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

This hearty ground beef–and vegetable-loaded soup will fulfill your Taco Tuesday needs.

By Elizabeth Mervosh
and
Leah Colins
A studio portrait of editor Leah Colins.
Leah Colins
Senior Culinary Editor

Leah is the Senior Culinary Editor at Serious Eats, and was previously a recipe developer and editor with America's Test Kitchen for almost 9 years. She has developed recipes for and edited over 20 cookbooks ranging in topic from bread baking to plant-based eating to outdoor grilling and so much more. While there, she also developed recipes and articles for Cooks Illustrated Magazine, Cooks Country Magazine, and ATK's digital platform.Before her life as a recipe developer, she cooked in 5-star and Michelin-starred fine dining establishments from coast to coast such as The Herbfarm and Aubergine Restaurant at L'Auberge Carmel; she also treasures her time flipping burgers on flattops in her teenage years, and baking and boxing cookies and pies at a wonderful family-owned German bakery in her early professional life.

Learn about Serious Eats' Editorial Process
Published January 18, 2025
Overhead of 2 blue bowls with taco soup, on with a spoon in it. A small dish with pico de gallo on it. Pink napkins and sparkling water and a magenta colored textile surface.

Serious Eats / Fred Hardy

Why It Works

  • Charring a medley of aromatics, including onion, garlic, and chiles, and blending them with canned fire-roasted tomatoes gives the soup a deep smoky flavor.
  • Adding crushed tortilla chips to the simmering pot helps to thicken the soup and enhances the savory corn flavor.
  • Filling individual bowls with soup and then broiling them briefly with a layer of tortilla chips and cheese creates a great crunchy, cheesy topping.

Every now and then, a Tex Mex-style ground beef taco really hits the spot. It was a move my mom used to make from time to time, throwing a packet of taco seasoning into some ground beef and serving the meat mixture with hard taco shells, and fixings like diced tomato, lettuce, sour cream, cilantro, avocado, and shredded cheese. It was a satisfying dinner perfect for a weeknight. Here we’ve spun the nostalgic Taco Tuesday–style taco on its head with our easy recipe for a deeply comforting, savory taco soup that hits all the notes of the classic. 

Our Birmingham, Alabama-based colleague Elizabeth Mervosh developed this thick and hearty taco-inspired soup, which features ground beef, corn, and pinto beans swimming in a flavorful purée of canned fire-roasted tomatoes, charred onion, garlic, jalapeño, and cubanelle peppers. Before being served, the soup is laddled into individual bowls, topped with cheese and tortilla chips and broiled until it’s crispy and melty on top. It’s a definite step up from the average Taco Tuesday dinner.

A first glance at this taco soup’s ingredients—ground beef, beans, chiles, canned tomatoes—might make you wonder how this soup is different from chili. But while there is certainly some overlap, this soup is much brothier and thinner than the average chili, meaning you could serve both in the same week without anyone feeling like they're eating the same thing for days in a row (not that there's anything wrong with that).

Overhead of 2 blue bowls with taco soup, on with a spoon in it, a small dish with pico de gallo on it, and a magenta colored textile surface.

Serious Eats / Fred Hardy

Technique Tips for an Unparalleled Taco Soup Experience

Add deep flavor with a charred tomato purée base. To make this soup really special, it's worth taking just a few minutes to char the onion, garlic, and chiles (a combination of sweet Cubanelles or banana peppers and mildly spicy jalapeños) in a dry skillet before blending these aromatics with canned fire-roasted tomatoes. Charring the vegetables for the soup before blending them adds a slight smoky flavor and also brings out the sweetness in the Cubanelle pepper. Make sure to cook the vegetables until they are blistered and have brown spots all over. This ensures they develop a robust flavor that will permeate the broth.

Bloom the spice mixture in oil. For a true Taco Tuesday experience, you’ve gotta include taco seasoning, and we made sure to use a generous amount to achieve that distinctive flavor. We recommend using our homemade taco seasoning recipe, but your preferred taco seasoning blend will work just as well (I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for Old El Paso’s taco packets).

For the best flavor, make sure to bloom the spice mixture in the oil until it’s fragrant and fully coated in the oil before adding the ground beef. The ground spices in the seasoning blend have flavor molecules that are largely fat-soluble, which means they will dissolve more readily into the oil than they would into a watery broth base. At the same time, as the taco seasoning heats and toasts in the oil, its flavor will become more fragrant and complex. Just make sure to add the meat before the taco seasoning scorches—be sure to have the package opened and ready to add to the pan.

Simmer the soup for just a few minutes. It might be tempting to slowly simmer a big pot of soup on the stovetop for a long period of time with the mindset that the longer the soup simmers, the more flavor will develop. But this is not the case with taco soup. Instead, limiting the simmering time to about 10 minutes helps you avoid overcooking the ground beef, which can easily turn dry, pebbly, and unpleasant to eat if simmered for too long. 

Finish with a cheesy, crunchy topping before serving. It wouldn’t be a taco soup without the tacos. For the “taco” element in this soup, Elizabeth uses store bought tortilla chips in two different ways. First, she stirs crushed tortilla chips into the soup’s broth to help thicken the soup and add savory, toasted corn flavor.

In addition to the crushed chips in the broth, you'll also layer tortilla chips and then cheese over the individual soup bowls and broil until the cheese is just melted. This creates a great crunchy, cheesy taco-like topping. 

Finished with an easy fresh salsa, this soup has all of the textures and flavors of a great ground beef taco in one big bowl of comforting soup.

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

Recipe Details

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

Cook 75 mins
Total 75 mins
Serves 6 to 8
Cook Mode (Keep screen awake)

Ingredients

For the Soup:

  • 1 small yellow onion (6 ounces; 170g), peeled

  • Two 5- to 6-inch Cubanelle chiles or banana peppers (3 ounces each; 85g each)

  • 4 medium garlic cloves, unpeeled 

  • 2 small jalapeño peppers (2 ounces; 60g), divided

  • Two 14.5-ounce (411g) cans fire-roasted diced tomatoes, undrained, divided

  • 2 tablespoons (30ml) neutral cooking oil such as vegetable or canola oil

  • 2 1/2 tablespoons homemade taco seasoning or store-bought taco seasoning (21g)

  •  1 1/2 pounds (680g) ground beef, 93% lean

  • 2 tablespoons (30ml) tomato paste

  • 5 cups (1.2L) homemade chicken stock or store bought lower-sodium chicken broth

  • Two 15.5-ounce (439g) cans pinto beans, drained and rinsed

  • 1 cup frozen corn (5 ounces; 140g)

  • 1/2 cup crushed tortilla chips (1 ounce; 30g), plus whole chips for topping

  • 2 teaspoons Diamond Crystal kosher salt, divided, plus more to taste; for table salt, use half as much by volume

For the Salsa:

  • 10 ounces fresh tomatoes (285g; about 3 medium), seeded and chopped (1 cup)

  • 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro (1 ounce; 29g)

  • 1 tablespoon (15ml) fresh lime juice from 1 lime

  • 6 ounces (170g) medium Cheddar cheese, shredded (about 1 1/2 cups)

Directions

  1. For the Soup: Halve onion. Cut 1 onion half through root end to create two quarters. Set aside remaining onion half. 

    Chopping an onion on a wooden board

    Serious Eats / Fred Hardy

  2. Heat a large cast-iron skillet over high until hot and just smoking. Place the 2 onion quarters, Cubanelle chiles or banana peppers, garlic, and 1 of the jalapeños in hot skillet; cook, turning occasionally, until onion, garlic, and chiles are blistered and charred in spots, 3 to 8 minutes for garlic and onions and 5 to 10 minutes for chiles. Use tonga to transfer to a plate as they finish cooking; set aside, and let cool slightly, about 10 minutes. 

    Charred and roasted pepers, onion and garlic on a wooden board

    Serious Eats / Fred Hardy

  3. Peel garlic and discard skins. Remove and discard stems, skins, and seeds from chiles. Transfer the charred onion, peeled garlic, and peeled chiles to a blender, along with 1 can of the tomatoes. Process until smooth, about 30 seconds; set aside. 

  4. In a large Dutch oven, heat oil over medium heat until shimmering. Add taco seasoning; cook, stirring constantly, until fragrant and sizzling, about 45 seconds. Add ground beef, and increase heat to high. Cook, stirring and breaking up meat with a wooden spoon, until browned, about 3 to 6 minutes. Add tomato paste; cook, stirring constantly, until tomato paste fully coats and slightly thickens beef mixture, about 1 to 2 minutes. Stir in stock, puréed chile-garlic mixture, beans, corn, crushed tortilla chips, 1 1/2 teaspoons of the salt, and remaining 1 can tomatoes. Bring to a simmer over medium-high heat; reduce heat to medium, and cook, maintaining a simmer and stirring occasionally, until flavors meld, about 10 minutes. Season with additional salt to taste, if desired.

    Mixing dutch oven taco soup with a wooden spoon

    Serious Eats / Fred Hardy

  5. For the Salsa: While soup is simmering, adjust oven rack to middle position and preheat broiler in oven. Chop the remaining onion half to equal 1/4 cup; finely chop remaining jalapeño chile to equal 1 tablespoon. (Reserve any remaining onion and jalapeño chile for another use.) In a small bowl, stir together measured chopped onion, jalapeño chile, fresh tomatoes, cilantro, lime juice, and remaining 1/2 teaspoon salt. 

    Mixing together pico de gallo ingredients in a small glass bowl

    Serious Eats / Fred Hardy

  6. Using a ladle, divide soup evenly among 6 broiler-safe soup bowls, and place on a rimmed baking sheet. Top each bowl with a few whole tortilla chips and 1/4 cup cheese. Broil until cheese is melted, about 2 minutes. Top with prepared tomato-chile salsa before serving. 

    Overhead of 2 blue bowls with taco soup, on with a spoon in it, a small dish with pico de gallo on it, and a magenta colored textile surface.

    Serious Eats / Fred Hardy

Special Equipment

Large cast iron skillet, blender, large Dutch oven, 6 broiler-safe soup bowls

Make-Ahead and Storage

The soup can be cooked through step 4, cooled and refrigerated in an airtight container for up to 4 days. To serve soup, reheat until simmering on the stovetop, then continue with step 4 in the recipe.

Nutrition Facts (per serving)
566Calories
30gFat
37gCarbs
38gProtein
×
Nutrition Facts
Servings: 6 to 8
Amount per serving
Calories566
% Daily Value*
Total Fat 30g38%
Saturated Fat 11g53%
Cholesterol 101mg34%
Sodium 1146mg50%
Total Carbohydrate 37g13%
Dietary Fiber 4g13%
Total Sugars 8g
Protein 38g
Vitamin C 33mg165%
Calcium 258mg20%
Iron 5mg25%
Potassium 1032mg22%
*The % Daily Value (DV) tells you how much a nutrient in a food serving contributes to a daily diet. 2,000 calories a day is used for general nutrition advice.
(Nutrition information is calculated using an ingredient database and should be considered an estimate.)

More Serious Eats Recipes