Soup Week - Soup #2 - Taco Soup

This Taco Soup is really, really easy and really perfect for leftovers. It also takes very little dishes -- I make mine in my crockpot. It can be made vegetarian or with meat. I'll give you the run down on what I dumped in my crockpot this time, and give examples for swap outs. It's great for a busy week because you can literally dump and turn the crockpot on and it will be done. Plus, the soup can be used as a great baked potato topper as well.

So, my ingredients this time were:

1 cup (about) of ground turkey (leftover from tacos a few nights before)
1 can of red beans
1/2 cup of black bean soup (or you could use 1 can of black beans)
1 cup or can of white beans (or whatever other bean you like - chili beans, garbanzo beans, etc. I had some white beans leftover from another recipe)
1-1 1/2 cups of corn (I used frozen corn that I had shaved off the cob when corn was in season and cheap. You could also use 1 can of corn, if you wanted).
1-2 cans of diced tomatoes (or fresh tomatoes, 1-2 cups, depending on how tomato-ey you want it).
1 packet of taco seasoning

I just dump all of these items in the crockpot and a few hours later you really do have a great soup. Just add salt and pepper to taste.

Garnishing with this soup is key - it's a great way to use up the crumbs at the bottom of a tortilla chip bag and anything you would top a taco with, is great on this soup, notably shredded cheese, avocado, sour cream, diced red onions, etc.

I also topped a baked potato with the soup one night, which was also quite good.

For swap outs, I recommend any ground beef you have or leftover fajita meat or even shredded chicken. It's also a great vegetarian soup in which I just up the amount of canned beans (usually putting two of kidney and two of black because those are my favorites. My mom usually adds frozen green beans as well.) You might also need to add more taco seasoning, if you make an extra full pot of it.

Enjoy!!