Bean and Tortilla Soup | Everyday Dorie

I can’t think of a more appropriate place to deploy the kitchen-sink approach to cooking than the bean and tortilla soup. Besides a long list of ingredients, this soup has some serious heat as is typical with any Tex-Mex dish. Dorie says the soup has a generous propensity for add-ins. She is right about that.

Treating heat with respect, I’ve been gradually working my way to amp up the heat quotient in my food. Early this summer, I decided to jump in with both feet and started growing hot peppers in my backyard vegetable patch. Jalapeños have come and gone, what’s left now are the firey red chili peppers — lots of them. What better way than putting them in the tortilla soup?

Subsequently, I use less than a handful of these tiny chili peppers. Lo and behold, I get heat — inescapable, but in a good way. Due to the intense heat already present, I forego chili powder, adobe sauce (which I can’t locate it in more than one grocery store and abandon the search) and Old Bay seasoning. With the freshly harvested red peppers, adding more spicy ingredients in the mix as Dorie suggests would have been too much for us. Furthermore, you may consider putting a bottle of hot sauce (optional in Dorie’s recipe) on the table, but I’ve found it to be unnecessary.

Making the soup goes slowly at first, which requires starting with the basics. I’ve found it helpful to put aside a block of quiet time to make the soup base. Standing by the stove, I patiently sweat chopped onion, red pepper, carrots, chili pepper and garlic for about twenty minutes until the vegetables are softened. Judging the way these ingredients smell as they cook, you know the soup will turn out nicely. (This spicy and sweet aromatic base goes well with anything.) Next, incorporate cumin, chile powder, vegetable or chicken broth and canned tomatoes with the juice. Then let the soup simmer for another twenty minutes. Remove from the heat.

Now the fun parts: the add-ins. Since I’ve loaded up on dry beans in the lockdown months, a bag of quality dry pinto beans from the pantry comes in handy. A pot of beans slowly simmering on the stove has been the hallmark during the pandemic when I’ve started cooking with beans in earnest. As a consumer, I like to support small local growers of heirloom beans, as well as agricultural diversity, while getting away from the growth-focused, commodity-based business model of large US companies.

The rest of the add-ins I gather are: Greek yogurt, avocado, chopped onion and bell pepper, shredded cheddar, and a fresh wedge of lime. Of course, a bag of tortilla chips, the namesake ingredient, to anchor the bean and tortilla soup. With all these fine ingredients, the soup looks festive and eats like a party in the mouth.