Designed with the busy home cook in mind, this Mexican chicken soup requires zero vegetable chopping or prep work aside from measuring a handful of spices. It makes a big batch of soup you can use to feed a small army or horde for your weekly meal prep since it reheats really well. Every serving has 17 grams of filling protein with just 175 calories, 15 grams of carbs, and 5 grams of fat.
How to Make Mexican Chicken Soup
Like I said, this is an easy one. You should be able to have it prepped and cooking in about 5 minutes. I’ll go through all the ingredients and potential modifications in the post below. If you’re feeling adherent, feel free to skip down to the full recipe card at the bottom of the post.
Add chicken thighs, stewed tomatoes, black beans, corn, cerveza, chicken stock, and a Mexican seasoning blend to a pressure cooker.
You can nearly always swap chicken thighs for chicken breast, but I’d encourage you to go with chicken thighs if possible. The extra fat content provides flavor and keeps the chicken super tender. And the nutrition facts aren’t hindered all that much by using thighs instead of breasts.
The seasoning blend for this Mexican chicken soup is the same I used for my Mexican shredded chicken thighs and Mexican potatoes with one exception—onion powder. To keep this soup as simple as possible, onion powder takes the place of dicing and sautéing an onion or two at the beginning of cooking.
For a shortcut, you may look at something like the ranch seasoning in my slow cooker creamy chicken taco soup or the fajita seasoning in my shortcut pulled chicken.
A common question from my shredded chicken recipe was about the cerveza. The beer is there for flavor, and the alcohol will cook off. So don’t worry about getting tipsy on this Mexican chicken soup. That is, unless we’re talking tipsy on flavor. You can swap it out 1:1 for extra chicken stock, or I’ve seen several people mention a non-alcoholic cerveza from Athletic Brewing.
And finally, if you have ingredients like the fire roasted corn and tomatoes from my stuffed pepper soup, those are always great substitutes for regular canned corn.
Pressure cook for 15 minutes.
I always use a food thermometer to double check cooked proteins. You want your chicken thighs to reach an internal temperature of at least 165ºF.
One other note I’ll mention here is that if you give your Mexican chicken soup a stir and decide you’d like it a bit thicker, you can use your pressure cooker’s sauté function to reduce the soup a bit more while you shred the chicken in a separate bowl.
Can I make this Mexican chicken soup in a crockpot?
You betcha. My slow cooker chicken stew cooks 2.5 pounds of chicken for 5-6 hours on low or 2-3 hours on high, for comparison.
With chicken thighs you have a lot of wiggle room. If you’re using chicken breasts, you might invest in a wireless meat thermometer like I used in my Traeger pot roast to set an alarm for the perfect internal temperature.
Shred or chop the cooked chicken thighs.
Like I mentioned in my chili coconut pulled chicken thighs, forks get the job done just fine when it comes to thighs. Chicken breast, on the other hand, can be a bit more labor intensive to shred. A pair of meat claws, stand mixer with a paddle attachment, or even a hand mixer all make shredding a bit easier.
Add the shredded chicken thighs back to the soup.
And that’s a wrap—you’re done! If you’re not serving or storing right away, be sure to set your pressure cooker to its keep warm function so you don’t continue cooking your Mexican chicken soup.
Serve with tortilla strips or chips, cilantro, cheese, and lime wedges.
I made baked tortilla strips using the same extra thin corn tortillas I used for my air fryer chicken taquitos, beef and cheese baked tacos, copycat Taco Bell Mexican Pizzas, and a beaucoup of other recipes. To make your own, slice the tortillas into thin strips, spray with a tiny bit of cooking spray, place on baking sheet, and bake for about 15 minutes at 400ºF.
In addition to all the fixin’s you see above, I love serving this Mexican chicken soup with a dollop (or three) of fat free Greek yogurt. If you’re feeling adventurous and love a creamy soup, you could even add some fat free cream cheese and Greek yogurt to the soup after it’s fully cooked like in my super popular high protein taco soup recipe. And if you’re looking for another sweater weather recipe to try, check out my Instant Pot chicken birria next.
However you serve it, I have a feeling you’re going to love it. Let me know what you think once you’ve made a batch! And if you have any questions about the recipe, drop a comment at the very bottom of this post.
Pressure Cooker Mexican Chicken Soup
Ingredients
- 2 lbs Boneless Skinless Chicken Thighs
- 2 cans, 15 oz Stewed Tomatoes
- 15 oz can Black Beans
- 15 oz can Corn
- 16 oz Chicken Stock
- 12 oz Cerveza, or more chicken stock
- 2 tsp Kosher Salt
- 2 tsp Garlic Powder
- 2 tsp Onion Powder
- 2 tsp Chipotle Chili Powder
- 2 tsp Dried Oregano
- 1 tsp Ground Cinnamon
- 1 tsp Ground Coriander
Instructions
- Add all the ingredients except the chicken thighs to a pressure cooker. Stir everything together before adding the chicken.
- Seal and pressure cook for 15 minutes with quick release pressure (vent immediately).
- Release the pressure and transfer the chicken to a bowl to shred.
- Add the shredded chicken back to the soup, stirring well.
- Serve with shredded cheese, tortilla chips or strips, cilantro, fat free Greek yogurt, and lime wedges, if desired.
Notes
Nutrition Facts Notes
- Each 1-cup serving of chicken soup has 2 WW SmartPoints (blue).
- If you swap the chicken thighs for chicken breast, each serving would have 155 calories, 19g protein, 15g carbs, and 2g fat.
This recipe is so easy and amazingly delicious. I meal prepped this for dinners this week. I imagine it will taste better and better each day! This will go into my rotation. So good!
This recipe would be ok with chicken breast right?
Yep. Go for it!
@Christine, yes! That is how I make mine.
This soup was delicious and so easy. It was a little spicy for my littler ones. Topped it with Greek yogurt, avocado and tortilla strips. I used frozen corn instead of canned and didn’t add the cinnamon (don t love cinnamon in savory dishes) or coriander, cause i didn’t have it. 🤷🏼♀️
I agree. I left those two ingredients out and used cumin (I’m love it—my family is Mexican American) and I used cilantro instead of oregano. 😋
@Genevieve, wish I’d read the comments first!😂 I think cumin would be awesome!
This soup was easy and delicious. It was a little spicy for my littler ones. We topped with Greek yogurt, Avocado and tortilla strips. Used frozen corn instead of canned and didn’t add the cinnamon or coriander (don’t love cinnamon in savory dishes and didn’t have any coriander 🤷🏼♀️)
Loved this and will definitely be making it again. Was so easy to throw everything in the instant pot on a weeknight and let it do its thing. Especially loved having leftovers. I did add some fresh jalapeno to it with some seeds for a little heat.
5 stars!!!! One thing I can always get my family to eat is a good soup! I used chicken breast instead of thighs, otherwise this was a hit and so easy! It will be on rotation through these winter months! Thank you!!
Should we be draining the corn, beans, and tomatoes? Just curious because I assume the corn but wasn’t sure on the others. Thanks!
Recently made this recipe and this is going to be a weekly meal in our house during the cold months! Doesn’t get much better than a quick and healthy soup! Love the spicy flavor.
It really doesn’t get better than this for a quick easy and delicious meal. Especially with the cold weather coming I plan to put this in the weekly rotation. One quick healthy tip is that I usually swap the chicken thighs for chicken breasts and it still tastes just as good. There’s so many other flavors in here that I barely notice the swap to breasts and you get less fat that way. Enjoy!
Loved this recipe but I used breast of chicken and less chicken stock to make it more of pulled chicken so I could put it in lettuce wraps for lunch.