Sweet Potato Soup with Butter Beans

This Instant Pot Sweet Potato Soup with Butter Beans is a healthy and filling soup, perfect for an early supper. Blended butter beans make it wonderfully creamy and thick, while the cinnamon and nutmeg add a subtle spicy flavor. Made in the instant pot, it is 100% vegetarian and gluten-free, with no unnecessary fillers like flour or cream!

Jump to:

• Why This Recipe Works
• Ingredients You'll Need
• A Note About Sweet Potatoes
• Step-by-Step Recipe Instructions
• Expert Tips and FAQs
• What Goes with Sweet Potato Soup?
• More Soup Recipes
• Sweet Potato Soup with Butter Beans

Craving soup? Then you need to make this creamy sweet potato soup because it's bursting with nutrition and taste. You will love its smooth texture and the flavors will linger in your mouth long after it is gone. Honestly, every time I make it, I feel all warm and fuzzy inside, like being enveloped in a bear hug. Because that's what this soup is: the equivalent of a hug!

On a more prosaic note, it's a kid-friendly kind of soup. It doesn't have any suspicious, chunky bits of anything floating around. What's more, it's not sharp or overpowering in any way (the criteria by which my two brats judge every food). So, if you have kids in the house, I'm willing to bet it will go down well with them.

A real bonus, if I might add. Because who doesn't want their kids to stay away from junk foods and eat healthy?

While we are on the subject of soups, you should definitely check out these vegetarian soup recipes from my blog, Indian Ambrosia: mushroom soup (this one's got an Indian twist!) and the absolutely divine broccoli-cheddar soup. Oh, and how could I forget the tomato and basil soup that gets over in record time every single time I make it?

All of these are instant pot soups that get made with no fuss.

Now, isn't that a LOT of reasons to love this?

Ingredients You'll Need

Here are the things you need to know about some of the ingredients. When it comes to the sweet potatoes, make sure you buy the ones with orange flesh for that wonderful color. Orange sweet potatoes are chocked full of beta-carotene or vitamin A.

Butter beans are flat, creamy beans with a mild flavor. Also known as lima beans, they can be pea-green or off white in color. For this recipe, I used canned, off-white beans. Make sure to use unsalted butter. It provides a rich, buttery taste! Ground cinnamon and nutmeg gives the taste of warm spices, which is so comforting.

A Note About Sweet Potatoes

At the grocery store, you might find the orange sweet potatoes labeled as yams. In truth, yams are different from sweet potatoes, but in North America, the terms are sometimes used interchangeably. The confusion arises because there are two varieties of sweet potato - the light yellow ones and the orange ones (used in this recipe). Since the orange sweet potatoes resemble yams, that is what they are called to differentiate them from the yellow ones.

Bottom line?

Don't worry if the orange sweet potatoes you want for this sweet potato recipe are in the bin labelled 'yams'. They are one and the same thing, in all likelihood!

Step-by-Step Recipe Instructions

Step 1

Switch on your instant pot to sauté and melt the butter. Add the sliced onions and garlic. Sauté for 2 minutes until the onions soften. Crumble the bouillon cubes by hand and add these along with ground spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, black pepper) and salt. Sauté for 1-2 minutes.

Step 2

Add the cubed sweet potatoes and roast it with a wooden spoon for 10 minutes on medium heat. Add a few splashes of broth if you find the sweet potato sticking to the bottom. Deglaze the pot in the end. Expert Tip: deglazing means to scrape the bottom of the pot to dislodge stuck bits of food. A little liquid, in this case, broth, helps to loosen the food.

Cancel the sauté function.

Step 3

Add the vegetable broth and mix well. Pressure cook on high for 3 minutes. When the timer beeps, release pressure immediately (Quick Pressure Release or QPR) and open the pot. Tip in the can of rinsed and drained butter beans.

Step 4

Using an immersion blender (if you have one), blend the contents of the pot to a puree like consistency. If you don't have an immersion blender, wait for the soup to cool down a bit, then blend it in your regular blender in batches. Expert Tip: Don't try to do it all at once because if the blender jar is too full, the lid might fly off and you'll end up with it all over your countertop.

The soup will be quite thick, so add a cup of hot water and stir. If you so wish, press sauté again and stir it for a minute or two to make it smooth again. Sprinkle extra cinnamon and nutmeg on top and ladle it out in pretty bowls. Your roasted sweet potato soup with butter beans is ready to be served!

Expert Tips and FAQs

• Rinse and drain the can of butter beans - rinse the butter beans in a colander under running water to get rid of the extra salt and foam.
• Roast the sweet potatoes - roast the sweet potatoes for at least 10 minutes before adding the broth and pressure cooking it. Roasting really coaxes the flavors from the sweet potato and spices. And the woodsy aroma of the cinnamon and nutmeg as you are roasting is going the fill the whole house.
• Store and freeze the leftover soup - store in a covered container in the fridge for 3-4 days. Since it does not contain any cream or milk, it freezes beautifully. Pour the leftovers in freezer bags or freezer safe containers and label with the date. When you want some, place the soup bag in the refrigerator until thawed, transfer to a pan, and reheat on the stovetop or microwave.

What Goes with Sweet Potato Soup?

I love serving this Bhature Bread recipe with this soup. It's soft and made without yeast! This Gluten Free Rosemary and Garlic Flatbread also pairs extremely well! Again, no yeast! And, you can never go wrong when pairing soup with a salad. Check out these salad recipes!

More Soup Recipes

You'll love this Mulligatawny soup. It's an Indo-British curry soup loaded with chicken, vegetables, lentils and apples. You should also try my Cream White Bean Tomato Soup because it's thickened with blended white beans, this one topped with fresh basil is rich in flavor and oh so satisfying.

A true fall favorite, this Hubbard Squash Soup is fresh and healthy, there’s no cream. It’s easy to make with a natural hazelnut flavor. And if you're looking for a good chili recipe, my Instant Pot White Chicken Chili is the perfect instant pot lentil soup, this is the best White Chicken Chili recipe around. Made in an Instant Pot, this chili is hearty and healthy and done in 20 minutes.