31 Fast and Easy Instant Pot Recipes

If you’ve just got your Instant Pot and are looking for some inspiration, you’re in the right place! We’ve got tons of recipes to whet your appetite and help you make the most of your Instant Pot.

If you’re an old hand at this Instant Pot business, you’re still in the right place. We bet we’ve got some recipes here that you’ve never tried before. Use the recipes in this article to spice up and change up your Instant Pot menu.

Jump to:

• What is an Instant Pot?
• What is The Best Instant Pot to Buy?
• Soups and Stews
• Meat
• Side Dishes
• Sweets
• 📖 Recipe

What is an Instant Pot?

Instant Pot is actually a brand name for a Canadian multicooker. These devices are able to perform the functions of several other devices including pressure cookers, food warmers, rice cookers, and steamers.

You may have a multicooker that is not labeled as an Instant Pot. That’s fine, it’s just a different brand. The term Instant Pot has become sort of a generic term for all multicookers, but other brands will work with these recipes.

What is The Best Instant Pot to Buy?

The type of electric pressure cooker you buy depends upon your needs. Below are some popular options and why they may suit your family meal planning.

• Instant Pot Duo 7-in-1 6-Quart Pressure Cooker - most popular option includes 13 one touch programs.
• Instant Pot Duo Crisp 11-in-1 8-Quart Pressure Cooker with Air Fryer - this option includes both pressure cooker and air fryer settings with a specialized lid.
• Instant Pot Ultra 80 10-in-1 8-Quart Pressure Cooker - similar to the Duo Crips, but without the air fryer lid.
• Instant Pot Ultra 10-in-1 3-Quart Pressure Cooker - smaller version of the Duo.

Soups and Stews

Chicken Noodle Soup

Recipe: Jo Cooks

Chicken noodle soup is the real MVP when it comes to soup to make you feel better. The saltiness of the broth combined with the comforting flavors of chicken and noodles is just pure bliss.

For this recipe, you’ll need an Instant Pot that has a sauté and soup function. If it doesn’t have a soup function, then the standard pressure cooker function is fine.

In total, from prep to serving, this recipe should take about 30 minutes. For most of this time, the cooker is doing its business alone, so you can relax, make yourself a drink, and set the table ready for a delicious dinner.

Potato Soup

Recipe: Belle of the Kitchen

If you prefer a thicker, creamier soup, this one's for you.

This potato soup recipe does suggest bacon bits as a garnish, this can be left off to make this soup suitable for vegetarians.

If you’re vegan, you’ll have to make a few more substitutions as this recipe calls for butter, milk, cheddar, and heavy cream.

For this recipe, you’ll need to use both the sauté and pressure cook function. Together, these functions make short work of your ingredients.

Vegetable Soup (Vegan)

Recipe: Where You Get Your Protein

This delicious, healthy, vegetable soup is perfect for warming you up on cold or rainy days. It has all of your favorite veggies and sprinklings of comforting seasonings like oregano and thyme.

This is the kind of soup that makes you think of cozy winter evenings in front of a fireplace. Just thinking about it makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

As well as being absolutely delicious, this recipe is also vegan. No substitutions or swaps are necessary, you can cook and eat it as is.

The recipe also has instructions for cooking this soup on the stovetop if you’d prefer not to use your Instant Pot for a night.

Beef Pho

Recipe: Pressure Cooker Recipes

Pho is a Vietnamese noodle stew that can be made with a variety of different meats. This recipe calls for beef, but chicken and pork are also acceptable.

Pho is sold everywhere across Vietnam and is the country's national dish. This recipe allows you to cook this hearty soup in your own home.

Now, this recipe isn’t as simple or quick as the others, in fact, it takes about 2 hours. It is well worth the wait, however.

Beef and Mushroom Stew

Recipe: Running to the Kitchen

This recipe is utterly divine. It might be my favorite stew of all time if I’m being honest. It is so hearty, wholesome, and comforting it makes me want to sing.

By the time your Instant Pot has finished, the beef is melt-in-the-mouth soft, and the sauce is so beautiful and rich.

This is a filling meal on its own. You don’t need sides or sundries to bulk it out. If, however, you like to have a carb with your meal, you can use rice or mash as a base for your stew.

Lentil Soup (Vegan)

Recipe: Indian Veggie Delight

This delicious, Indian lentil soup is rich, filling, and hearty.

Green lentils are the preferred pulse in this recipe, but you can also use brown lentils. These two stand up best to the liquids in the soup and tend not to lose their shape.  

To make lentil soup, you’ll need to use the sauté and soup functions. It should only take 30 minutes from start to finish to get this soup ready. This is perfect for busy evenings when you just want to get food on the go.

Black Bean Soup Recipe

Recipe: Craft Create Cook

This flavorful black bean soup is made with dry beans that are seasoned with just the right amount of herbs and cooked until tender then served blended or as whole beans.

Top this with a bit of fresh cilantro, sour cream, or avocado for a protein-packed recipe that is easy to make vegan with minor changes.

Meat

BBQ Ribs

Recipe: Damn Delicious

What we love about this recipe is that you can have BBQ ribs year-round. This means you don’t have to wait for BBQ season to start up again. In as little as an hour, you can have beautifully tender BBQ ribs come rain or shine.

Before sticking your ribs in the instant pot, you need to give them a dry rub. This involves rubbing seasoning, herbs, and spices into the meat. Don’t skip this step. It helps create a mouth-wateringly good taste that penetrates right to the core of the meat.

Umami Pot Roast

Recipe: Corrie Cooks

For this recipe, you’re going to need some beef chuck roast. Ideally, you want meat that is a choice grade or higher. If you’re in Canada, then you want to look for AAA-grade blade roast.

Naturally, you can use lower-grade meat, but it won’t be quite as tender at the end.

Umami might sound delightfully Japanese, and indeed the word is. However, the umami flavor is actually just the rich, delicious, savory flavor that you get from meats, dairy, and fish. Like sweet, sour, and salty, umami is one of the 5 tastes your taste buds identify.

Chicken Breast

Recipe: Recipes From a Pantry

This recipe is ideal for people who are meal prepping and need to cook off chicken breasts in a bit of a hurry.

You can cook a batch of breasts and freeze or refrigerate them for later in the week. This recipe produces deliciously seasoned and moist chicken breasts, so they won’t come out of the freezer tasting bland and dry.

The key to this recipe is sautéing the chicken before you cook it. This helps to keep moisture inside the breast by sealing the outside.

Roast Beef

Recipe: Pressure Cooker Recipes

Who’d have thought you could prepare a whole roast in the Instant Pot! It’s incredible what this thing can do.

This beef roast is ideal for a British Sunday dinner, holiday meals, or to carve up deli-style. It comes out tender, rich, and juicy accompanied by its own gravy!

From start to finish, this will take you about an hour and a half, and you’ll end up with a medium-rare roast. You can adjust the timings if you prefer it rare or well done.

BBQ Pulled Pork

Recipe: Creme de la Crumb

This pulled pork recipe is utterly divine! We think the secret here is the can of cola. It adds this wonderfully sweet taste that isn’t sickly. When combined with the BBQ sauce, it is absolutely amazing.

You can cook this pulled pork in a slow cooker as well as an Instant Pot if you’d prefer. Naturally, the cooking time will be longer.

Another great thing about this recipe is that you can use frozen pork without thawing it. You’ll have to add about 40 minutes of cooking time, but it’s perfect if you forgot to take the pork out of the freezer.

If you want the barbecue but using a tenderloin, then check out this Instant Pot juicy pork tenderloin with sauce.

Whole Chicken

Recipe: Natasha's Kitchen

Probably the fastest way to cook rotisserie-style chicken, this Instant Pot recipe is to die for.

The recipe is so simple, you’d almost expect it to lack flavor. However, the opposite is true. This recipe is so yummy. The combination of seasoning and the chicken broth creates a lovely, rich chicken and gravy.

The only thing to be aware of is the size of the chicken. If you get an enormous bird, it is unlikely to fit into your instant pot.

Brisket

Recipe: Lemon Blossoms

What we love about brisket is the fact that it is a fairly cheap cut of meat. This means that you can have a delicious, hearty meal for half the price of more expensive cuts.

The issue with brisket is that it takes an incredibly long time to become tender. At least, this used to be the problem. With your Instant Pot on hand, you can have melt-in-the-mouth tender brisket in little over an hour.

What’s more, the BBQ sauce in this recipe is wonderfully balanced. It has the right amount of sweet and spicy flavors and just a hint of smoke. It’s the kind of sauce you’ll be craving for days afterward.

Pork Shoulder

Recipe: Pressure Cooker Recipes

This pork shoulder is garlicky, buttery, and incredibly yummy! You’ll want to save this recipe for dinner parties or holidays when you need to wow the crowd.

During cooking, it creates the base for a beautiful gravy that you can serve with the pork. It goes wonderfully with mashed potatoes or some roasted vegetables.

Meatloaf

Recipe: Tastes Better From Scratch

Meatloaf is a quintessential family dinner. Your mom may not have made her meatloaf in an Instant Pot, but times change. This recipe is delicious enough to rival even the best mom’s meatloaf!

What’s great about this recipe is that you can cook the whole meal in the Instant Pot in one go. The mashed potatoes cook alongside your meatloaf. There’s no wasting time with pots and pans on the stove. It also helps you keep the dishes to a bare minimum!

If you like this, then you will love this list of Instant Pot comfort food recipes too!

Pineapple Glazed Ham

Recipe: Sweet and Savory Meals

For the perfect holiday ham, you don’t need to look further than your instant pot. This recipe will walk you through creating the most succulent ham you’ve ever tasted.

It’s an incredibly easy recipe that anyone can make. With fewer than 10 ingredients, it's something affordable to make for a holiday or family meal. Plus there are always leftovers for sandwiches!

You can pretty much set this ham to cook and forget about it until the timer goes off. The only hands-on part of the recipe is creating the sauce, which takes a few minutes at most.

Side Dishes

Refried Beans

Recipe: Well Plated

The perfect accompaniment to tacos, enchiladas, and other Mexican dishes, these refried beans are simple but delicious.

The great thing about making refried beans in your instant pot is that you don’t have to soak the beans first. The pressure cooker is powerful enough to cook the beans quickly as they are.

When choosing beans, you want to go for dry pinto beans. Try to avoid canned beans because they soak the pinto beans, which makes them too soggy for this recipe.

Mexican Black Beans

Recipe: Piping Pot Curry

We’re sticking with the Mexican theme for the moment with this black bean instant pot recipe.

These beans are perfect as a filling or topping for burritos, tacos, and enchiladas. They also make a wonderful side dish or accompaniment for many other foods.

This recipe is fairly simple and straightforward. In the end, though, you get beans that are perfectly cooked and seasoned. The flavor is anything but simple with layers of onion, cumin, and oregano throughout.

Sweet Potato

Recipe: The Kitchn

Baked sweet potatoes are one of my favorite sides. They are creamy, filling, and delicious. The problem is they take ages to cook. Of course, that was before the Instant Pot.

This recipe is great because it acknowledges the fact that not all sweet potatoes are created equal. It walks you through a formula for getting the right cook time based on the size of the potato. This means that you get soft, creamy potatoes every time.

Corn on the Cob

Recipe: The Instant Pot Table

This is another dish that tends to be relegated to BBQ season, but there’s absolutely no reason why. With your Instant Pot you can make sweet, juicy corn on the cob all year round. What’s more, it won’t take an age.

Of course, the toppings are where the magic happens. You can still douse the corn in your preferred seasoning. Whether you’re a fan of butter and salt, garlic and Parmesan, or hot sauce, this corn can handle it.

Mashed Potato

Recipe: The Salty Marshmallow

Arguably the best side dish going, mash potato goes with absolutely everything.

Normally, you’d have to wait close to half an hour for your potatoes to boil before you can mash them. With this recipe, you only need to wait 10 minutes! How awesome is that?

I know that I’m going to be eating a heck of a lot more mashed potatoes now!

Perfect Rice

Recipe: Kristine's Kitchen

Rice is something that I always struggled with before my Instant Pot. I always ended up undercooking or overcooking it.

While many people might prefer a rice cooker to an Instant Pot, there isn’t much in it. The instant pot cooks rice fabulously well. It always comes out soft and fluffy in about 20 minutes.

Mac and Cheese

Recipe: The Salty Marshmallow

Mac and cheese is one of those dishes that works well as a side dish but is so tasty you could eat a whole meal of it.

This Instant Pot mac and cheese recipe is beautifully creamy and comforting. The sauce is made from cheddar, mozzarella, and Parmesan making it incredibly cheesy, as it should be.

Perhaps the best thing about this recipe is that it only takes 10 minutes to cook! I’m going to be making this pretty much every night from now on.

Sweets

New York Cheesecake

Recipe: Damn Delicious

Most people don’t tend to think about desserts when they buy their Instant Pot, but they should. This miracle machine can make some phenomenal desserts like this New York Cheesecake.

If we’re being honest, this recipe isn’t easy or simple like the others. However, it was just so dang delicious we had to include it.  

Like any cheesecake, you need to assemble this one in a cake tin before you place it in the Instant Pot. However, this recipe shows you how to steam cook the cheesecake in your Instant Pot.

Chocolate and Fudge Cake (Vegan)

Recipe: Well Plated

There is so much to love about this cake! It is deliciously moist and soft, it uses wholewheat rather than white flour, and it's vegan.

Another great thing about this recipe is that you only need one bowl! There’s no fussing around with different containers for various ingredients, just lob it all in and mix. I’m always a fan of recipes that reduce my washing up!

Pumpkin Bundt Cake

Recipe: Sweet Pea's Kitchen

In little over half an hour, you could be eating a delicious pumpkin and chocolate cake. Isn’t that awesome?

This recipe uses the trivet and steaming function of your Instant Pot to cook the cake batter. You’ll need a Bundt cake tin for this recipe, of course. The hole in the middle helps the cake to cook quicker as there is more pan against batter.

As a pumpkin recipe, this cake is naturally ideal for fall. Perhaps you could bring it along to your next Halloween or Thanksgiving Day party.

Arroz Con Leche

Recipe: One Happy Housewife

This is a traditional Hispanic rice pudding that tastes beautifully sweet and creamy. Usually served warm with a sprinkling of cinnamon, this recipe is perfect for cold winter nights.

When made on the stove, arroz con leche can be hard to get right. Heck, any rice pudding is difficult to get right by hand. However, the Instant Pot makes this recipe a breeze.

There are literally only 6 steps to this recipe. It’s almost impossible to get wrong. This means that even the most inexperienced chef can cook up perfect arroz con leche.

Pumpkin Pie

Recipe: The Spruce Eats

This pie has a huge pumpkin filling which should satiate even the hungriest guest! It fixes the only problem I had with pumpkin pie, the fact that the filling was always so shallow.

This pie is almost like a pumpkin cheesecake as it uses crackers rather than pastry as the base. Even so, it is absolutely beautiful.

Bread Pudding

Recipe: The Simple Happy Foodie

Bread pudding isn’t as popular as it used to be. It became a staple during World War II when wives had to cook with rationed food.

Frugal it might be, but bread pudding is delicious. This recipe gives you a quick and easy way to make it in your Instant Pot.

Peanut Butter Explosion Cakes

Recipe: Delish

These are a twist on the ever-popular chocolate lava cakes.

Made from pantry staples, these cakes are delicious! They are ready in 45 minutes and will be demolished in seconds by your dinner guests.

Creamy Instant Pot Yogurt

Recipe: Scrambled Chef's

A bonus recipe that is more breakfast than dessert is this delicious homemade yogurt. Flavor it with fresh fruit, honey, or extracts to create a tasty and healthy treat!