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I just made this exactly as written but air-fried the corn fritters (8 min @ 400, sprayed liberally with oil) and it was delicious!! Thank you!!!
Kamila
This recipe is a fan-favorite! It was originally published in 2021 as part of our Soup Series! View the full series.
This soup is a hug in a bowl.
It’s got a tomato and pinto bean base, with warm chili spices, a creamy silky thickness – and once you add in that generous pile of crispy, sweet, spicy melt-in-your-mouth corn fritters on top, the whole thing is going to have you coming back for more. And more. And then, okay, more again because this one just keeps getting better.
Will you make soup art on top with that Mexican crema, cilantro, and salty cotija cheese? We hope so.
Origins Of Sopa Tarasca
Sopa Tarasca (“Tarascan soup”) originated in the Michoacán state of Mexico and was given the name in honor of the indigenous peoples of that area, the Purépechas or Tarascos. It is made with tomatoes, garlic, onion, and our favorite little friend, pinto beans! It is also made with fresh or dried chiles native to that region, which help give it its warm smoky flavor.
We were first introduced to the soup by this video on YouTube from Pati Jinich. We made her beautiful recipe immediately and it was so very, very yummy! Pati used whole dried ancho chiles, which are often trickier to find at our local grocery store (although if you can find them, they are absolutely delicious to use!).
We made some ever-so-slight swaps based on availability and preference, like using ancho chili powder instead, cooking the onion rather than adding it raw, and tossing in some extra cumin, to come up with this cozy-as-all-get-out nod to a more traditional sopa tarasca.
Why It’s So Good
This soup has heat but not exactly spiciness (though there is ancho chili powder). It’s like, actual warmth but not just from soup temperature either, you know? It’s just warm. The sun peeking through the clouds, or sitting just the right distance from the fire pit, or a soft thick sweatshirt and a perfectly weighted blanket. That kind of warm. You’ll feel it and it’s so great.
The creamy thickness that the soup gets from the pureed pinto beans makes you feel like you really made something special for yourself, and listen, you did.
This is also a topping lovers da-ream.
- A swoopy swirl of Mexican crema on top (sour cream would also be delightful)
- A confetti of fresh cilantro
- Sprinkle on some cotija cheese at the end and then sprinkle some more. Still holding the bag? Great, one more sprinkle it is.
What else are you thinking? Avocado chunks? Green onion? Chips? YES, YOU GET IT. You toppings champ, you.
Our hearts were specifically called to make and include some little crispy salty-sweet jalapeño corn fritters. Sure, it’s a lil’ extra step, and yes there is some frying involved, but we think we may have been put on this earth to eat these fritters and we take this job very seriously.
The other VERY FUN THING about this soup is that it is incredibly versatile. Not only as a toppings trough but you can get creative with the leftovers (speaking of which, the soup is *even better* the next day). Did we use it as a sorta simmer sauce for chicken tacos? Yes, we did. Would it make a fantastic enchilada sauce? We really think so, please report back!
How To Make Sopa Tarasca (Pinto Bean Soup)
This bowl of lovely is a pretty simple sauté/simmer/puree sitch, so here is how it goes:
- Get your onions and garlic going until soft and fragrant, then spice it up with the ancho chili powder and cumin.
- Add your tomatoes and simmer away baby!
- Blend that until smooth and return to pot.
- Add your pinto beans and some broth to the blender and buzz those up, too!
- Mix everything together and simmer
- Consider, AND THEN DEFINITELY GO FOR, making some jalapeño corn fritters to pop on top for serving.
Let’s Talk Jalapeño Corn Fritters, Shall We?
Cutie, crispy, sweet, savory perfect little corn fritters. Oh my. OH MY. You would definitely commonly find this soup with some fresh crunchy tortilla strips on top, which would be great, but there’s just something so special about making one extra loop in the kitchen to get these guys in your bowl. The batter is simple and they fry up quickly and then you are rewarded with the most wonderful little stack of sweet corn goodness, floating in your soup. The top stays crisp and the bottoms get a little like a dumpling with juicy little bursts of corn and tiny kicky bits of jalapeño throughout.
Flavor: A+. Texture: 10/10 would recommend.
We’re so excited to have this one on heavy rotation this soup season, the best of all seasons. So, gather all your toppings and get yourself ready for this warmly-spiced and deeply flavored bowl of love (and fritters!🤩).
Sopa Tarasca: FAQs
There’s lots and lots of flavor in this soup plus some heat, but it’s not super spicy.
Yes! Just add a teeny bit of red pepper flakes in addition to the regular chili powder.
Tortilla chips, homemade tortilla strips, or our jalapeño corn muffins would be really, really good.
It can! See notes in recipe card.
Prefer To Watch Instead Of Read?
Sopa Tarasca (Pinto Bean Soup) with Jalapeño Corn Fritters
- Total Time: 40 minutes
- Yield: 6 servings 1x
Description
Let’s make Sopa Tarasca! It’s a creamy, silky Mexican-inspired soup made with pinto beans, warm chili spices, and whole tomatoes. And you NEED a big pile of the jalapeño corn fritters on top. Drooling over this one!
Ingredients
Sopa Tarasca
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 onion, chopped
- 4 cloves garlic, smashed
- 1/2 tablespoon ancho chili powder
- 2 teaspoons cumin
- one 28-ounce can whole tomatoes
- two 14-ounce cans pinto beans, drained
- 2–3 cups water or vegetable broth
- 2 teaspoons salt (more or less to taste)
Jalapeño Corn Fritters
- 1 3/4 cups frozen corn
- 1/4 cup flour
- 1 tablespoon cornstarch
- 1/4 to 1/2 cup cotija cheese
- minced jalapeño (to taste – one is usually more than enough)
- 1/2 teaspoon salt, and/or salt for topping
- 1 cup vegetable oil for frying
Instructions
- Heat olive oil over medium high heat. Add onion and garlic; sauté until soft and fragrant. Add ancho chili powder and cumin; sauté for 1-2 minutes. Add tomatoes; simmer for 15 minutes. Transfer mixture to a blender and blend until smooth. Return to pot.
- Add pinto beans to blender; puree with water or broth. Return to pot and stir it into the tomato mixture. Simmer over low heat until ready to serve.
- For the corn fritters, pulse 1 cup of the corn in a food processor until smooth-ish. Mix your pureed corn with the flour, cornstarch, Cotija, jalapeño, and salt. Add in remaining 3/4 cup corn. Pour several cups of oil into a skillet for frying. Heat over medium heat. When the oil is hot, add the corn batter in small rolled balls – about 1-2 tablespoons per fritter (a cookie dough scoop works well for this). Fry until golden on both sides. Remove from the oil and drain on paper towels.
- Serve soup topped with corn fritters, crema, Cotija cheese, cilantro, and anything else your heart is asking for. YUM.
Notes
Instant Pot Instructions: Sauté the onion and garlic in the Instant Pot with a bit of olive oil. Add in the ancho chili powder and cumin, and sauté an additional minute or two. Add in the tomatoes, pinto beans, and 2 cups or water or broth. Cook on high pressure for 5 minutes with a quick release when the soup finishes. Transfer the mixture to a blender and puree until smooth or puree everything right in the Instant Pot until smooth.
I actually made potato eggplant tacos and chicken tacos with the leftover soup – just use it like a simmer sauce to cook with your taco filling. Super yummy.
- Prep Time: 10 minutes
- Cook Time: 30 minutes
- Category: Soup
- Method: Stovetop
- Cuisine: Mexican-Inspired
Keywords: sopa tarasca, pinto bean soup, bean soup
More Veg-Friendly Soup Recipes!
- The Best Vegan Broccoli Cheese Soup (plant-based meets comfort food)
- 5 Ingredient Cheesy Cauliflower Soup with Kale Pesto (cheesy soup forever)
- Instant Pot Pumpkin Walnut Chili (don’t skip on the toppings, so yummy!)
- Golden Soup (so healing, so good)
- Instant Pot Wild Rice Soup (the ultimate comfort soup)
One More Thing!
This recipe is part of our collection of incredible corn recipes. Check it out!
This soup looks absolutely delicious! I love the combination of creamy pinto beans and crispy jalapeño corn fritters. Such a comforting and creative recipe! For more useful everyday calculation tools, visit: https://www.tipcalculatr.com/
Delicious! I used sweet ancho chili powder and next time would add even more. We don’t have cotija cheese in the UK so I used feta cheese instead and it turned out great.
I’ve made several of your vegetarian recipes, all top-notch ! When I made this one, my corn fritters were a failure – not sure why…I used a mix of coconut oil (the liquid kind) and avocado with a touch of walnut. Because that’s all I had. Maybe I didn’t let the oil get hot enough, because all it did when the fritter dough hit it was foam up and the fritters just turned to goo, and I had to scoop them out in blobs. I decided to use the fried goo in my soup anyway, and it actually wasn’t half bad – it just mixed in and added some kind of fried corn flavor. Delicious soup though! Four stars only due to the fritter difficulty!
Great recipe super yummy but had trouble keeping the corn fritters together and took way longer than 40 min…
This was delicious! Only mods I did were concerning the dumplings. I initially added an egg because they didn’t seem like they were going to hold together. I also added 3 Tbsp of cornmeal because the batter seemed a little too wet after adding the egg. I airfried the dumplings at 400 for 10 minutes. Yum!
Super delicious!! I used a chipotle pepper puréed with some of the liquid in place of the ancho pepper because I didn’t have any on hand.
The fritters were soooo good too 😋
This looks delicious. I am wondering if I can just bake the fritters in a convection oven (with a spray of oil).
I’m wondering the same thing. We try to avoid fried foods but the fritters sound so good!
I’m allergic to nightshades so made this with an equal amount of beets and carrots instead of the canned whole tomatoes. It’s absolutely delicious! And everyone thinks it’s a tomato bisque when I serve it to guests. I freeze it and use it instead of tomato sauce & tomato products in other recipes. So versatile!
I just made a double recipe of these (substituting gluten free flour) in the air fryer (and parm instead of cotija because that’s what I had). 9 mins at 400. They are so yummy! Made soup with fire roasted tomatoes and added some shredded chicken after all the blending and it’s definitely going in the rotation. Thanks!
This was very good. I bougied it up and modified it little, and it came out a combo of this and the original
3 cans Pintos
6 Romas
2 full anchor
1 1/2 guajillo
Caramelized 1/4 of a huge onion. The rest went in as instructed
Some sun dried tomatoes I was tired of looking at
Used beef stock
Spices – super minimal: cumin, cumin seed that I tadka’d in with the caramelized onion, smoked salt, black pepper, some Penzeys Chili Con Carne spice mix and some chicken boullion.
Thickened up with some old corn tortillas in our freezer that I dried out in the oven and whizzed with the pintoschili’s.
Grabbed some Hondouran style hard cheese and have other stuff to do up on top.
Serving with cast iron skillet cornbread with cheddar and green chilis.
This recipe is a trusty winner in our house. Quick and easy on nights when you have no time (and easy clean up- thank you immersion blender). My kids request it and cheer when I tell them I’m making it.
I just made this recipe and I enjoyed it very much. The corn fritters add a crunchy bite. Flavors are great, but since I enjoy spicy, I think I would make the soup spicier. I could actually eat the soup by itself with tortillas on the side. I would definitely make it again.
Have made this recipes so many times, an absolute favourite! So hearty, comforting, and delicious. It’s not easy to get pinto beans here so I’ve just used a variety of other canned beans which have also worked well. Also usually air fry the fritters which works well – just a spray of oil and cooking until crispy!
As written, this tasted way too much like a watered-down bean dip to me. The large amount of pinto beans was overpowering and didn’t allow the tomato or other flavors to shine through. I even added tomato paste and more chile powder afterward, and it didn’t help. I used the lower end of broth (2 cups instead of 3 cups), so I bumped it up to 2 1/2 cups, and that didn’t help either. SOooooo…. Next time I try this, I would recommend starting with the lower amount of broth and half as much beans, then adjust each accordingly. Also, in order to get the soup really smooth, you need a high-powered blender, run on high for awhile. Some texture is ok, but then it’s more obvious there are beans in there. Maybe also add some cotija to the soup blend itself? Hope that helps others!
I made this last night, so yummy and perfect for a cold night. I used a single chipotle chili (the canned type in adobo) instead of chili powder (Didn’t have on hand). And the Jalapeno Corn Fritters were a big hit, the sweetness of the corn with the smoky rich soup was perfection
Such a fantastic recipe! The combination of ingredients is just perfect, and your instructions make it look so effortless. Can’t wait to make it soon!
Made this tonight with the air fryer option for the fritters. The soup had good flavor but the fritters were a bit gummy and underdone. I think they would def be better actually fried. (True for most things…)
Delicious, warm, and comforting. The fritters on top make this soup!
This soup is delightful! Very easy to make. The corn fritters take a little more time, but are so worth it. Agree with everyone who says to double the fritter recipes because they really are that good.
Should the frozen corn be defrosted first? Thanks for the great recipe!
Yes, it should be defrosted!
Can the fritters be baked?
Love this recipe! I haven’t eaten something so good in a long time!
Yum yum yum. I made this tonight and the flavors are so good. We loved the corn fritters, too. I didn’t have cojita cheese and substituted with goat cheese. It came together quickly, too. Thanks for a great recipe that will be a repeat for us.
Could you use cornmeal instead of flour for the fritters or will it not hold together as well?
We’ve never tried that so can’t say, but it sounds delicious! If you give it a try, we’d love to hear how it goes.
I have only one problem with this recipie. The corn fritters should be doubled in the original posted recipie because you will need more of them! Holy f*** this is delicious.