A soup maker is a simpler appliance than it sounds. It’s just a stainless steel jug with a heating element integrated into it and a stick blender attached to the lid.
But it is one of the best additions you can make to your kitchen.
A soup maker lets you enjoy tasty and nutritious soups without spending hours standing over a saucepan or spending money on generic store-bought soup.
Chop up your ingredients and put them in the jug, add some stock and select your preferred setting. Most soup makers will have your soup ready in about 20 minutes.
Many soup makers can prepare different types of soups and even smoothies.
In this buying guide, we review the best soup makers you can order online in the UK. But first, some tips on how to choose the right soup maker for your needs.
What to Consider When Choosing a Soup Maker
a) Capacity
How many bowls of soup can you get from the soup maker? The ideal number depends on whether you are getting the soup maker for your entire family or personal use.
Most soup makers have a capacity of about 1.6L, which fills about four standard soup bowls.
If it is just for you, you can get a small one with a 1L capacity, enough for about two bowls.
b) Pre-Set Modes
Look for a product that requires no guess work. You shouldn’t have to wonder how much time the soup needs or what power level to use.
Most soup makers have pre-set modes. Just select a mode and the appliance does all the work for you. It’ll automatically select the amount of time to cook the soup and how much blending power to apply.
You can also vary how chunky the soup is by selecting different modes.
The most common modes include smooth, chunky, smoothie and compote.
c) Pause Function
Sometimes, you need to add spices, vegetables or more stock to your soup midway through the preparation.
Look for a product that has a built-in pause function. In some soup makers, it’s called a memory function.
It allows you to pause preparation, open the lid and add more ingredients then close the lid and continue from where you left off. The soup maker won’t reset the timer or soup settings.
d) Sautéing Function
Many soup recipes involve sautéing some of the ingredients such as onions on a pan to extract more flavour.
Most soup makers don’t offer a built-in option to sauté. You have sauté first in a pan then pour the onions into the soup maker.
A few models however have this option built in. It’s a big time saver and saves you the hassle of going from the pan to the soup maker.
If many of your soup recipes involve sautéing, look for a soup maker that offers this function.
e) Keep Warm Function
‘Keep warm’ is an important feature that you’ll find useful many times.
Sometimes, you don’t need to eat the soup immediately or you want to leave some in the jug for later. The ‘keep warm’ function does exactly what it says – it keeps the soup warm for a certain period so it’s ready to enjoy at any time without having to reheat it.
f) Cleaning Mode
Another function to look for is self-cleaning. It makes it much easier to keep your soup maker clean.
You just add water and mild detergent to the steel jar, close the lid and select the cleaning mode.
But even if your preferred soup maker lacks this mode, soup makers are generally easy to clean. Most have a non-stick interior without any small or sharp parts inside the jar.
A quick wipe with a soapy sponge followed by a rinse is enough to keep the soup maker clean.
The Best Soup Maker Reviews
1. Morphy Richards 501022 Soup Maker Review
The Morphy Richards 501022 Soup Maker is one of the most popular soup makers on Amazon. It has an impressive rating and mostly positive customer reviews.
Four pre-set modes offer a simple one-touch operation with no guesswork. The modes include smooth soup (21 minutes), chunky soup (28 minutes), smoothies (2 minutes) and a basic blending mode.
The blending function allows you to further customize the texture of your soup. If you feel the chunky mode produces a soup that’s too chunky, you can blend it a bit longer to make it smoother.
A pause function lets you add additional ingredients midway without losing the initial settings.
Once the soup is ready, you can serve it hot or leave it in the soup maker until you are ready to eat it. A keep warm function keeps it at the perfect serving temperature.
The jar’s 1.6L capacity produces about 4 bowls of soup or 5-6 bowls if you are serving small starter portions.
The Morphy Richards soup maker has a clean mode that helps remove bits of soup and food from hidden crevices.
If you are not sure where to start – which soups to make, what ingredients to use etc. – the Morphy Richards soup maker comes with a handy recipe book with a wide selection of easy and nutritious recipes.
What we like about it:
- Easy to use.
- Large capacity.
- Comes with recipe book.
- Easy to clean.
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2. Tefal Easy Soup and Smoothie Maker Review
The Tefal Easy has a slightly lower capacity (1.2L), but still enough to serve four bowls if you measure carefully.
Like the Morphy Richards, The Tefal soup maker comes with four modes: creamed soup (smooth texture), soup with pieces (chunky texture), compote (for fruit purees, compotes and baby food) plus a manual blend mode.
The creamed soup mode runs for 23 minutes, the chunky one for 25 minutes and the compote one for 20 minutes.
The manual mode is handy for adjusting the texture of the soup to your liking. You can also use it to make a fruit or veggie smoothie just like you would with a traditional blender.
If you don’t have much experience making your own soups, the included recipe book has 30 easy recipes to get you started.
We love the large display and control panel at the top of the soup maker. The large icons for different soup modes are easy to see and select.
The control panel is super easy to use. All it takes to get your soup started is two clicks: one, your preferred mode and two, the start button.
It can keep your soup hot and ready for up to 40 minutes after it’s done cooking.
When you are done making your soup, use the ‘easy cleaning’ function to clean the jar.
What we like about it:
- Easy to use – large display with easy-to-select automatic programs.
- Versatile modes.
- Keep warm function.
- Easy to clean.
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3. DREW & COLE Soup Chef Stainless Steel 1.6L Soup Maker Review
The DREW & COLE Soup Chef is another good choice for families looking for large capacity. At 1.6L, you can make between 4 and 6 bowls of soup depending on how generous you are with the portions.
What we love most about the Soup Chef is that it comes with a built-in sauté function. To use it, add the ingredients you want to sauté into the jar and then press the sauté button that is on the handle.
You don’t need to cover the soup maker when sautéing.
When it’s done, add the rest of your ingredients, close the lid and select your preferred mode.
The Soup Chef comes with four modes: sauté, smooth soup, smooth+ and chunky soup.
The smooth+ mode is a sort of manual function. You use it when you want to manually customize the texture of your soup.
Once you select the smooth+ mode, you can press and hold the blend button to make the soup smoother. You can also use this mode to make fruit smoothies, nut milks, milk shake and cold soups.
At any time when the soup is cooking, you can lift the lid to add more spices or ingredients. The soup maker will automatically pause cooking and retain memory of previous settings.
Return the lid within three minutes and the soup maker picks up from where it left off.
The Soup Chef also has a ‘keep warm’ function that engages automatically when your soup is ready. It keeps the soup warm for up to two hours.
The Drew & Cole soup maker comes with a bonus recipe book filled with 20 recipes. But you can prepare just about any recipe – whether from online or your grandmother’s recipe collection – in the Soup Chef.
What we like about it:
- Easy to use.
- Sautéing function.
- Auto-clean.
- Keep warm mode.
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4. Salter EK2613 Go Healthy Electric Soup Maker Review
If you are looking for a cheaper soup maker, we recommend the Salter EK2613. It’s a 1.6L soup maker that’s perfect for families (it can make 4-6 bowls of soup).
You get three soup modes plus an auto-cleaning mode. The soup modes include smooth, chunky and blend.
As in other similar products, you can use the blend mode to manually adjust the texture of your soup. It’s also handy for making purees, cold soups and fruit smoothies.
Note that the Salter has no ‘keep warm’ function. Serve the soup immediately to keep it from going cold.
Cleaning is super easy. Just add water to the metal jar and press the auto-cleaning button. You can also hand-wash the soup maker.
The jar is smooth with no crevices. A quick wipe with a soapy sponge plus a rinse are enough to clean out any bits of food. The blade is small and thus easy to clean (be careful though, it’s sharp).
What we like about it:
- Affordable.
- Easy to use and clean.
- Versatile – you can prepare smoothies, soups, purees and many other foods.
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5. Morphy Richards Compact Soup Maker Review
Looking for a personal soup maker or something you can carry with you?
We recommend the Morphy Richards Compact. With a 1L capacity, it makes enough soup for two or three bowls, making it also ideal if you need a soup maker just for you and your partner.
Despite the smaller size and capacity, it’s just as functional as the larger models.
You get four modes: smooth, chunky, drinks and manual blend.
The smooth mode takes about 19 minutes while chunky soup takes 25 minutes. You can see how much time is remaining on the countdown timer.
The soup maker doesn’t have an auto-clean mode but you don’t really need it. The non-stick interior coating gets clean with a quick wipe and rinse.
What we like about it:
- Budget price.
- Portable.
- Takes little storage space.
- Versatile and easy to use.
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Frequently Asked Questions
1. Is a soup maker worth it?
A soup maker is so much better and faster than making soup the traditional way in a pot or pan. It does everything for you including cutting up the ingredients and cooking the soup to perfection.
If soups are a regular part of your diet, getting a soup maker will save you time and effort. You might even find you are making better tasting soups
2. Can I put raw vegetables in a soup maker?
You definitely can. It will blend the ingredients to your desired consistency and cook everything through.
The only thing we don’t recommend putting in raw is meat. That’s because the short cook cycle of the soup maker is not enough to cook the meat. But you can add cooked meat to a soup maker.
3. What can I make in a soup maker?
A soup maker can prepare most kinds of soups as well as smoothies and compotes. Most products come with a recipe book to give you ideas on what you can prepare in the soup maker.
Keep in mind that this appliance is not as powerful as a blender, so don’t put in anything hard like large chunks of ice, nuts or seeds.
