Another good recipe from Family Feasts for $75 a Week: A Penny-wise Mom Shares Her Recipe for Cutting Hundreds from Your Monthly Food Bill. I’ve seen various recipes for taco soup before but they all call for packaged mixes and seasonings, which I rarely buy.
This came out great and she provides you with alternatives to the packaged mixes! Initially, the broth was a little salty but that was my fault as I was using a jarred soup base and mismeasured. ;( But adding some extra water fixed that in a jiffy. I modified her recipe a bit. She called for 2 cans of chili-style beans, which I didn’t have, so I used two cans of kidney beans instead. She also called for a 28 ounce can of diced or pureed tomatoes or 2 cups fresh pureed tomatoes. I used a 15 oz can of diced tomatoes and a 15 oz can of diced tomatoes with green chilies because that’s what I had in the pantry.
Taco Soup
Ingredients
- 1 tsp oil
- 1 onion, peeled and chopped
- 1 pound of ground beef or turkey
- 1 packet of Onion Soup mix or make your own
- 1 packet of taco seasoning or make your own taco seasoning
- 2 15- ounce cans of kidney beans, drained and rinsed unless you use the chili-style beans
- 1 15- oz can of corn don’t bother draining
- 28 ounces or so of some sort of diced or pureed tomatoes
- 4 cups beef broth
Instructions
- Heat the oil in a soup pot and start the diced onion cooking for a few minutes. Add the ground beef and cook until browned, using a wooden spoon to break it into small pieces as it cooks.
- Drain any excess fat, then stir in the onion soup mix and the taco seasoning. Add beans, corn, tomatoes and broth. Simmer, partially covered, for 45 minutes or so.
- Serve with sour cream, grated cheese and chips at the table.
You can make your own Onion Soup Mix.
And make your own packet of taco seasoning.
All the other taco soup recipes I see call for a packet of Ranch dressing mix as well. All these packets would easily add $3 to the cost of the soup even if you managed to find them on sale! I do wonder what the flavor of the Ranch might do, but if you’re curious you can always make your own with soda crackers! But the soup was quite good without.
When I served this I had no tortilla chips so made some cheese quesadillas to go with the soup. I swung by the grocery store for some cat food yesterday so picked up some tortilla chips, knowing several of us would be eating this for lunch. I quite enjoyed dipping the chips into the soup or just crumbling them into the bowl.
She says this serves 6 and I don’t doubt it. So far I’ve gotten 5 servings from it and still have at least 2, probably 3, left. But we’re 2 teen girls and one woman here now so probably lighter eaters than average.
Other recipes I’ve enjoyed from this cookbook or Mary’s blog OwlHaven (always a fun read, whether you have a large family or a small one, like me!):
I ate the last of this for lunch the other day and added some chunks of avocado to the soup after I’d warmed it up. Really good!
Sure, it will just be a lighter flavor. I was actually thinking that next time I might try that, or might use half chicken broth and half beef. Let me know how it turns out!
could i use chicken broth instead of beef broth