8 best soup makers for easy, speedy lunches and more

We were thoroughly impressed by this high-end machine. There are options for chunky or smooth soups, or you can set it to your own specifications. The soup maker can handle temperatures of 75-100C, and it has three blending speeds. This is all controlled from a really easy-to-read LED touchscreen.

When we were itching for lunch (any time from 10am onwards, if we’re honest), we could check how long the soup would be on the countdown timer. Plus, it kept our soup warm until we were ready for it. There’s also an option to blend without heating, which is great for making sauces, dips and curry pastes.

We also loved the cleaning function on this one – just add some warm water, a few drops of washing-up liquid and hit the clean button. This tackled the worst of the mess, and enabled us to just rinse the jug (which is quite heavy) before drying it.

Due to high demand, this one is currently sold out, but it will be back in stock from 13 February 2023.

This smart appliance is as good as many of the bigger-ticket items, and certainly delivers top-notch soups. As well as making chunky and smooth soups, it can whip up milkshakes, compotes, multigrain milks and hot sauces such as béchamel. There’s also a steam basket for steaming meat and veg.

The perfectmix has a generous 1.75l capacity, which was more than enough to make soup for a family of five. It might be slightly slower to cook ingredients, but it’s also quieter at blending than most.

The clearly labelled buttons made this really easy to use – we just chucked in our ingredients, roughly chopped, hit the soup button and then start. About 30 minutes later, we returned to a velvety smooth soup that was piping hot. There’s also a function that allows you to add ingredients through the lid as you go – handy if certain ingredients are only added at the end of cooking.

As well as making soups (chunky or smooth), the Ninja foodi also makes smoothies, frozen desserts and jam. With frozen desserts, you need to use frozen ingredients – it doesn’t freeze like an ice cream maker does. However, this soup maker does, of course, have a heating element, allowing it to cook a soup from any of the raw ingredients you throw at it.

You can also use it to sauté ingredients, either before you use them in a soup or just to give you a hand in the kitchen and free up hob space. This function gives a really nice depth of flavour to soups (we used garlic and onion).

The capacity for hot ingredients is 1.4l, so slightly smaller than some others we tried in this round-up. It will keep food warm for up to 60 minutes, which means you can set it off to make your lunch and come back when you’re peckish. Once you’re done, there’s a clean function, making clean-up a breeze, too.

This little dynamo is designed for making two portions of soup. Perfect for smaller households or those making a meal for one, with a portion to save for another day. It’s easily the smallest soup maker we tried, taking up very little space in our cramped kitchen cupboard.

Despite its diminutive size, the sauté and soup is still mighty. It can make chunky or smooth soup in just 19 minutes. You can also sauté ingredients, such as bacon and onion, first to give more depth of flavour to your soups – just hit the sauté button on the side (with the lid off). Once the ingredients are fried off, chuck the rest of your ingredients in, put the lid on and you’re away.

One slight hitch for us was that the blade is attached to the lid rather than the bottom of the jug. This meant we had to factor in shoving the blade into the ingredients after they were in the jug. However, thanks to the sauté mode and the clean mode, the sauté and soup compact still offers flavoursome soups with minimal effort.

This one’s designed for both the cooking novice and those who are more experienced chefs. As well as chunky and smooth options, this soup maker offers a “medium” texture. This is perfect for your carrot and corianders or broccoli and stiltons, providing a satisfying, hearty soup with nothing left undercooked.

As with the Morphy Richards compact, it has a sauté function, which helps with the faff of frying off ingredients before adding them to the soup maker. It also lets you manually blitz soups, so if the timer is up but it’s not to your liking, you can whizz it up for longer.

The markers on the side of the jug help you make the right amount for the portions you need ­– most glass jug soup makers have this function, but not all metal jug ones do.

Other great functions of this mid-range soup maker include a clean function, reheat and drinks for creating smoothies.

We are so in love with this gadget that it’s a bit embarrassing. We found it a total breeze to set up and use, and it turned out perfect soups every time. A rotary dial lets you select from chunky or smooth soup, as well as a sauce mode, ice crushing, steaming, cleaning, blending and manual functions. You can also use it to control the temperature and time on manual cooking mode. After you’ve selected your function, a countdown timer illuminates in the middle, so you know exactly where you are. Once your soup is cooked, the soup maker switches to keeping it warm for 20 minutes.

The glass jug is on the heavier side, which isn’t great for washing up or getting out of the cupboard. However, it was good to see what we were adding, and the hatch in the lid let us add extra ingredients as we went along.

This sleek, black gadget also looks smart, so you’d be happy to leave it out on the work surface. With all those functions, you’d probably have it out more often than not anyway.

Designed for both commercial and domestic use, the Super Q is quite literally a cut above most other blenders. The super-powerful motor takes just minutes to blend ingredients into the lightest, smoothest soup we’ve ever tried (it’s worth noting that it can’t do chunky soups – minestrone lovers, look elsewhere). The resulting soup was so good we actually couldn’t believe we’d made it ourselves.

A glass jar and hatch in the lid mean you can keep sight of what you’re adding, as well as the blending progress, and you’re able to add in ingredients as you go. The super Q also has a noise-reduction function, though it’s still noisy by household standards – our young kids did not enjoy us using it. It was fantastic for feeding the kids, though, as the jug capacity is a generous 2l. If you don’t want that much soup, there’s also a personal-sized jug attachment, which makes a more modest 700ml.

We can’t ignore the hefty price tag on this blender, and for that reason, it’s clearly not going to be for everyone. But it does also whip up smoothies, frozen desserts (as long as the ingredient are already frozen), green juices and can turn chunks of ice into finely milled snow. There are also 12 speed settings, so you have a greater degree of control for making things such as nut butters and dips, as well as grinding spices. Basically, this gadget will make short work of whatever you throw at it.

This is a real Swiss Army Knife of kitchen appliances. It has 10 settings, allowing you to make everything from soups (natch), stews and milkshakes to nut milks, juices and smoothies.

The powerful motor means you don’t have to faff about chopping your ingredients too much, which is great for a busy life. There are chunky and smooth options to choose from, and the aurora actually has an element to heat up the food to 100C – watch it on the dial. This is different to most other blender/soup maker hybrids, which heat the food via friction from the blades. This results in a smooth soup where none of the bits are a tad, well, undercooked.

We found this blender easy to use – the dial has all the hot settings on one side, and the cold settings on the other. The warm settings then illuminate white once selected, and the cold ones blue, meaning it’s pretty foolproof.

Smooth soups took around 30 minutes, while chunky soups took a fraction longer. There’s a hatch on the top to add ingredients as you go, and a pulse/clean function to deal with the worst of the clean-up.

This blender comes with two jugs – one normal one, and one vacuum one. The vacuum one sucks air out of the jug before blending. The result is creamier, smoother soups and smoothies, and the flavours and nutrients are preserved too. Fancy.