Instant Pot Meatball Soup

Easy Instant Pot meatball soup with frozen meatballs in pressure cooker or homemade with ground beef is made in under 20 minutes! A healthy low carb and keto friendly dinner you’ll love, packed with vegetables. Can make in a Ninja Foodi or Crock pot express too.

When I do have some time I will make them homemade like I did with our Instant Pot Swedish meatballs dish, so whatever works. 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.

To make things easier (and under 30 minutes) we often times will use frozen meat balls like I said. This way it can be made in under 20 minutes flat. That’s my kind of semi homemade dinner. In the new year we have vowed to eat healthier with lower fat options. With that said I have made this with air fryer chicken meatballs.

Ingredients Needed and 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.

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.

Variations

We always incorporate ALL the vegetables we can, especially when it comes to Instant Pot soups. During the summertime fresh is easy to find. Since we live in a smaller town I will buy mixed frozen vegetables in the colder months since the others don’t typically look so great.

Once you make this you can later swap out the meat too. Think sliced kielbasa would work, leave the protein out and make it vegetarian, or if you have leftover chicken then use that!! You know i hate wasting food so I use what I have on hand y’all.

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.

Serve in bowls alone or with parmesan cheese on top. 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.

with 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.

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

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.

Our favorite is probably this 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!

Can you can soup in an Instapot?

No, that is not recommended by the manufacturer. They state that the temperature doesn’t get high enough to kill all of the bacteria like a stovetop version would. With that said it may not be safe to then store at room temperature and consumer later.

Why do my meatballs fall apart when cooking?

The binder is usually the problem if they do. Most meatball recipes call for using bread crumbs and eggs. Too many bread crumbs makes them loose, but not enough bread crumbs won’t help them hold together either. Adding homemade Instant Pot meatballs into liquid like this doesn’t seem to work real well as far as them staying in tact. Using frozen eliminates this issue, so that’s my preference.

How long do you brown meatballs before putting in sauce or soup?

Give them a minute or two on each side to fully brown in a skillet or in your pressure cooker with the saute function with a bit of olive oil. Then finish cooking them in the oven.