How to Adapt Soup Recipes for Soup Makers

When looking for soup recipes online, you will find that most of the instructions involve making soup in a pan. However, many people have soup makers, and there is often a different process when using these, leaving people asking how to adapt soup recipes for soup makers.

Whether you need to adapt the recipe at all depends on your soup maker’s functions and the ingredients you are using. It can also depend on your personal preferences regarding the texture, consistency, and flavour.

To help you understand more about using soup makers, here is our guide for how to adapt soup recipes for soup makers.

How to Adapt Soup Recipes for Soup Makers: A Complete Guide

If you make soup regularly, then one kitchen gadget you may invest in is a soup maker. Many people find this a useful piece of kitchen equipment. Like all technology, there are pros and cons to using a soup maker, and we will begin by looking at these before dealing with the specific questions that people often ask about adapting soup recipes for soup makers.

The Pros of Soup Makers

There are many benefits to using soup makers, and some of these include:

• The soup-making process is simplified
• Great for people who make soups regularly
• You can make most soups in under 30 minutes
• Less washing and cleaning than when using a pan and a blender
• There are a variety of sizes, designs, and functions available
• In some models, it is possible to cook other foods
• They save time so that you can complete other tasks

The Cons of Soup Makers

All gadgets have their downsides. In the case of soup makers, the cons include:

• Take up storage space
• Less control over the cooking of ingredients
• You may need to cook some ingredients first
• Expensive if you do not cook soup much

To learn more about the pros and cons of different soup-making equipment, you might like to read more in our soup-making equipment guide.

How to Adapt Soup Recipes for Soup Makers- Is It Easy?

When reading a soup recipe, it may seem tricky to adapt it to cook a delicious soup in a soup maker. However, it is surprisingly simple. In some cases, you will not need to adapt the recipe at all. For example, many vegetable soup recipes are easy to make as adding all the ingredients to the soup maker and then leave it to do its work is all you need to do.

How easy it is to adapt a soup recipe to using a soup maker depends predominantly on two factors: the functions of your soup maker and the ingredients in your soup. However, it is usually possible to cook most soups in a soup maker with a couple of adaptations.

Do I Need to Saute Vegetables First?

If your soup maker has a sauté setting, then you can sauté the vegetables first. If you are using a soup maker that does not have a sauté function, then whether you choose to sauté your vegetables first depends on your personal preferences.

Sautéing your vegetables has several purposes. It is a cooking process that adds a golden colour to your vegetables and also releases some of the flavour. Therefore, many people prefer to saute some of the ingredients first.

Personally, I like to sauté vegetables such as leeks and onions before adding them to a soup maker that does not have a sauté function. Other vegetables, such as carrots or potatoes, I think are fine to add straight into the machine without sautéing.

How to Adapt Soup Recipes for Soup Makers if Meat is an Ingredient

For soup recipes with a high meat content, it is usually best to at least brown the meat in a pan first. If your soup maker has a saute setting, then you can saute small quantities of meat first, adding the other ingredients into the soup maker. Otherwise, brown the meat in a frying pan, then add to the soup maker with the other ingredients.

What About Soup Recipes Containing Fish?

Whether you want to saute your fish before cooking in the soup maker depends on personal preference. Like meat, you can start to cook it in a frying pan before adding to the soup maker with the other ingredients. For small amounts of fish, you can cook them using the saute function inf your soup maker has one.

Oils to Use When Adapting a Soup Recipe for Soup Maker

Most soup recipes contain oil, and this is usually used for sautéing the meat, fish, or vegetables before adding the liquid for the soup. If your soup maker has a saute function, then simply use the recommended amount of oil to the machine before adding your ingredients.

On the other hand, if your machine does not have a saute function, and you are simply adding all the ingredients to the soup maker at the same time, then you can omit the oil from the recipe.

You may also wonder if there is one oil better than others to use with your soup maker. The answer to this is that you can use any oil you wish to make soup in a soup maker. My personal preference is olive oil, which is an oil you will see in the ingredients list of most recipes on Super Souper Ed. Olive oil is one of the healthier options, and it has a nice flavour.

If you prefer to use butter rather than oil as fat for sautéing, it is worth noting that butter can sometimes take on a burnt taste when used in a soup maker. You can reduce the likelihood of this happening by also adding a little oil along with the butter.

How to Adapt Soup Recipes for Soup Makers: Using Liquids

You will need some liquid to make soup, and usually, this is stock. As soup makers are intended for the purpose of making soup, using such liquids is fine.
In some recipes, you may add other liquid ingredients that you should take care of when using a soup maker. For example, passata is thicker than stock, and it also contains natural sugars, which are not present in stocks.

For this reason, it is best to add some other liquid to the pot to prevent it from sticking, such as water or stock. It also helps to stir the soup mid-way through cooking.

Will I Still Need to Use a Food Processor?

Whether you need to use a food processor depends on the settings of your food processor and your consistency and texture preferences.

Most soup makers have various settings for you to choose a soup consistency. They can then blend the soup to your chosen consistency and texture. Therefore, there is no need to use a food processor.

However, not all soup blenders have multiple setting options, so you may need to process the soup in a soup processor if you want a very smooth texture.

Adapting Soup Recipes for Soup Makers if They Contain Frozen Ingredients

The recipes on Super Souper Ed predominantly contain fresh ingredients. However, we do have some recipes that you can make using frozen vegetables for quick and easy soup. On example is our 15-minute pea and ham soup recipe.

If you are using a small amount of frozen vegetables along with hot liquid and other ingredients, then using frozen vegetables is usually not an issue. Ingredients such as frozen peas will quickly defrost and cook.

However, it is not recommended that you make soups in a soup maker that contain lots of frozen ingredients. The main reason for this is that too many frozen ingredients can cause problems for the blade; either by damaging the blade or preventing it from functioning.

There is an easy solution if you wish to adapt a soup recipe for a soup maker and the soup contains frozen vegetables. Replace the frozen vegetables with canned vegetables, or finely dice fresh vegetables to use. If you opt for fresh vegetables, you may need to increase the cooking time slightly.

How to Adapt Soup Recipes for Soup Makers- The Bottom Line

In most cases, it is easy to adapt a soup recipe for soup makers. For some recipes, including many vegetable-based soups, you will not need to adapt the recipe at all.

How to adapt soup recipes for soup makers depends on the gadget’s functions and the ingredients in the recipe. There are some ingredients, including meat, fish, and some vegetables, that you may prefer to saute first if your soup maker does not have this function.

Overall, if you have bought a decent soup maker with multiple functions, then there are very few adaptations that you need to make.