Want to make dinner in your pressure cooker but not sure where to start? Hi, we’re Alex and Sonja, and we’re here to help! In the past few years, we’ve gone from skeptics to electric pressure cooker experts. We’ve understood what makes it tick, what are the advantages to using one, and where it can come up short. We’ve found vegetables it can cook in an instant (black beans! beets! spaghetti squash!), and other recipes that take just as long as the stovetop. In short: we’ve made all the mistakes and mastered all the techniques so that you don’t have to. Here, we’ve compiled our top electric pressure cooker recipes for dinner! These are the recipes we often turn to when we want to make a full meal with our Instant Pot. If you’re looking for other recipes like side dishes or basics (rice, beans, grains, veggies), head to some of the posts below.
20+ Healthy Instant Pot Recipes 25 Vegetarian Instant Pot Recipes 15 Best Vegan Instant Pot RecipesBEST Instant Pot Recipes
And now, our top electric pressure cooker recipes!
What’s an electric pressure cooker?
An electric pressure cooker is a device used to cook foods at high pressure, which cuts down on cooking time. It’s the exact opposite of a crock pot or slow cooker, which has very long cook times. Other terms for a pressure cooker are Instant Pot or Instapot, a slang variation). Don’t take it just from us: reader Laura told us,“My husband said this could easily go into regular rotation at our house.” Score! Don’t take it just from us! One reader commented: “This soup is AMAZING!!! I actually think it’s my new favorite soup, which is saying a lot!” Take it from one of our readers, who said: ““Oh my, I scraped the bowl clean on this one! The flavor was awesome.” No reviews
What pressure cooker do you recommend?
Alex and I use an Instant Pot brand pressure cooker. Here’s the 6 quart Instant Pot we have. This is the pressure cooker that we’ve 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 much too small!
Why cook with a pressure cooker?
Let’s clear this up right away: even though the brand-name electric pressure cooker is called an Instant Pot, it does not cook all foods in an instant! There are lots of things to get used to with pressure cooking. However, once you do: there are lots of advantages to using an electric pressure cooker in your kitchen!
It’s usually pretty hands off. The nice thing about pressure cooking is you can “set it and forget it” in many cases. Recipes don’t require baby-sitting like they do on the stove or in the oven.It can be faster. For some recipes, the pressure cooker can shave the standard cook time in half: like cooking dried beans, spaghetti squash, or beets.It can extend your kitchen. One of the reasons we love our electric pressure cooker is that it gets extra pans off our stovetop or oven so that we can concentrate on cooking the rest of the meal.
Understanding cook time with a pressure cooker
As Alex and I have come to understand our pressure cooker, we’ve learned a few things. The cook time for pressure cooker recipes can look deceptively short. Apple crisp cooks in 2 minutes, and broccoli in 0 minutes! But keep the following timing in mind when making these recipes:
“Preheat” time: After you add the ingredients to the pot, the pressure cooker requires about time for “preheating” or coming up to pressure. This time can varies 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 call for a “cool down” process to release the 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 call for a Natural Release, where you wait with the cover on for the pressure to naturally release from the pot.
Last updated: January 2021
