Creamy Black Bean Taco Soup

DeKalb in February is an act of endurance. The wind comes off the prairie like it has a personal grudge against anyone who chose to attend a university in the flattest part of Illinois, and the walk from my dorm to the education building is twelve minutes of my face being sandblasted by air that feels like it has teeth. I bought a balaclava at the Dollar General on Lincoln Highway. I look like I'm about to rob a bank. I don't care. My face is warm.

Assessment and Evaluation is getting slightly less terrifying. Professor Huang does this thing where she puts a sample data set on the board and walks us through it like she's narrating a nature documentary — calm, patient, like the numbers are animals in their natural habitat and we just need to observe them without panicking. I am observing. I am mostly not panicking. I got a B-minus on the first quiz, which is not a B, but it's not a C, and right now I am grading myself on a curve that accounts for the fact that four months ago I couldn't read a paragraph. A B-minus is a miracle in disguise.

Nar-Anon on Wednesday. Pat was there — the woman who lost her son eleven years ago. She brought cookies. Oatmeal raisin, homemade, slightly burned on the bottom. I ate three. Nobody talks about the food at meetings, but the food matters. It's the thing that says: I thought about you before I got here. I carried something from my kitchen to this basement because you're worth the effort of preheating an oven. Babcia Rose would understand. Babcia Rose communicates exclusively through food and disapproval and love, in that order.

I made chicken tortilla soup on Sunday — a whole pot in the communal kitchen while Priya studied at the library. A can of black beans, a can of diced tomatoes with green chiles, shredded chicken from a rotisserie bird I bought at Jewel for $4.99 on markdown, cumin, chili powder, garlic, chicken broth from a box. I crushed tortilla chips on top because I didn't have fresh tortillas and because crushed chips are, frankly, better — they get soft and salty and they thicken the broth into something that feels like a hug from the inside. The pot made five servings. I labeled the containers with days of the week in Sharpie. Priya asked if she could have one. I gave her Tuesday. That's the system: cook big, share small, keep going.

That pot of soup — the labeled containers, the shared Tuesday, the chips dissolving into something warm — is exactly what got me through the week, and it’s what I keep coming back to when I need to feel like I have my life together. The version I’ve written out below is slightly creamier than my Sunday batch, because I’ve made it enough times now to know what it wants to be. Here’s how I make it.

Prep Time: 10 min | Cook Time: 25 min | Total Time: 35 min | Servings: 5

Ingredients

2–3 cups shredded rotisserie chicken (from 1 store-bought bird)
2 cans (15 oz each) black beans, drained and rinsed
1 can (14.5 oz) diced tomatoes with green chiles (such as Ro-Tel Original)
4 cups chicken broth (from a box or carton)
4 oz cream cheese, softened and cut into cubes
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon chili powder
3 cloves garlic, minced, or 1 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
Salt and black pepper to taste
Crushed tortilla chips, for topping
Optional toppings: shredded cheddar, sour cream, sliced scallions, hot sauce

Instructions

Build the base. In a large pot over medium heat, add garlic (if using fresh) and stir for about 1 minute until fragrant. Pour in the chicken broth, diced tomatoes with green chiles, black beans, cumin, chili powder, smoked paprika, and garlic powder if using. Stir to combine.
Add the chicken. Stir in the shredded rotisserie chicken. Bring the pot to a gentle simmer.
Make it creamy. Drop in the cream cheese cubes. Stir steadily over medium-low heat until the cream cheese fully melts into the broth, about 5–7 minutes. The soup will turn a soft, hazy orange.
Simmer and season. Reduce heat to low and let the soup simmer uncovered for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Taste and adjust salt, pepper, and chili powder to your liking.
Portion and top. Ladle into bowls or divide into airtight containers. Top each serving with a generous handful of crushed tortilla chips just before eating — they soften into the broth and thicken it just enough. Refrigerate leftovers up to 5 days.

Nutrition (per serving)

Creamy Black Bean Taco Soup — The Pot That Gets You Through the Week