Easy Vegan Homemade Chalupa Recipe with Black Beans

If you’re in the mood for some home cooked Tex-Mex style cuisine, but you want to try something beyond the familiar fajitas, tacos and nachos, how about an easy vegan homemade chalupa recipe with black beans? In fact this recipe is a 3 for 1 deal because we’re sharing what we believe our the simplest methods to make your own plant-based queso, dairy free sour cream and give you black bean chalupa recipe. Sure you can use store bought queso, or buy vegan sour cream from the grocery store, but they’re also really easy to make yourself.

Chalupas bread is made by frying a dough in a pan of hot oil until it’s golden brown and barely has a crispy texture to its outside. Chalupas are shaped and eaten like a taco, held in the hand with any number of fillings. For this recipe we’ll use lettuce, tomatoes and black beans, topped with queso, sour cream and vegan cheese. This is a great dish for a table surrounded by family or friends, with a pile of warm breads in the centre surrounded by all the toppings and sides.

The queso recipe we’ve included in this post uses cashews blended with soy milk, nutritional yeast, chipotle paste and some more spicy seasonings. It’s creamy, cheesy and has a bit of a smokey fire tone to it. And it is as simple ti make as throwing everything into a blender. We’ve listed one cup of raw cashews in the ingredients list, which is enough to use amongst 10 or so chalupas, but if you can use a smaller blender. It’ll make life easier so you don’t just end up costing the insides of a large jug with half blended cashew paste. A smaller blender like a single potion smoothie maker will keep everything contained, and yield a smoother queso sooner. 

To make your very own vegan sour cream you just need a bowl and a whisk. You’ll simply mix together a plant-based whipping cream with some tangy white vinegar, zesty lemon and a pinch of salt. The cream will thicken into the perfect homemade vegan sour cream to serve with your homemade chalupas. 

Traditional chalupas are made from masa, which is a corn dough, different to flour tortillas. The Tex-Mex version of this dish though, which is popular in the united states, is typically made from flour, milk, butter, salt and baking powder. Our vegan version of this dish is going to substitute in soy milk and plant-based butter. The American style of chalupa still has a fried dough shell, but it’s a thicker kind of shell, made from a soft dough.

When it comes to making your first chalpa breads, you are going to make a couple of imperfect ones, to reach the perfect ones. After you’ve made the dough for the bread, you will roll small portions of it in your hands to form dough balls, which you will then roll flat into a disc before frying in It’s the next bit that’s trickier. You will need a pair of tongs, preferably ones with quite large clamping faces. There’s an art to grabbing frying chalupa bread and folding it in half before continuing to cook it. We’ll tell you now where we slipped up, if you over fry the first side when you place the raw dough into the hot oil. As soon as you flip the dough disc and try to fold it in half, it will split, because it’s simply too crispy. So don’t over fry the first side, use tongs that won’t damage the bread, fold the chalupa bread and then finish frying the dough.

There’s no right or wrong way to fill your chalupa bread with toppings, but we found that if you put the sour cream into the warm bread first it instantly melts, so we think veggies first, then queso and cheese, sour cream last. Serve up your bean chalupas with some street corn, chips and salsa and you will have one tasty food fiesta. 

If you’re really entertaining a large group as well and are wanting to go all out on a Tex/Mex inspired spread, then you should also take a look at our easy vegan recipe for chicken enchiladas. Or if you’re actually looking for some easy light lunch ideas then we also have our own vegan quesadillas recipe.

Ever wondered how to make hard taco shells? If you feel like giving it a go then why not try swapping out the chalupa bread for a taco shell instead and just use our queso and sour cream recipe instead? Or why not make your own version of a Taco Bell gordita crunch and slide in a hard shell and a layer of plant based cheese with the chalupa bread on the outside?

Vegan Chalupa Recipe Ingredients

Chalupa Shell Ingredients

3 cups plain flour

1 1/2 tbsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

2 tbsp melted plant based butter

1 1/4 cup unsweetened soy milk

Vegetable oil for frying

Toppings Ingredients

2 cups chopped lettuce

1 cup chopped tomatoes

2 cups canned black beans

1 cup grated Mexican style plant based cheese (substitute with vegan cheddar cheese)

Sour Cream Ingredients

1 cup vegan whipping cream

1 Tbsp lemon juice

1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar (or white vinegar)

Pinch of plain salt

Queso Ingredients

1 cup raw cashews

3/4 cup hot soy milk

1 tsp minced garlic

1 Tbsp chipotle paste (or hot sauce)

3 Tbsp nutritional yeast

1 tsp chili powder

1/2 tsp ground cumin

1/2 tsp salt

How to Make Vegan Chalupas

Into a large mixing bowl add the all purpose flour, baking powder, salt and plant based butter. Use a wooden spoon to mix the dry ingredients with the melted butter.

Add to the bowl the soy milk, and mix this in until a dough texture starts to take shape. Then with your hand start to knead the dough until you have one soft, consistently textured dough ball.

Still in the mixing bowl, cover the dough with plastic wrap or even a plate and let it rest for 15 minutes.

Afterwards divide up the dough into 10 equally sized pieces, roll them into balls in your hands and set them aside.

Take a trying pan and set it over a medium-high heat, then add enough oil so that it’s about 1 cm or close to a half inch deep.

When the oil is hot, take one dough ball at a time and flatten it out with a rolling pin until it’s about a 6 inch circle. Pierce with a fork once rolled?

Now using a pair of tongs gently place the flattened dough into the hot oil and let it fry for no more than 30 seconds. Just enough so that it turns a golden brown colour. 

Turn the frying bread over to cook the other side. Holding one half of the bread with the tongs still, fold it in half now to take the final shape of a chalupa.

After you have fried the outside of the chalupa bread for 20-30 seconds a side and it’s looking golden brown all over, take it out of the oil and leave it to dry, resting on some kitchen towel.

Repeat this for the remaining 9 dough balls, until each vegan chalupa shell has been fried. 

How to Make Vegan Sour Cream

In a medium sized bowl add the 1 cup of vegan whipping cream, along with the lemon juice, vinegar and salt.

Using a whisk, mix the ingredients together until they are well combined and you can see that the cream is starting to aerate and thicken slightly. The cream will continue to thicken a bit further after whisking in the lemon and vinegar.

How to Make Vegan Queso

Start by heating the soy milk in a microwave for 30 seconds at a time until it is hot. Alternatively you can heat it over a stove in a small pan, heating but not boiling the milk. 

Add all of the cashews, hot milk and all of the other ingredients to a small blender. Then blend them together until you have a smooth creamy consistency.

You can adjust the thickness of your queso quite simply, just add another 1/4 cup at a time of soy milk, blend again and continue until you’re happy with it. 

How to Build a Vegan Chalupa

Chop up a head of lettuce into strips (we like to use an iceberg lettuce, 1/4-1/3 chopped will fill 2 cups)

Dice a couple of tomatoes (2 salad tomatoes diced should fill 1 cup)

Drain and rinse a can of black beans though a sieve under cold running water and then mix 2 cups in a bowl with the lettuce and tomatoes. 

Serve by filling the chalupa breads with the vegetables, topped with sour cream, queso and grated cheese.

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