Instant Pot Meatball Soup

This is our easy Instant Pot meatball soup with frozen meatballs recipe made in 15 minutes! It’s a healthy low carb dinner you’ll love, packed with vegetables you can make in a Ninja Foodi too.

When I do have some time I will make the meatballs homemade like I did with our Instant Pot Swedish meatballs dish. In this case you would just brown them on the saute function for a few minutes so they don’t fall apart when in the broth.

Ninja Foodi Meatball Soup

You don’t have to have an IP either, the brand doesn’t matter. I have a few different models and both the crockpot express and Ninja Foodi work just as well too. With the latter though you want to remember to use the lid that is not attached only.

To make things easier (and under 30 minutes) we often times will use frozen meat like I said. That way this way it can be made in under 20 minutes flat. No need to precook like our Instant Pot frozen meatballs, instead they will boil to tender in the broth.

Ingredient Notes

Broth, either chicken broth or beef broth, your choice is better than water for the liquid needed to add a ton of flavor to this dish.

Onions are diced or sliced but optional as well as some peeled and sliced carrots are a given and celery is always around too for a cheap add in for texture and to add flavor to any dish.

Can you use frozen vegetables?

We always incorporate ALL the fresh vegetables we can into our Instant Pot soups but yes since we live in a smaller town I sometimes will buy a bag of frozen vegetables and add a cup or so of those instead.

Garlic will amp up the flavor. It can be jarred and already minced or if you have fresh cloves go ahead and chop it fine to add in there.

Tomato sauce or crushed tomatoes could be used as an alternative but I like it thicker so I like the first option. Salt and pepper are the basic seasonings but I typically will add Basil and parsley as nice touches too

1 Bag of frozen meatballs is what we used here. You do not need to know how to cook frozen meatballs for this one. Just throw them in and cooked in the liquid they will get tender nicely in no time.

Can you use homemade meatballs?

How come I don’t I add raw homemade meatballs into the mix? Because they tend to fall apart in the cooking process. If you do NOT use frozen, you need to add them at the end once the soup is done cooking. If not they’ll fall apart. Now with the Foodi you can cook homemade with the air crisp function on 400 for 6 min. or so, or saute with the lid off. This is how to cook meatballs in oven too.

Can you add noodles?

Unlike our Instant Pot Italian wedding soup recipe we did not add any pasta or noodles to this one to keep it keto. If you wanted to add some you’d need to cook it 3 minutes shorter, release steam, add noodles and add 3 more minutes with a quick release.

How Long to Cook Meatball Soup with Frozen Meatballs in Instant Pot

You are going to want to cook this for about 15 minutes. I like a bit longer so they get super duper tender but realistically you could cut it down to 10 if you didn’t want them quite as soft. Do a quick release when done and serve.

You could use our Crockpot frozen meatballs timing first, then add the other ingredients halfway thru and make it that way too. That would of course take a lot longer but I do like to have options depending on how our day is going.

We like to serve this in bowls alone or with parmesan cheese on top with some of our semi homemade refrigerated biscuit pull apart bread. You can also make this easy roll recipe. Garlic bread from scratch goes well with just about anything….I mean I can’t resist crusty bread with soup and stew!

Print recipe below. Nutritional information is included to with saturated fat and calorie information.

Other Instant Pot Soup Recipes you’ll Love

I’ve made another version using ground sausage where I didn’t form them into balls at all. I just browned it on saute and left it as it. That worked well too. If you’re interested in that version you can try this Instant Pot sausage soup with kale. It’s another one of our favorite comfort foods. This Instant Pot minestrone soup is packed with vegetables with pasta too if you want another simple dinner idea.