Instant Pot Cheeseburger Soup

You have got to make our easy Instant Pot cheeseburger soup with no potatoes tonight. It’s a fun one pot meal made quick in a pressure cooker or Ninja Foodi that your kids will love and will make you come back for seconds.

This one is really easy. Then again all of my Instant Pot soup recipes are easy to make! We are all about comfort foods like this when it is snowy outside, okay and year round. You can use ground beef or sausage in this. Use half and half spicy to add some heat too which is amazing.

You can use any brand of electric pressure cooker you have at home. I have a Mealthy, Crockpot Express and this makes a great Ninja Foodi recipe with the lid that is not attached. The directions below work the same for all models.

Now let’s talk about ingredients. I don’t use “weird” stuff you can’t find easily in your local grocery store. I mean, let’s make it easy on ourselves shall we? Now once my husband had to go dairy free I did adjust this so he could enjoy it too. Not as hard as I once thought, and the taste isn’t all that different.

You can always use plain almond milk instead of dairy varieties, there are DF sour creams out there, coconut milk instead of heavy cream and Daiya has a great shredded cheese.

Ingredient Notes

As for the meat to make this hearty and more of a meal than a side dish I typically use 80/20 Ground beef or if you like heat use Jimmy Dean spicy ground sausage. If you want lower in fat, ground turkey works too but doesn’t offer nearly as much flavor.

Kerrygold (my favorite brand) Butter will make it creamy and will allow you to brown the meat, diced bacon pieces and diced onions if you choose to add those as well.

As for the necessary liquid you should choose chicken or beef broth – your choice, beef will make it a deeper color, I used chicken broth here.

Heavy cream is better than milk to make it thicker and more of a rich meal so that is recommended.

You will want to add plenty of shredded cheddar cheese, I like sharp the best myself into the mixture itself and some on top of each bowl when served as well (there is never enough).

Cornstarch is used to thicken the broth at the end which I felt was necessary. If you need a gluten free alternative you can use arrowroot flour instead.

Sour cream can be stirred in at the end or put a dollop on top when serving and add some spices, salt and pepper to taste as you like.

Can you add potatoes?

The ingredients can be adjusted a bit, but the base and amount of liquid needs to remain the same. There aren’t any diced potatoes in here but if you wanted to add those it would work well too. Would be a bit like our Instant Pot potato corn chowder in a sense, but with cheese.

Can you make this without cheese?

You could skip the cheese entirely if you wanted to but the whole yum for us is with it. If you did want a lower calorie version you can certainly try our Instant Pot hamburger soup which leaves that part out.

How Long to Cook Cheeseburger Soup in Instant Pot

You will need a few minutes to saute the ground beef, bacon and onions. After that though you just cose lid and steam valve and set to high pressure for 3 minutes. Do a quick release when done. To thicken at the end you will need another 3 minutes or so. I would say the total, with time to reach pressure, would be 20 minutes!!

Ladle some in a bowl and enjoy a nice day outside together. I guarantee everyone will love this soup…even those spending the day in the pool. Below is the printable recipe with nutritional information included like protein, saturated fat, etc.

FAQ