26 Delicious Soup Recipes made in your Ninja Foodi or Instant Pot! (2024)

Published: January 23, 2022Updated: January 23, 2022 · This post may contain affiliate links. If you make a purchase after clicking a link, I may earn a small commission. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. See Our Full Disclosure Policy for More Information

Using the pressure cooker function for making soup allows all those great flavors to infuse in a very short time, so making soup in your Ninja Foodi Pressure Cooker & Air Crisper not only saves time and is pretty hands off, the results are as delicious as if you simmered it all day!

Not all soups do best with pressure cooking though, so always look at the ingredients you are using to determine the best function. Sear/Sauté works just like the stove and slow cooking is another great option for making soups when you have thicker ingredients.

In fact, you can turn just about any leftovers into a wonderful pot of soup just using sear/sauté! I've done that with my Thanksgiving Dump Soup. Everything I had leftover went into the pot and it was delicious!

Or you can use turn leftover pot roast into pot roast soup (AKA beef stew!). Leftover roast beef makes a great vegetable beef soup and leftover mashed potatoes are perfect for making a delicious potato soup!

I've also included some tips for making soups in the Ninja Foodi as well as some guidelines that you can use when you want to convert your favorite recipes to the Ninja Foodi.

Tips for Making Soups in the Ninja Foodi

• Always make sure your seal is inserted correctly inside the pressure cooker lid. If you see steam coming around the lid while it's building pressure, your seal is probably not inserted correctly. Turn the pot off, remove the lid carefully, run it under cold water until you can touch it and adjust the seal.
• Most soups are made with high pressure but if your ingredients are more delicate consider using low pressure instead. This will lower the temperature inside the Ninja Foodi.
• When the pot is more than halfway full with ingredients, you may want to do a natural release versus a quick release. This will give the pot time to cool and allow the steam to revert back to liquid so you don't have your broth sputtering out of the pressure release valve. Many soup recipes will call for a 10-minute natural release of pressure to prevent the sputtering from the valve. This means you let the Ninja Foodi switch over to keep warm and count up for 10 minutes, then turn the valve to vent to release the remaining pressure
• When pressure cooking soup, make sure the valve is in the seal position, otherwise your thin liquid will evaporate and could trigger the water notice. If you see steam coming out of the valve after the pin pops up, check to make sure it is in the sealed position.
• Always keep in mind that volume does make a difference when pressure cooking. If you are doubling a soup recipe that has quick cooking ingredients like pasta, rice, or delicate fresh vegetables, you should decrease your cook time because the time to pressure will be longer and can cause these ingredients to overcook.
• When making creamy soups, sometimes the recipe will call for blending it after pressure cooking using an immersion blender or an electric hand blender. I recommend transferring the soup to a deep container before blending to protect the ceramic cooking pot of the ninja foodi.
• When using the sauté feature on the Ninja Foodi, make sure to deglaze the pot with thin liquid and scrape the bottom well to release anything that may have stuck to the bottom during the sauté process. This helps prevent the water notice.

Ninja Foodi Soup Recipes

Using your Ninja Foodi Pressure Cooker & Air Crisper to make delicious soups is so easy and there are so many different kinds of soups you can make! Here are some of my favorite Ninja Foodi Soup Recipes for inspiration.

Whether you love a good chili, a vegetable based soup, a creamy soup, or a thick and hearty stew, you will definitely find some inspiration in these recipes.

Thin Liquids for Pressure Cooking Soups

When making soups using the pressure cooking function, you will always need a thin liquid to build and maintain pressure. This is one of the areas where people get into the most trouble converting their favorite soup recipes to the Ninja Foodi.

Here are some of the most common thin liquids used for pressure cooking, but is by no means an exhaustive list. With the exception of the broths or stocks, most of the other thin liquids are used in smaller quantities and mixed with other thin liquids. You would not want to make a soup using all soy sauce as your thin liquid or it would be way too salty and inedible. You can, however, use a few teaspoons or tablespoons added to another thin liquid and it does count as a thin liquid.

• water
• chicken stock or chicken broth
• vegetable broth or stock
• beef broth or stock
• any flavor bouillon mixed with water
• red or white wine
• any kind of bone broth
• beer
• soy sauce
• Worcestershire sauce
• coconut milk: I like to chill the can and put the liquid part on the bottom and the thicker stuff on top of the ingredients. Coconut milk doesn't separate like cream does under pressure.

Ingredients to add After Pressure Cooking Soups

Here is a list of some ingredients that you may want to add after you are finished pressure cooking because they will either split under pressure or cook too fast and turn to mush even after a short Pressure Cooking time.

Ingredients that tend to split under the high heat of pressure cooking

Some of these are fine to pressure cook with, but they will look horrible when you open the lid because they split. Cream cheese does come back together when stirred though, so I do pressure cook with it sometimes. Remember though, you always need a thin liquid and none of these are considered thin liquids.

• Heavy Cream and other milk products
• Cream Cheese: I have added cream cheese during pressure cooking and it's fine, but expect it to look horrible until it's mixed back in.
• Cheddar cheese and other cheeses

Ingredients that tend to overcook when pressure cooking soup

Root veggies such as potatoes, turnips, carrots, and rutabaga do great in soups, but other fresh vegetables may not fair as well. When an ingredient is quick cooking, I usually add it at the end. Surprisingly, mushrooms are one ingredient that do great under long pressure cook times, so you can safely add them to your pressure cooker soup without worry!

• Spinach
• small florets of broccoli
• peas
• delicate seafood

Converting Soup Recipes to the Ninja Foodi Pressure Cooker & Air Crisper

If you are converting a stovetop recipe to the Ninja Foodi using the pressure cooking function, you will want to decrease your cook time to ⅓ of what the recipe calls for as a general rule. So, if the recipe says to simmer for 30 minutes, you would set the pressure cook time to 10 minutes.

Each soup recipe is different though, so when at all possible look for the timing of similar soups made in a pressure cooker. You can do this by searching the internet and put Ninja Foodi or Instant Pot behind the name of the soup.

Instant Pot Soups can be made in the Ninja Foodi usually without any changes. The important things to pay attention to is the size of the electric pressure cooker they are using. If they are using a larger size than you have, then you may need to make some adjustments in ingredients and cook times.

If your soup is broth-based and usually done on the stove, you will also want to decrease the thin liquid by about 1 cup or so. The longer the simmer time on the stove, the more you will want to decrease the liquid when pressure cooking. This is because there is a lot more evaporation with stove top cooking than pressure cooking. The only time you have evaporation of liquid when pressure cooking is when you build pressure and see steam coming out or you immediately release pressure and see steam coming out.

When converting soup recipes from another cooking method like stove top and it has a lot of fresh vegetables that are quick cooking, you may want to use the sear/sauté function instead of pressure cooking and simply follow the same instructions as the stovetop method.

If your recipe is for a slow cooker or crock pot, consider using the slow cooker function on the Ninja Foodi, especially if the recipe contains thicker liquids that will make it hard to build pressure.

Many people complain about the slow cook function on the Ninja Foodi, but I love it and find that it works perfectly. It does take a little longer to get going, especially on low slow cook, so I would add a few hours to the cook time if the recipe is made in a crockpot.

ABOUT THE RECIPE AUTHOR, LOUISE LONG

Louise is a full-time recipe creator and food blogger @ The Salted Pepper. She has over 30 years ofexperience with cooking and recipe development. She owned a restaurant for several years and was a full-time RN until retiring to blog full-time.

She published her first cookbook in the Fall of 2018 and is very interested in writing several more.

Louise is also the creator of an online Ninja Foodi Pressure Cooking Course with over 100 instructional step-by-step videos. People absolutely rave about the course and all the value they have received from it.

Louise has several very active Facebook groups that help people with the basics of cooking and getting the most out of the Ninja Foodi.

Ninja Foodi 101

Simply Cooking with Louise

Louise is also a YouTube creator and you can find most of her recipes in video format onThe Salted Pepper YouTube channel.

She is very responsive to messages and eager to help in any way she can.

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