T is for Taco Soup

T is for Taco Soup as I continue with my #AprilAtoZChallenge. I love soups of all kinds. Mark will eat them because he is kind and will eat pretty much anything I cook but soups are not his favorite. The beauty of most soup recipes is they freeze well. I make a pot of soup and portion it out into containers that go into the freezer. Here in Alabama we've had a weird chilly week and I actually made soup.

Taco Soup is easy and one of my favorites. It is also very WW friendly if you are on the blue or purple plan. It calculates as higher points for those on green plan.

You can see how many recipes I have for this soup and to be honest, I don't even use a recipe but feel free to read and combine.

For the pot of soup pictured below, I used the following ingredients:

plus corn - I forgot it in the picture above! I prefer to use shoepeg corn in this recipe but shoepeg corn evidently has more sugar because using shoepeg corn changes the WW points value.

Taco Soup

Ingredients:

2 cans light red kidney beans

2 cans pinto beans

2 cans black beans

2 cans petite diced tomatoes

1 can original Rotel

2 cans corn (I didn't have any canned corn but had some corn in the freezer)

1 can of water (I usually use the diced tomato can)

1 packet Hidden Valley Dry Ranch Seasoning Mix

1 packet Taco Seasoning

1 onion chopped

1 pound 99% fat free ground turkey (original recipe called for ground beef - when I use the ground turkey, I add about a tsp of beef bouillon granules)

Chop onion. Add onion and ground turkey to skillet and cook until turkey is no longer pink. I use my all clad non-stick skillet. If using a regular skillet, either use a little olive oil (maybe a tsp) or spray with pam before adding raw meat. There is VERY little fat in this meat and it will stick.

Open all of those cans and dump into a large pot (including the can of water). The only beans I drain are the black beans and I only drain them because they make the soup a weird color. That is a personal preference. Add seasoning packets and cooked ground turkey (and onions). Allow to simmer for a couple of hours. Enjoy. You can actually cook the meat and onions and dump everything into a crockpot and allow it to cook on low all day. Technically the soup is edible after about 30 minutes but we like to cook it longer because it takes the "tin can" tomato taste away. Do you know what I mean? If you are cooking for just 1 person or if you don't want any leftovers, cut everything in half.

Ready for my lunch!

Do you like soups? Do you have an easy soup recipe?