The Best Slow Cooker Soup Recipes to Make on Repeat All Year (Your Family Will Love Them!)

Consider enchilada soup a thicker, heartier version of a classic tortilla soup. You can opt for bone-in chicken thighs for a richer taste, or go boneless if you want an easier shredding experience. If you like your bowl extra-spicy, chop up an extra jalapeno and toss it in your pot.

It’s a fact: The longer you let your chicken soup simmer, the richer and more delicious the broth. That’s what makes this slow cooker recipe such a no-brainer (you can let it sit for hours without worrying about leaving your stove’s burner on). Meanwhile, waiting until the end of your cooking time to add the noodles will prevent them from turning to mush.

Haters might say that soup isn’t a filling dinner option — but they haven’t tried this recipe. Packed with chicken, beans, and vegetables, this hearty chili will satisfy even the hungriest at your table. You can whisk in a mixture of butter and all-purpose flour if you want a creamier broth, too.

Congee is the magical mixture that brought me back to life after the worst bout of food poisoning of my life — the mixture of chicken, rice that’s cooked down to the texture of porridge, and ginger is just that healing. While you can eat it for dinner, it’s traditionally enjoyed at breakfast and lunch too.

The sad, watery minestrone you might have eaten out of a can during your childhood wouldn’t recognize the chunky, rich version of the soup. Keep in mind that you’ll add your pasta, Swiss chard, cabbage, zucchini, and garbanzo beans at the end of your cook time to prevent them from overcooking.

Classic tortilla soup can notoriously take up to a full day to cook, so you might as well do yours in a slow cooker. Top your bowl with avocado, cilantro, or freshly shredded Monterey Jack cheese (or all of the above) in addition to a liberal sprinkling of crumbled tortilla chips depending on what you’re craving.

The secret to this recipe: Choose a ground turkey with plenty of dark meat in the mix, and then mash it up with a combination of milk and breadcrumbs, to ensure your protein stays moist while cooking for hours. But that’s not the only surprise on this ingredient list. (Hint: Start brewing a pot of coffee.)

A classic comfort food, this chicken and wild rice soup gets its creamy taste from a cup of whole milk and a buttery roux added into the pot at the end of your simmering time. Wild rice can be chewy and dense, which makes it ideal for the long hours spent in a slow cooker.

The key to achieving the perfect thick, creamy texture in this soup lies in sprinkling the chicken and veggies with flour before adding your broth to the pot. Resist the urge to stir, and try not to panic if the mixture looks clumpy — it’ll be silky-smooth in the end.

A jar of marinara sauce keeps this lasagna soup recipe easy. Plus, the only chopping you’ll need to do involves dicing up two cloves of garlic and an onion to serve as your aromatics. The sheets of lasagna are broken up into bite-size pieces to make sure each piece fits in your spoon.

Scoring the perfect texture for your beef stew all comes down to choosing the right ingredients: Opt for a nicely marbled boneless beef chuck roast for the most tender feel when it comes to your meat. Then go for Yukon Gold and red potatoes; they’ll hold their shape even after hours of cooking.

Famed Food Network chef Giada de Laurentiis is the mastermind behind this recipe. The sun-dried tomatoes, red wine reduction, and fresh herbs make this blend more complex in flavor than your typical hearty stew.

While the barley in this recipe needs to be added about four hours into the six-hour cook time, you can also make it ahead of time, store it in the fridge, and add it to your pot just before serving if you won’t be available to complete this step partway through.

Hours in a Crock-Pot will soften the strong taste of the turmeric in this recipe, and a spoonful of yogurt along with a squirt of lemon juice will add a tart twist to the finished product. Vegetarians and meat-eaters alike will appreciate that this soup comes packed with nearly 19 grams of protein per serving.

This vegan-approved blend (if you use vegetable stock instead of chicken) gets its orange hue from not just butternut squash and sweet potato, but also carrots. Although it’s spiced with only a little garlic, you can also season it with nutmeg, cinnamon, curry powder, or ginger to taste.

Your slow cooker provides the ideal vessel for perfecting this broth, which is made entirely from scratch using water, ginger, mushrooms, carrots, lemon, scallions, turmeric, and salt. Tofu, bok choy, and soba noodles add some heft to each spoonful.

Green lentils will hold their shape better in a slow cooker than red or yellow, and they also have a more earthy, peppery taste. This particular soup is packed with vegetables and spices, and it’s vegan-approved.

Black bean soup gets its rich flavor from simmering for hours, which makes it a great candidate for a slow cooker. Your final product will be filled with more than 10 grams of fiber and 13 grams of protein per serving, and you can top with Greek yogurt, fresh cilantro, or avocado.

While many potato soups wind up dominated by the flavor of bacon, this one delivers a vegetarian take that loads up on leeks. You’ll need an immersion blender to properly purée the soup before serving.

Fans of green juice will appreciate this warming soup that relies on Swiss chard and peas for its vibrant hue. Poach an egg to add to the finished product, or sprinkle some flavorful feta on top to add some heft to this meal.

Full disclosure: This isn’t necessarily a slow cooker recipe you can just dump in the pot and forget about. Prep requires roasting the cremini mushrooms in the oven ahead of time, and then using an immersion blender to get your desired consistency at the end. But the final product will be worth the extra effort.

Consider this the slow cooker equivalent of running a marathon: It requires a whopping 20 hours in the device to get the rich taste we all know and love in French onion soup. Serve it with toasted baguette and a heaping amount of Gruyère cheese.

Ree Drummond, aka The Pioneer Woman, developed this recipe that will satisfy both kids and adults alike. Her secret ingredient is two cans of cream of celery soup for extra creaminess to balance out the recipe’s massive quantities of cheese.

If you don’t mind forgoing this soup’s vegan status, you can add a Parmesan cheese rind to the broth for more richness. While minestrone typically uses pasta for extra heft, this recipe relies on adding homemade croutons to the finished product for a nice crunch.

This split pea soup skips the ham typically used to add a smoky flavor to the broth, but keeps the recipe interesting with grilled cheese croutons sprinkled on top. You can even use a smoked cheese to emulate the flavor that might typically come from pork.

Lactose-intolerant folks will appreciate that coconut milk gives this soup its creamy texture. You can also replace the spinach typically called for in this recipe with an equal quantity of basil for a flavorful twist.

If it’s not corn season, a bag of frozen kernels will do. The chopped red bell pepper and lemon juice give this recipe a little tang to keep it from feeling too heavy, and you can use smoked salt to replicate some of the flavor that corn chowder sometimes pulls from meats like bacon.

If you’re not a fan of bean-based chili, this sweet potato, lentil, and kale version offers a nice alternative. It has 15 grams of protein per serving, so your family will stay full despite the lack of meat.

This recipe is reminiscent of a potato-leek soup, but with celery as a stand-in for the leeks. You’ll need to purée the final result in a blender and fry the bacon topping separately. Vegetarians can swap the pork for croutons and use vegetable stock instead of chicken.

Spuds are truly the star of this soup (seriously — there are no other vegetables squeezing in to steal the show). The soup is packed with rich flavor from pancetta, onion, garlic, and dried thyme.

You can use either smoked turkey or ham legs to give this soup a rich flavor and an ample serving of protein (nearly 23 grams per bowl!). This is a classic set-it-and-forget-it slow cooker recipe; just toss everything in the pot, and at the end all you’ll need to do is shred the meat and season with salt and vinegar.

Fun fact: You can probably score a ham bone from your local butcher for this delicious soup that yields a flavorful homemade broth after 8 hours of soaking in the slow cooker. Potatoes, carrots, and celery make this a full-fledged meal — especially when you serve it with a crusty slice of bread.

Both a cup of apple juice and two medium chopped apples lend this stew a slightly sweet flavor that the whole family will love. You can add egg noodles or cauliflower rice to give each bowl even more staying power.

You’ll need to soak your beans overnight before popping them in your slow cooker, but the final result — seasoned with pancetta, bell pepper, onion, tomatoes, and other spices — makes this Italian classic worth the extra effort. Kids will love noshing on the bite-size ditalini pasta.

With green chiles, pork, and tomatillos, this recipe gives you a pleasantly spicy yet brightly flavored take on traditionally heavier chili. To scale back the spice for little mouths (or your own sensitive palate!), strip the chiles of their seeds and inner membranes.