Slow Cooker Vegetable Soup

Slow Cooker Vegetable Soup is hearty, delicious and kid-friendly using our ‘kid soup tips’!

How to Make Soup Kid Friendly

Soup is a great way to get kids to eat veggies, if you do it right.  When it is filled with fun colors, and you use a few simple tricks to make it taste amazing, soup can be a really kid friendly, nourishing meal for kids.

Tip #1: Use squash puree in the broth base.  Not only does the squash sweeten up the soup a little, it also gives it a creamier texture versus a brothy water texture and feel. It feels more indulgent but without any added dairy or flour to thicken.

Tip #2: Add flavor with ingredients.   You don’t always need salt or other spices to make the soup taste good.  Kids appreciate the actual flavors of foods because their sense of taste is more sensitive than adults.  Don’t underestimate the power of using a handful of real minced garlic, or instead of all white potatoes, use half white and half sweet potato for more flavor (and more nutrient variety!)

Tip #3: Chop veggies small.  It is harder for kids to eat large chunks of veggies, and can sometimes be intimidating to them.  Smaller veggies look more appetizing and you can get more flavors on the spoon for one bite which just tastes better. Instead of just tearing the kale, I even run my knife through it a little more to make the leaves smaller.

Tip #4:  Puree soups for kids with texture sensitivities.   Take an immersion blender to this soup when it is done and blend the veggies until you reach a consistency that you thing your kids won’t mind.  The sweet potatoes make it super creamy once pureed and it is really delicious.  If they can’t handle the kale, then leave it out.  There are plenty of other veggies in this soup for them to enjoy!

Meal Prep Soup the Night Before

Pull your slow cooker out this week and enjoy the night off on slow cooker night! I even do all the veggie chopping the night before (except leave that white potato for the morning to chop since it will brown), dump it right into the slow cooker, put the lid on and put it into the fridge over night! In the morning all I have to do is put the broth and white potato in and flip it on! Done!

Cooking Soup in the Slow Cooker

Cooking soups in a slow cooker is so easy!  For most recipes, you can just put all your ingredients right in your slow cooker, turn it on and let it cook away while you do other things.  With most slow cookers, there are two temperature settings – low and high.   If you cook your soups on low heat, it has more time to let the flavors combine and enhance. High heat cooking works and surely saves cooking time, but you lose a little bit of the flavor profile you can get from cooking on low heat.

It is best to put your veggies in raw with your other soup ingredients so that they don’t overcook.  Some softer vegetables like zucchini will need less cooking time that harder vegetables like carrots.

Most any soup recipe can be adapted for a slow cooker.  The major change is just cooking time and the recipe can basically stay the same as the original version.

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