The Best Vegan Tortilla Soup
on Mar 29, 2019, Updated Jan 06, 2025
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This vegan tortilla soup might just be the best you ever make! This recipe is healthy, gluten-free and easy to make with simple ingredients.

How to Make Vegan Tortilla Soup
First up, chop the onion, garlic and jalapeno and saute them in the olive oil until they’re soft and fragrant.


After they’ve softened, add the tortilla – yes, a WHOLE tortilla, a small one, like for tacos, chop it up and throw it in.
Add the spices, broth and diced tomatoes too. I like fire-roasted diced tomatoes best! You can use any vegetable stock or broth but I like this bouillon from Better than Bouillon.

Cook that up for 10 minute or so, a light simmer is perfect. It should be smelling pretty amazing by now!

After that has simmered a bit, add the cilantro and black beans and you’re almost there!


After you stir those in, you can either transfer about 2/3 of the soup to a blender and pulse a few times to smooth it out or use an immersion blender right in the pot.
Don’t completely pulverize it, a little chunkiness is good!


Best Tortilla Soup Toppings
As much as I love tortilla soup, I think the toppings might actually be my favourite part. Try topping your soup with:
- avocado
- cilantro
- lime
- crispy tortilla strips
- shredded vegan cheese
- vegan sour cream
How to Make Crispy Tortilla Strips
To make these amazing crispy, salted tortilla strips, I used my favourite white corn tortillas from La Tortilla Factory. These guys make a mean, authentic tortilla and they’re my go-to for tacos, burritos and other Mexican-inspired dishes.
They’re soft, thick and chewy and when fried in a pan, they puff up and come to a perfect crisp, absolutely perfect for adding to this soup! I also added 1 tortilla right into the soup and I think that really helped bring it all together!

Vegan Tortilla Soup Recipe
The best part of this tortilla soup? You only need a few simple ingredients and it can be ready in about 20 minutes. It’s super easy to make yet the flavour of this simple, vegan soup absolutely delivers.
More Healthy Soups
Loving this tortilla soups? Here are more delicious and healthy vegan soups to try:
- Butternut Squash Lentil Soup
- Curried Cauliflower Sweet Potato Soup
- Coconut Ginger Carrot Soup
- Easy Vegan Minestrone Soup
- Spicy Vegan Black Bean Soup
- Vegan Enchilada Soup
More Recipes to Try!

The Best Vegan Tortilla Soup
Ingredients
- 1 tsp olive oil
- 1 small white onion, diced
- 5 cloves garlic, minced
- 2 jalapeño, seeded and diced
- 1 28 oz can diced tomatoes, fire-roasted if possible
- 2 cups vegetable stock
- 1 6-8 ” inch corn tortilla
- 1 tbsp chili powder
- 2 tsp garlic powder
- 1 19 oz can black beans, well rinsed and drained
- 1 cup cilantro, finely chopped
- juice from 1 lime
- salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
- Saute the onion, garlic and jalapeño in the olive oil for 5 minutes, stirring until soft and fragrant.
- Add the diced tomato, vegetable stock, tortilla, chili powder and garlic powder. Stir well and simmer over medium heat for 10 minutes.
- Stir in the black beans, cilantro and lime and simmer a few more minutes.
- Using an immersion blender or by placing most of the soup in a blender, blend just enough to ensure the tortilla has been blended completely into the soup. You want to leave it a little chunky.
- Add salt and pepper to taste.
- Serve topped with avocado, cilantro, fresh lime and crispy tortilla strips.
Video
Notes
Nutrition
This recipe was originally posted October 18, 2015. It was updated March 29, 2019 with new text and photos.













Accidentally bought crushed tomatoes instead of diced. Kept in the seeds of one of the jalapeños and added corn. Turned out super good! This recipe is a keeper!
Totally still works with crushed, no big deal! Glad you enjoyed it! Sounds great with corn and the extra spice!
This soup is delightful! So tasty and filling. I like to add about 1/4 cup corn (fresh or defrosted) after returning puréed portion.
This looks delicious. I’m going to add some ground beef to this so everyone in my family who isn’t vegan will eat it and I’ll put some aside for the vegan. Win win. Thank you so much.
I hope everyone enjoys it!
Just made this for dinner. It’s so good! I used half diced tomatoes and half fire roasted, and started with half of the black beans. I blended most of it as the recipe said, then added second half of the black beans. Served with chips, sour cream, vegan cheese, and guacamole. Everyone loves it, including kids. They said “this is definitely a keeper!” It was so easy to make, the kids helped.
Awesome! So glad you and your family enjoyed the recipe. The toppings sound delicious! Thanks for the review.
I love this soup. Sometimes I add tiny diced carrot or corn if the cob to get in some extra veg. It’s such an easy one to make and my non vegan friends love it as much as I do!
Love that idea! Sounds great with corn. Thanks for the review, I’m so glad you enjoy it!
I made this Vegan Tortilla Soup this morning and had it for lunch – it was sooo good. I can’t wait to have it for lunch again tomorrow. Thanks for sharing!
Delicious!!!!!!! So good and so easy to make.
Yay! So glad you liked it! Thanks for the review.
HI!
I just made this soup for my meal prep for the week and it is AMAAAAAAAAZZZZZING!!!! My husband says “Well this is BS, you meal prep the good stuff and serve me tofu!” LMFAOOOOOOOOOOO I caved and gave him one of my servings. =)
Anyway, I do have a question: do you by chance have the nutritional info for this soup? I made it exactly as the recipe states. For some odd reason My Fitness Pal won’t let me save this and it won’t compute it for me either… sighhh ughhhh
=(
There seems to be a bug in My Fitness Pal recently…if you go back and check a bit later, the recipe should be there! That happened to me yesterday and when I went back later, a recipe had saved 3 times. Sorry, I don’t have this one calculated! I’m so glad you enjoyed it.
This soup is flavorful enough,, but if you don’t like your food VERY SPICEY consider adjusting the amount of jalapeño you use – or perhaps using diced green chilis instead. I lost one of mine, and thank goodness I did. I like a little heat, but if I’d used two it would have been inedible for me. My husband thought the heat level was fine. Otherwise, I followed this recipe exactly, with one exception. I had some corn on the cob, so I threw in the kernels of one of them.
I like it depends on the jalepenos too because I had one the other day and I used 1/2 of it a recipe and it just about killed me! Thanks for the feedback on that. Sounds yummy with corn in there.
This is the best tortilla soup I’ve ever had bar None!!!!!!!! It is requested by my friends all the time when we do potlucks. I add vegan chicken to it. Just love love Love!!!
Thank you so much for you comment, Paula!! I’m so happy you like it. It really made my day to hear that!