Winterify Your Taco Tuesday With This Tacky, Tortilla-Topped Taco Soup

January 18, 2025

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Why It Works

Charring a medley of aromatics, together with onion, garlic, and chiles, and mixing them with canned fire-roasted tomatoes provides the soup a deep smoky taste.
Including crushed tortilla chips to the simmering pot helps to thicken the soup and enhances the savory corn taste.
Filling particular person bowls with soup after which broiling them briefly with a layer of tortilla chips and cheese creates an important crunchy, tacky topping.

From time to time, a Tex Mex-style floor beef taco actually hits the spot. It was a transfer my mother used to make now and again, throwing a packet of taco seasoning into some floor beef and serving the meat combination with onerous taco shells, and fixings like diced tomato, lettuce, bitter cream, cilantro, avocado, and shredded cheese. It was a satisfying dinner excellent for a weeknight. Right here we’ve spun the nostalgic Taco Tuesday–fashion taco on its head with our straightforward recipe for a deeply comforting, savory taco soup that hits all of the notes of the traditional.

Our Birmingham, Alabama-based colleague Elizabeth Mervosh developed this thick and hearty taco-inspired soup, which options floor beef, corn, and pinto beans swimming in a flavorful purée of canned fire-roasted tomatoes, charred onion, garlic, jalapeño, and cubanelle peppers. Earlier than being served, the soup is laddled into particular person bowls, topped with cheese and tortilla chips and broiled till it’s crispy and melty on prime. It’s a particular step up from the common Taco Tuesday dinner.

A primary look at this taco soup’s elements—floor beef, beans, chiles, canned tomatoes—would possibly make you marvel how this soup is totally different from chili. However whereas there may be actually some overlap, this soup is far brothier and thinner than the common chili, which means you might serve each in the identical week with out anybody feeling like they’re consuming the identical factor for days in a row (not that there is something improper with that).

Critical Eats / Fred Hardy

Approach Suggestions for an Unparalleled Taco Soup Expertise

Add deep taste with a charred tomato purée base. To make this soup actually particular, it is value taking just some minutes to char the onion, garlic, and chiles (a mix of candy Cubanelles or banana peppers and mildly spicy jalapeños) in a dry skillet earlier than mixing these aromatics with canned fire-roasted tomatoes. Charring the greens for the soup earlier than mixing them provides a slight smoky taste and in addition brings out the sweetness within the Cubanelle pepper. Make certain to prepare dinner the greens till they’re blistered and have brown spots throughout. This ensures they develop a strong taste that may permeate the broth.

Bloom the spice combination in oil. For a real Taco Tuesday expertise, you’ve gotta embrace taco seasoning, and we made positive to make use of a beneficiant quantity to realize that particular taste. We advocate utilizing our do-it-yourself taco seasoning recipe, however your most well-liked taco seasoning mix will work simply as nicely (I’ll at all times have a gentle spot in my coronary heart for Previous El Paso’s taco packets).

For one of the best taste, be certain to bloom the spice combination within the oil till it’s aromatic and totally coated within the oil earlier than including the bottom beef. The bottom spices within the seasoning mix have taste molecules which can be largely fat-soluble, which implies they’ll dissolve extra readily into the oil than they might right into a watery broth base. On the identical time, because the taco seasoning heats and toasts within the oil, its taste will change into extra aromatic and complicated. Simply be certain so as to add the meat earlier than the taco seasoning scorches—you should definitely have the package deal opened and able to add to the pan.

Simmer the soup for just some minutes. It is perhaps tempting to slowly simmer a giant pot of soup on the stovetop for an extended time period with the mindset that the longer the soup simmers, the extra taste will develop. However this isn’t the case with taco soup. As a substitute, limiting the simmering time to about 10 minutes helps you keep away from overcooking the bottom beef, which may simply flip dry, pebbly, and unsightly to eat if simmered for too lengthy.

End with a tacky, crunchy topping earlier than serving. It wouldn’t be a taco soup with out the tacos. For the “taco” ingredient on this soup, Elizabeth makes use of retailer purchased tortilla chips in two other ways. First, she stirs crushed tortilla chips into the soup’s broth to assist thicken the soup and add savory, toasted corn taste.

Along with the crushed chips within the broth, you may additionally layer tortilla chips after which cheese over the person soup bowls and broil till the cheese is simply melted. This creates an important crunchy, tacky taco-like topping.

Completed with a straightforward contemporary salsa, this soup has all the textures and flavors of an important floor beef taco in a single huge bowl of comforting soup.

This recipe was developed by Elizabeth Mervosh; the headnote was written by Leah Colins.