, keep the lid cracked so the steam can escape, and pour it back into the pot.
- Taste the broth before you add the chicken. This is the moment to adjust. Too mild? Another pinch of chipotle. Flat? It almost always needs more salt than you think, plus a squeeze of lime. Once the chicken and beans go in, the broth is harder to correct, so fix it while it’s smooth.
- Toast the spices in the pan, don’t dump them in the liquid. The recipe has you stir the oregano, cumin and chipotle into the softened onions for a minute or two before the tomatoes go in. It feels like a small step, but spices bloomed in a little hot oil taste deeper and rounder than spices that just get boiled in stock. You’ll smell the difference the second they hit the pan.
- Keep the toppings off until the bowls are filled. Avocado, cheese, cilantro and tortilla strips all go on at the table, not in the pot. The strips stay crunchy, the avocado stays green, and everyone gets to build their own bowl. This also means leftovers reheat perfectly, because there’s nothing soggy in the container.
- What to serve it with: Chicken Poblano Skillet Enchiladas alongside the soup is honestly a dream dinner situation.

Nutrition (estimated)