Looking for vegan Instant Pot recipes? Alex and I were Instant Pot skeptics for the longest time. We figured it was just for cooking meat. Turns out, pressure cookers are fantastic tools for cooking anything from sweet potatoes to soups. They can cook dry beans from scratch, or make pasta in minutes. Now: we’ll be the first to admit the Instant Pot still requires time and effort to plan meals and cook. But, it’s a pretty fantastic tool that we’ve come to love. Here are our favorite vegan Instant Pot recipes, and an incredibly tasty Instant Pot spaghetti recipe that you can whip up in a flash. Ready to get started?
And now, our favorite vegan Instant Pot recipes!
What’s an Instant Pot? Why cook with one?
First of all: what’s an Instant Pot? An Instant Pot is a programmable digital pressure cooker (Instant Pot is the brand name; Instapot is a slang variation). There are many other brands of electric pressure cookers. The concept is to cook foods at high pressure, which cuts down on cooking time — versus a crock pot or slow cooker, which is the opposite. Top with Cashew Cream, cilantro and hot sauce. Serve with our famous Easy Vegan Cornbread! Now, we’ll be the first to admit: cooking with an Instant Pot is not something Alex and I ever expected to do! We’re wary of adding new gadgets to our kitchen–especially things that seem trendy like the Instant Pot! We were on the fence about it for years until a friend mentioned you can make Instant Pot vegetarian and vegan recipes: like cooking sweet potatoes, rice, quinoa, and dried beans. Since we eat vegetarian or vegan recipes for the majority of our meals, we decided to give it a try. Still skeptical, we put the raw sweet potatoes into our pressure cooker…and they came out perfectly moist with little effort and faster than baking them in the oven! After the sweet potatoes, we were sold. We use our Instant Pot for cooking components and meals.
Cooking Instant Pot Basics
In addition to meals, we have a long list of basics that we cook in our Instant Pot! We love that the Instant Pot is so versatile: versus our rice cooker that only could cook a selection of things. (We really only used it for rice!) Our Instant Pot has replaced our rice cooker ever since. Here are a few of the basics we use our Instant Pot to cook:
Sweet Potatoes Chickpeas Lentils & RiceHard Boiled EggsQuinoa White RiceBrown RiceBasmati RiceJasmine RiceBrown Lentils
How to make vegan Instant Pot spaghetti
Now, let’s talk vegan Instant Pot recipes that are meals! This Instant Pot spaghetti is king: it’s seriously easy, quick, and tastes incredible. It’s turly a matter of throwing a few ingredients into the Instant Pot. While cooking pasta in an Instant Pot comes out a little different than cooking pasta on the stovetop, it’s just as tasty. We loved how easy it was to simply place ingredients in the Instant Pot and not have to worry about boiling water for pasta. Here’s how to make this vegan Instant Pot spaghetti recipe:
Mix up the sauce ingredients in a bowl: crushed fire roasted tomatoes, spices, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, spinach, and fresh basil leaves. Place a bit of the sauce in the bottom of the Instant Pot. Add the spaghetti noodles, and make make sure to fan out the noodles. Noodles that are directly next to each other in the Instant Pot stick together when they’re cooked. You’ll need to fan out the noodles so they’re going different directions: this helps them to cook evenly! Pour the remainder of the sauce on top.Pressure cook on high for 5 minutes, then quick release!
And that’s it! The Instant Pot spaghetti comes out intensely flavorful, with sweet tomatoes and the herbaceous punch of basil. It’s seriously satisfying for eaters of all kinds, not just vegan! For example, one of our readers said this about the recipe: “My husband is a total carnivore and he loved this; he said it’s a definite keeper! I expected him to comment that it needed meatballs or sausage, but he liked it just the way it was.” -Amanda
A note on fire roasted tomatoes
A note on fire roasted tomatoes: this vegan Instant Pot spaghetti recipe calls for crushed fire roasted tomatoes. Fire roasted tomatoes have a sweet flavor that’s perfect for spaghetti sauce! If you can’t find fire roasted, use the best quality of crushed tomatoes you can find. If you can find fire roasted tomatoes diced but not crushed, you could also whiz them up a few times in the blender.
What Instant Pot do you use?
Alex and I use an Instant Pot brand Instant Pot, though there are lots of other great pressure cookers out there! The Instant Pot we use is the Instant Pot DUO60 6 Qt 7-in-1 Multi-Use Programmable Pressure Cooker. There are some variations between pressure cooker brands, so we can’t speak to how other brands cook. For example, we’ve heard that the Instant Pot Mini is pretty different and does not work as well as the standard size. So, only use the Instant Pot Mini for these recipes at your own risk! Last updated: December 2020 No reviews
