Here’s a fantastic way to use leftover chicken: Mexican chicken tortilla soup. This famous south-of-the-border soup uses leftover shredded chicken for a flavor-packed soup in 30 minutes. The best part is the garnishes, like Cheese, avocado, herbs, crispy baked tortilla strips, and a tart squeeze of fresh lime juice.
Jump to:
Why You'll Like This Recipe
If you love a good soup with chicken recipe, here's another one to fall in love with; a Mexican chicken soup. Plus, it's an easy tortilla soup recipe because of using leftover chicken and basic pantry ingredients.
This Mexican-inspired soup recipe:
- Is a great use for leftover roast or baked chicken, or rotisserie chicken.
- Has big flavors, colors, and customizable tasty garnishes.
- Is easy to make.
- Pinto beans add substance, protein, and healthy fiber.
- It's the most loved soup of Mexico, for good reason.
Recipe Ingredients
- Cooking fat: Choose olive oil, avocado oil, or try this new healthy oil.
- Onion: The flavorful aromatic backbone of soups, choose yellow, brown, or white.
- Carrot: Many tortilla soup recipes don't include carrot but I do for color and flavor.
- Celery: Part of flavor trio of onion, carrot and celery (mirepoix) for soup bases.
- Chili pepper: If you like heat, go Jalapeño pepper. For little heat but good flavor, buy an Anaheim pepper. (See what one looks like in this post).
- Garlic: Use fresh garlic cloves and finely chop or use a microplane zester. In a pinch, use granulated garlic powder.
- Spices: Ground cumin, ground coriander, ground chipotle peppers (powder), and ancho chili powder. It's the ancho chili powder that gives tortilla soup it gorgeous red color.
- Herbs: Dried oregano and either fresh cilantro or fresh Italian parsley (for garnish)
- Diced tomatoes: Use canned and don't drain them, use the juices too. Get the fire-roasted.
- Pinto beans: A traditional Mexican bean, also called red Mexican beans. Using canned is fast for making tortilla soup.
- Broth: Use low sodium chicken broth or try turkey broth. Homemade chicken broth is easy and freezes. Rich broth equals rich flavor.
- Chicken: Use shredded baked chicken or rotisserie chicken, homemade is best but store bought is fine too, it's up to you.
- Tortilla strips: Corn tortillas, either golden or blue, oil and salt.
Pleas see recipe card for measurements.
Substitutions and Variations
- Substitute Anaheim pepper (very mild) for Jalapeno pepper.
- No fresh jalapeños? Use part or all of a small can of green chiles.
- Substitute canned black beans for canned pinto beans, or small white beans.
- Add corn kernels if you'd like for more color and texture.
- Don't like cilantro? Use fresh chopped parsley as an alternative garnish.
- If you can't find pure ancho chili powder use chili powder (which is a blend). Smoked paprika is another option for flavor and color.
- Bell pepper is a terrific addition to chicken tortilla soup. Choose red, yellow or orange.
- Swap regular diced tomatoes for the fire-roasted tomatoes.
Recipe Instructions (soup)
Chicken tortilla soup is based on classic Mexican flavors, ingredients, and spices, using ground cumin, coriander, ancho chili pepper, and dried oregano. It's similar to chicken taco soup but lighter and more brothy. It's the most loved of many famous Mexican soup recipes.
Step 1: Saute the onion, carrots, celery and jalapeno pepper in oil until soft. Add garlic. Step 2: Add the herbs and spices to the pot and cook 2 minutes to release the flavors.
Step 3: Stir in the beans and tomatoes.
Step 4: Add the chicken and the broth.
What's left to do? The garnishes!
Chef's Tip: Be careful when handling and chopping hot peppers. It protects your hands to wear disposable food handling gloves. Do not touch your eyes or face after handling fresh chilies and wash them well. The heat of peppers is in the inner membrane, the veins (or ribs) of the pepper, not the seeds.
Homemade Tortilla Strips
While you could use lightly crushed, fresh corn tortilla chips from a bag, they pale in comparison to the homemade version.
These baked tortilla chips (or strips) are crisp, lightly salty and hard to stop eating. Make the homemade baked tortillas strips while you're working on the soup.
Recipe Instructions (strips)
Cut the tortillas in half (corn tortillas, not flour tortillas), then cut the halves crosswise into thin strips. Toss with a tiny bit of olive oil and bake in a 350°F degree oven until golden and starting to crisp, about 15 minutes. Season with salt when you remove them from the oven.
Serving: The Add In's
The best part of chicken tortilla soup is the garnishes, or as I call them, the goodies. Placing bowls of goodies on the table allows everyone to customize their soup. Offer:
- Lime wedges for fresh squeezed lime juice.
- Chopped fresh cilantro (or parsley).
- Sliced or diced avocado.
- Grated cheese.
- Fresh jalapeno slices.
- A dollop of sour cream adds a nice cool tang.
- Chopped green onions.
- Thinly sliced or grated fresh radishes.
- Wedges of refreshing limes.
- And to top it all off, those crispy tortilla strips.
Chicken tortilla soup is a meal in a bowl. You don’t really need anything else to complete dinner. If you want to, add a tossed green salad with a citrusy vinaigrette. Make one with a lime olive oil like this.
Leftovers and Freezing
Leftovers keep 3-4 days in the refrigerator in an airtight container, labeled and dated. Can you freeze this soup? Yes, freeze it without any garnishes for 2-3 months.
Thaw overnight in the refrigerator, and finish thawing and heating in a pot on the stovetop over low heat, covered, for best results. Then add fresh garnishes to serve.
Recipe FAQ's
Tortilla soup is definitely Mexican, in fact it's the most popular soup in Mexico. You'll find it on the menus of most Mexican restaurants. It's a traditional brothy soup with terrific flavors from spices common in Mexican cuisine. It's called Sopa de Tortilla in Spanish. It's also called Sopa Azteca (Aztec Soup).
Tortilla soup is usually lighter and more brothy than taco soup. Taco soup often uses ground beef and is sort of between a tortilla soup and chili in texture. Both recipes utilize traditional Mexican ingredients and spices.
More Mexican Recipes
Need more fiesta flavors? Another Mexican inspired recipe that's quick and easy if this 10-minute taco meat filling recipe. And be sure to make a jar of my homemade taco seasoning blend. It works for more than tacos.
⭐️Did you Make This Recipe?
If you make this recipe, please add your comment. I appreciate your feedback and enjoy hearing from you. If you loved it, please give it a 5-star rating! They really help other readers. If you had an issue with it, let me help you figure it out.
📖 Recipe
Chicken Tortilla Soup
Ingredients
Tortilla Soup
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- ½ medium onion 1 cup chopped
- 1 large carrot ½ cup chopped
- 1 large celery rib ½ cup chopped
- 1 small jalapeño pepper or Anaheim for mild heat
- 3 large garlic cloves chopped fine or zested
- 1 tablespoon ground cumin
- 1 ½ teaspoons ground coriander optional but good
- 1 teaspoon ancho chili powder
- 1 teaspoon dried oregano
- ½ teaspoon sea salt
- ¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
- ¼ teaspoon ground chipotle powder optional for spicy soup
- 1 15-ounce can diced tomatoes not drained
- 1 15-ounce can pinto beans rinsed and drained
- 5 cups chicken or turkey broth
- 9 ounces cooked shredded chicken about 2 ¾ cups
Tortilla Strips (optional)
- 8 small corn tortillas for strips, make ahead, directions below
- ½ teaspoon olive oil to make tortilla strips
- salt
More Garnishes (optional)
- 4 ounces grated Jack or Mexican cheese blend
- 1-2 limes quartered
- 2 tablespoons fresh chopped cilantro or parsley
- 1 large avocado sliced, diced or mashed
- 2 radishes thinly sliced
- 1 jalapeno sliced
Instructions
Crispy Tortilla Strips
- Pre-heat the oven to 350°F degrees. Line a rimmed baking sheet with foil. Cut tortillas in half, then crosswise into thin strips. Toss with 1-2 teaspoons of olive oil. Bake strips 12-15 minutes or until crisp and golden. Watch so they don’t burn. Timing depends on whether your oven is convection or not; convection is a little faster. Directly after removing from the oven, sprinkle with sea salt. They will crisp a bit more as they cool.
Chicken Tortilla Soup
- If not already done, chop the onion, carrot and celery into small pieces. Slice off the top of the jalapeno, then lengthwise into quarters. Scrap out the seeds and the inner membrane if you want to reduce the heat. Chop the pepper small.
- In a 5 quart pot or Dutch oven, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the onion, carrot, celery and jalapeño and cook until the vegetables are soft, about 5 minutes. If they start to brown, turn your heat down. Add the garlic and cook 1 minute.
- Add the spices, oregano, salt and pepper and cook 2 minutes to release the flavors. Add the tomatoes, beans, broth and chicken and heat through, about 10 minutes. Serve with garnishes on the side or on top.
The Porsche guy says
I love the soup at Mexican restaurants and I love it even better at home because I know it’s healthier and I love all the garnishes. Thanks for a great recipe. Easy too.
Sally Cameron says
Thanks for letting me know you enjoyed it!
Linda says
Made this last night and used the same pressure cooker method that you use for the Chicken Rice soup and it turned out great. I had requests to make it again!
Sally says
What a great idea Linda! Will have to note that in the recipe! Thanks for reporting back!
Steph says
Hello! I made this today for dinner and I really liked how easily this healthy dish all came together -- the flavors are great too!
Oh and fyi, you mentioned chipotle and jalapeno in the directions but not in the ingredient list, so I just used 1 tsp chipotle powder and 1 minced jalapeno. Thanks for the recipe 🙂
Mary@SiftingFocus says
Sally, what a wholesome and satisfying soup. My husband loves chicken tortilla soup and shamefully I admit I have never made it for him. One night this week I'm going to surprise him and make your recipe. By the way, I love tortilla soup too!