Chicken tortilla soup pairs crispy home-cooked tortilla strips with a hearty, filling soup. It comes together in under 45 minutes and is absolutely loaded with flavor! Recipe includes a how-to video!
The Coziest Tortilla Soup
My chicken tortilla soup deserves a spot in your dinner rotation this season. It’s hearty, super filling, and has just a touch of cream cheese to make it slightly creamy but not too rich. Crispy homemade tortilla strips (they’re so easy to make, I promise!) add the perfect crunch and make this a complete meal in a bowl!
This soup is loaded with protein from shredded chicken and black beans. It’s a (mostly) wholesome, yet still indulgent meal that is comforting and perfect as a weeknight dinner or cold weather comfort food (like my creamy chicken noodle soup).
What’s to Love About This Recipe
- Fast: just 35 minutes to make. And that includes making the homemade tortilla strips!
- Incredible flavor from a bacon base, fire roasted tomatoes, ancho chili powder, and a few more special ingredients.
- Uses pre-cooked chicken, so it’s great for using up leftover chicken or a rotisserie chicken from the store.
- Easy: the ingredient list on this recipe might be long, but the actual process is so simple. We’re really just tossing everything into the pot!
- You can customize your spice level depending on your tastes. As is, this soup is mild. But it’s very easy to spice up; scroll down to the FAQ section for more info.
What You Need
Let’s go over a few of the key ingredients that give this soup its flavor. You can find the full list of ingredients further down into the post in the recipe card.
- Bacon. While it may be an unlikely suspect, this secret ingredient creates an amazingly flavorful base, just like in my potato soup recipe. If you don’t want to use bacon, that’s fine! I provide instructions on how to make this soup without bacon in the recipe notes below.
- Chili powder. Like in my award-winning chili recipe, we are using a combination of regular and ancho chili powder for the most depth of flavor. If you don’t have ancho chili powder, you can just use all regular chili powder instead. The ancho adds a nice smoky element though, which I love!
- Fire roasted tomatoes. If you can’t find fire roasted, plain diced tomatoes work just fine, but I prefer the smoky depth of flavor the fire roasted version offers.
- Sugar. I know, I know–we typically save the sugar for the desserts, but just a teaspoon here really rounds out the flavors. I also use sugar in my sloppy joes recipe and tomato soup recipe, so this shouldn’t surprise you too much!
- Cream cheese. This thickens the soup and adds lots of flavor. You can always skip it for a thinner soup with a more tomato-y base, but I love the creaminess it adds.
SAM’S TIP: I prefer to use rotisserie chicken for this recipe; it’s easy and inexpensive to buy one from the grocery store, shred it, and toss it into the soup. You could also make my easy crockpot shredded chicken and use that instead.
Remember, this is just an overview of the ingredients I used and why. For the full recipe please scroll down to the bottom of the post!
How to Make Chicken Tortilla Soup
- Cook the bacon until crisp, then remove to a paper towel lined plate.
- Cook the onion, pepper, and jalapeno in the bacon grease and until translucent. Add garlic and cook until fragrant.
- Stir in the stock, diced tomatoes, beans, enchilada sauce, corn, chilis, spices, and chicken.
- Let the soup simmer while you prepare your tortilla strips (demonstrated below).
- Add cream cheese and lime juice and stir until the cream cheese is melted.
- Serve topped with tortilla strips and other toppings (suggestions below!)
SAM’S TIP: Preheat your oven before you start the soup, that way it has time to get nice and hot for your tortilla strips!
How to Make the Tortilla Strips
The crispy corn tortilla strips are possibly my favorite part of this soup. While you could just buy pre-made strips, it takes only minutes to make them at home using corn tortillas.
- Cut 10 corn tortillas into ¼” strips (mine usually end up thicker than this, but I always aim for ¼”) and then cut strips to be about 2″ in length. Place on a baking sheet.
- Drizzle lightly with olive oil and sprinkle with salt. Toss until all strips are lightly coated and spread evenly over the pan.
- Bake until crisp (about 10 minutes) and allow to cool before serving with the soup.
Frequently Asked Questions
This soup is still mild enough for my kids to enjoy despite using a jalapeno, chiles, and enchilada sauce, since we remove the jalapeno seeds and use mild versions of the potentially spicy items.
If you want to make it spicer, toss in a few of the jalapeno seeds and use hot green chiles and hot enchilada sauce.
Toppings-wise, we love avocado, cotija cheese, sour cream, cilantro, and lime juice. A splash of hot sauce doesn’t hurt either!
As for sides, we love serving with my famous cornbread or jalapeno cornbread, though biscuits are always a good option, too.
I haven’t tried freezing this soup, but I would be worried that the cream cheese wouldn’t thaw properly and could make the end result seem “piecey” and separated (though I suspect the taste would still be fine). You could try freezing the soup before adding the cream cheese and stir it in once thawed.
If you try freezing this recipe, I’d love to know how it goes for you!
This soup makes the perfect cold weather meal. I hope you give it a try this season!
Enjoy!
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Chicken Tortilla Soup Recipe
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Servings: 6 servings
Calories: 428kcal
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Instructions
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Preheat oven to 415F/215C (this is to cook your tortillas, you want the oven preheating and it can take some time for it to reach this temperature so preheat it now).
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Place bacon pieces in a large heavy bottomed pot (I like to use my Dutch Oven) and cook over medium heat until browned, crisp, and cooked through. Remove to a paper towel lined plate and set aside.
5 strips (uncooked) bacon
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Add onion, pepper, and jalapeno to pan and cook until translucent (about 3-5 minutes).
1 cup (115 g) chopped onion, 1 cup (115 g) diced red pepper, 1 finely chopped jalapeno
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Add garlic and cook until fragrant (about 30 seconds)
1 Tablespoon minced garlic
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Add chicken stock, tomatoes, beans, enchilada sauce, corn, chilis, chili powder, sugar, cumin, ½ teaspoon kosher salt, paprika, black pepper, and chicken. Stir well and bring to a simmer. Allow to simmer for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Meanwhile prepare your tortillas.
3 ½ cups (830 ml) low sodium chicken stock, 14 oz (396 g) can fire roasted diced tomatoes, 14 oz (396 g) can black beans, 10 oz (283 g) mild enchilada sauce, 1 cup frozen sweet corn, 7 oz (200 g) can diced green chilis, 1 Tablespoon chili powder, 1 teaspoon sugar, ¾ teaspoon cumin, ½ teaspoon kosher salt, ½ teaspoon paprika, ½ teaspoon ground black pepper, 3-4 cups (450 g) shredded or diced cooked chicken
TORTILLA STRIPS
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Cut tortillas into strips that are ¼” thick by 2” long. Scatter evenly over parchment paper lined baking sheet, drizzle lightly with olive oil (about 1 Tbsp), sprinkle with kosher salt and use a spatula to evenly coat with olive oil.
10 corn tortillas, Olive oil, Kosher salt
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Transfer to 415F (215C) and cook until crisp, about 10 minutes. Allow to cool on baking sheet.
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Meanwhile, once soup has finished simmering, add cream cheese and lime juice and stir well until cream cheese is melted. Return bacon to the pot and stir well.
4 oz (113 g) cream cheese², 1 Tablespoon fresh lime juice
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Serve topped with your crisp tortilla strips and other toppings, as desired.
Optional toppings: avocado, cotija cheese, cilantro, sour cream, etc.
Notes
¹Bacon
If you don’t care to use bacon, you can substitute 2 Tablespoons of butter (or even olive oil, but each substitution will result in less flavor) instead. Melt over medium/high heat then proceed with recipe as written.
²Cream cheese
If you don’t like a creamier soup you can leave out the cream cheese.
Storing
Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 4 days.
Nutrition
Serving: 1serving | Calories: 428kcal | Carbohydrates: 51g | Protein: 22g | Fat: 17g | Saturated Fat: 5g | Polyunsaturated Fat: 2g | Monounsaturated Fat: 5g | Cholesterol: 54mg | Sodium: 1476mg | Potassium: 561mg | Fiber: 12g | Sugar: 13g | Vitamin A: 2850IU | Vitamin C: 88.3mg | Calcium: 130mg | Iron: 4mg
Nutritional information is based on third-party calculations and should be considered an estimate only. Actual nutritional content will vary based upon brands used, measuring methods, cooking method, portion sizes, and more.
I originally published this recipe in March of 2019. Post has been updated to be more helpful, but the recipe remains unchanged.
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