Best Kitchen Tools for Making Soup

Since the dawn of time, soup has featured as a budget meal, whether you’re cooking for two on a budget or feeding a large family.

Soup is hearty, filling, and cheap, a great way to make the most of what you have. Best of all, it’s easy to make!

You don’t need much to make a great pot of soup, but there are a few kitchen tools and gadgets that can make the process easier. When something is easy, you enjoy it more and do it more often.

Since soup is such a budget-friendly meal to serve, it’s a good idea to make it easy. Check out these kitchen tools for making soup.

Basic Tools for Soup Making

A heavy soup pot

Most soup recipes call for a heavy soup pot because a light, cheap pot won’t distribute heat well. Using a sturdy heavy pot will help prevent your soup from burning.

I regularly use a Lodge Dutch oven for making soup as well as the pot pictured above which is a KitchenAid stock pot.

A ladle

A ladle is a great tool for serving soup. Could you use a measuring cup or a regular spoon? Sure, but a ladle makes things easier.

Look for a solid, one-piece ladle. Those that are made of many pieces have cracks and gaps where dishwater (or worse) can get trapped. A one-piece is the way to go.

I like this nylon ladle from Oxo.

An immersion blender

If you enjoy blended soups, like Roast Vegetable Soup or Asparagus Soup (pictured), then an immersion blender is a must-have. This “stick blender” allows you to blend the soup in the soup pot rather than having to transfer hot soup to a traditional blender or food processor.

I have had good experience with the Cuisinart brand of immersion blenders.

Good soup bowls

There’s a wide world of soup bowls out there and what you choose and what you determine as “good” will depend on your family’s preferences and ages. Little kids may do better with small plastic or melamine bowls rather than large, traditional soup bowls.

I recently upgraded our set of soup bowls since our ancient World Market set had dwindled. Breakage over the years left us with fewer bowls than people at the dinner table.

I was initially hesitant about this set of soup bowls from Sweese due to the swoopy lines, but I love the colors and already had their salad plates. Turns out the swoopiness isn’t a problem.

Soup storage containers

One of the best things about soup, besides its budget-friendliness, is its freezability. Soup freezes so well, it’s worth your while to make extra to freeze.

When making soup to freeze, there are two basic ways to store it:

1. In the container you will serve it in – this is best for single-serve containers for packing soup to work. I like these Reditainer soup bowls.
2. In Souper Cubes – Souper Cubes are basically large silicone ice cube trays perfect for freezing soup, though they work for so much more than just soup. You can freeze the soup in the cubes and then transfer to a pot or heat-proof dish for reheating.

Small appliances for Soup Making

While there are dedicated soup makers on the market, I’ve done some research and am not convinced they are worth the storage space or the purchase price. The big complaint I’ve seen is that they are hard to clean.

If you have a crockpot and/or instant pot, I don’t really see the point of a soup maker. Sure, they can blend your soup, too, but if you have the immersion blender, you’re set.

I don’t personally use the soup function on the Instant Pot, but I make soup in it all the time, like this Easy Instant Pot Bean Soup or Instant Pot Tomato Soup.

The slow cooker is fantastic for stews and chilis as well as soups that call for long cook times, like this Chicken Gumbo Soup.

Don’t miss out on the Souptember Goodie Box which includes six digital resources to elevate your soup nights.