Best Soup Makers 2018 &#8211; Home Soup Making Review Guide

Let’s kick off with our favourite soup maker, the Morphy Richards 48822. We really like this model because of how much it delivers for a relatively low price tag. Granted, it’s not the cheapest of the cheap, but it does offer very impressive all round performance for around half the price of the more expensive soup makers we feature.

As with many kitchen gadgets, like steamers, kettles and toasters, you might find yourself feeling tempted to opt for the cheapest item you can find to do the job. After all, a kettle is a kettle isn’t it? How many ways are there to make water hot? Well, what you’re often missing with that argument is the build quality of the appliance, and crucially how long it’s likely to last. The same applies here.

While you can pick up a very cheap soup maker, in the range of £30-£50, you’re probably not going to get the quality of results you really want. After all, many people invest in making their own soup as a healthy alternative to other meals, and so that they’ve got something to enjoy at lunch time that’s a bit more exciting than a couple of bits of bread and a slice of ham – if you get a poor quality soup, the motivation to eat fresh soup probably won’t last.

So, in a roundabout way, what we’re highlighting here is the reason why the 48822 soup maker’s price has dragged a good, solid machine up to our top spot – it’s not going to cost much more than a budget machine, but performs like a mid range maker. For newbies to soup making and those looking to replace their machine alike, this will appeal to both. If you aren’t familiar with these products, perhaps we should take a moment to explain them, as they virtually all work the same way – the difference is in how well they perform. As a rule, you place all of the ingredients for your soup into the chamber, much like you’d fill a kettle with water. You’ve then got an array of settings you can use (some offer automated ‘programmes’) such as chunky soup versus smooth soup and temperature selections.

The 48822 offers four levels of coarseness in operation, with the common two (smooth and chunky) plus a juicing and blending setting. Typically, expect soups to take just over twenty minutes to complete, and if you leave the lid on they tend to remain at an acceptable temperature to serve for up to fifteen minutes. As this maker is backed by a two year warranty from registration, you’re covered by Morphy Richards’ confidence in their product for an extended period after purchase.

Learn more in our complete Morphy Richards 48822 review, or check out Amazon’s latest price here:

Tefal BL841140 Soup Maker

Next up,we’ve got a soup maker from Tefal to look at, the BL841140. Appearance wise, it looks a bit more dated than some of the other soup makers that we’ve featured in our reviews, but don’t let looks deceive you!

One of the great functions that the Tefal BL841140 offers that’s missing on some of the alternatives is a ‘keep warm’ setting that means you can delay serving for up to two hours after the soup has been made. That could be a huge bonus to households that suffer from frequent interruptions, perhaps if you’ve got small children that need attention. As many soup makers can take up to half an hour to complete their soup making cycles, for some people it’s hard to know if you’re going to be free to sit down and eat in 30 minutes time!

The BL841140 features four cooking programmes, each designed for a slightly different purpose:

Creamed: smooth soup
With Pieces: chunky soup
Compote
Blend

There’s then controls for the additional easy clean and keep warm functions – hopefully they’re self explanatory!

Size wise, this unit is roughly the size of a large electric kettle, so fits comfortably on the worktop space in the kitchen without taking up too much valuable room. That’s an important takeaway point if you’ve already got a lot of gadgets in the kitchen, or space is limited. Its design is also similar to other products in the Tefal range, so if you’ve already got a similar kettle from the same brand it will fit in nicely if you like things to look just right.

The blend function is a nice feature in this model, the included instruction and recipe book will give you plenty of ideas about the sort of ingredients you might like to use, but before long if you’re like us you’ll build up the confidence to experiment with different shakes and smoothie ideas.

There’s more information for you in our Tefal BL841140 review.

VonShef 800W Soup Maker

The VonShef 800W soup maker brings us a high quality soup maker for a very affordable price. At the time of writing, the VonShef is one on the cheapest models that have made it to our top ten, and at the same time offers on of the highest capacities, meaning that you can make more soup per cycle.

With a fast programme of 25 minutes available, it won’t take the VonShef long to turn your chopped veg into the soup of your choosing, whether that’s a smooth or a chunky meal. That 1.6 litre capacity means that you’re able to serve up to six standard portions at once, or cater for four people if you’re like me and enjoy a generous helping!

The VonShef manages to keep the soup warm for much longer than some other models too, even after an hour it’s still warm enough to enjoy. While you get a good soup maker for your investment with this model, it does lack a few features that you’ll find on other soup makers, such as a reheat function, and a long blending option. You can pulse blend ingredients, but it’s not quite the same.

One of the big draws for people buying soup makers is that they know exactly what they’re eating. For some, canned soups can taste quite processed, whereas the do it yourself nature of soup making means you can make exactly what you want, and create very pure, healthy soups with nothing you don’t want (or like!) added in.

Sometimes is takes a while to get used to the taste of homemade soups, but before long, the VonShef 800W soup maker can offer you a low cost, extremely healthy way to make lunch fast!

Here’s an even more detailed VonShef 800W review, or if you’re wondering about the price, find out here:

Morphy Richards 501016 Soup Maker

Like the impressive 48822, the 501016 is a popular and high performing soup maker from Morphy Richards.

Like the previous Morphy Richards and the VonShef, it’s got a good 1600ml capacity, so six standard servings or four generous bowls are comfortably produced in one go.

It’s also got the standard functions for smooth or chunky soup as you’d expect, along with the blend and juice functions (which were lacking in the VonShef soup maker).

Nice added extras on the 501016 include a timer to keep you informed how long it’s going to be before the soup is ready (think of this as an estimate rather than a precise timer) and being a very easy to clean unit – particularly good as soup makers often have a habit of suffering from ingredients getting stuck to the elements and even burning on. If you’re disciplined about cleaning after use, a rinse and wipe with a cloth followed by a second rinse is all this soup maker should need.

Hairy Bikers Soup Maker

Let’s be honest here, we didn’t expect much from the Hairy Biker’s branded soup maker. That’s not to say we’re not big fans of two of the most unlikely TV chefs on the planet, we very much are (mate). It’s just that all too often, products get the celebrity treatment more as a result of a big sponsorship pay cheque than a genuine endorsement of the rebadged product that they’re promoting. In this case, though, we were very pleasantly surprised. It’s certainly not one to rival the most impressive Morphy Richards or Tefal models, but if you’re looking for something a little different, and like a novelty angle or just love those two bearded national heroes, this might appeal to you.

Notably, you also get a cleaning brush in the box with this model, a nice extra on the face of it, but it does also mean that cleaning in general isn’t quite as easy as the easy-clean Morphy Richards products above, hence the need for the brush!

Morphy Richards 501014 Soup Maker

The next product in our table is the 5014014 from Morphy Richards. At first glance, it looks very similar to the earlier products in the Morphy Richards range, but there are a few important differences. The fact that this ranks lower should also give a clue to the fact that we think the earlier choices will be better for the majority of our readers.

The big plus for this model is that its a saute maker as well as a soup maker. I was a bit confused as to the why’s and how’s of this when I first came across a combined soup and saute maker, so it’s worth explaining how it works, and what it’s for! In these types of soup maker, the base of the inside of the chamber can heat up so that you can cook ingredients before making soups. This opens up a much wider range of varieties of soup, particularly allowing things like bacon to be included without needing to precook it under the grill or on the hob. With a standard soup maker, you shouldn’t use uncooked meat unless the instructions tell you otherwise, as the temperature may not get high enough to fully cook them.

Another small but useful feature is the ability to pause the programmes, so for example if you wish to add ingredients or flavouring (eg salt and pepper) part way through, you can do so without causing the cycle to start again from the beginning.

All in all this is another impressive Morphy Richards soup maker, and one for meaty soup fans.

See Amazon Price
(Now 33% Off RRP)

Cooks Professional Soup Maker

Taking a step away from the big, well known brands again, this is the Cooks Professional soup maker. It’s another affordable option to consider alongside the VonShef for people on a tight budget looking to buy a good soup maker.

As you would probably guess, the lower price tag does mean a slight compromise in features, with the main one being a smaller than average 1200ml capacity for soup making. In terms of what you can make though, this soup maker stands next to the best of them, able to handle smoothies and shakes as well as the soups you’d expect from a modern machine.

The Cooks Professional soup maker even comes complete with a recipe book to help you get started straight away, although the fun of experimentation with ingredients will almost certainly take over very quickly!

See Amazon Price
(Now 33% Off RRP)

VonShef Multifunctional Soup Maker

Like the earlier VonShef 800W, this machine is another from the brand that offers exceptional value. It feels more of a combined blender and soup maker which will appeal to some, especially if you have limited kitchen space or are on a tight budget and want both a blender and a soup maker.

While this model is very cheap, it does feel that it’s lacking in the sense that it’s not really an expert in soup creation. In the same way that you can buy microwaves that double up as grills, they never seem to quite do the job as well as you’d hope.

If you’re on a tight budget and can’t stretch to the better models above, this is a better option than nothing, and is certainly capable of creating a good soup, however it’s let down by just falling short in too many areas (for example the build quality feels fragile compared to other models).