These easy pressure cooker recipes are the best ways to use your Instant Pot to prepare dinner, from soups to pasta and tacos!
Want to prepare dinner in your pressure cooker but don’t know where to start? Hi, we’re Alex and Sonja, and we’re here to help! In recent years, we’ve gone from skeptics to electric pressure cooker experts. We’ve understood what makes it work, what the advantages of using one are, and where it can fall short. We’ve found vegetables you can cook in an instant (black beans! beets! spaghetti squash!), and other recipes that take as long as the stove. In short: we have made all the mistakes and mastered all the techniques so that you do not have to.
Here we have compiled our best recipes for electric pressure cookers for dinner! These are the recipes we often turn to when we want to make a complete meal with our Instant Pot. If you’re looking for other recipes like side dishes or basics (rice, beans, grains, vegetables), head over to some of the posts below.
- 20+ Healthy
- 25 Instant Pot Vegetarian
- 15 Best Vegan
- BEST Instant Pot RecipesAnd
Instant Pot Recipes
Recipes
Instant Pot Recipes
now, our best electric pressure cooker recipes!
What is an
electric pressure cooker?
An electric pressure cooker is a device used to cook food at high pressure, which reduces cooking time. It is the exact opposite of a clay pot or a slow cooker, which has very long cooking times. Other terms for a pressure cooker are Instant Pot or Instapot, a variation of the jargon.)
What pressure cooker do
you recommend?
Alex and I use an Instant Pot brand pressure cooker. Here is the 6-quart Instant Pot we have. This is the pressure cooker we have used to test all the recipes above. There are some slight variations in pressure cookers between brands, so keep in mind that you may need to make adjustments based on your pressure cooker. And please don’t use a mini pressure cooker for any of these recipes: it’s too small!
Why cook with a pressure cooker?
Let’s get this straight away: although the branded electric pressure cooker is called Instant Pot, it doesn’t cook all food in an instant! There are many things to get used to with pressure cooking. However, once you do: there are many advantages to using an electric pressure cooker in your kitchen!
- It’s usually quite hands-free. The good thing about pressure cooking is that you can “set it and forget it” in many cases. The recipes don’t call for childcare like they do on the stove or in the oven.
- It can be faster. For some recipes, pressure cooker can cut the standard cooking time in half: such as cooking dried beans, spaghetti squash, or beets.
- You can extend your kitchen. One of the reasons we love our electric pressure cooker is that you get extra pans from our stove or oven so we can focus on cooking the rest of the food.
Understanding cooking time with
a pressure cooker
As Alex and I have come to understand our pressure cooker, we have learned a few things. The cooking time for pressure cooker recipes may seem deceptively short. The crispy apple cooks in 2 minutes and the broccoli in 0 minutes! But keep the following moment in mind when making these recipes
: “
- Preheating” time: After adding the ingredients to the pot, the pressure cooker requires approximately time to “preheat” or reach pressure. This time can vary depending on the recipe: it’s usually about 5 minutes, but can be up to 20 minutes (like in our mashed potatoes for a crowd).
- Natural release time (depends on recipe): Some recipes require a “cooling” process to release pressure in the pot. A quick release means that the steam in the pot is released immediately and you can remove the lid. But some recipes require a natural release, where you wait with the lid on for the pressure to be released naturally from the pot.
Last updated: January 2021
