Quick Dinner Recipes for Your Instant Pot or Pressure Cooker

Collage of pressure-cooker recipes — Photographs: J. Kenji López-Alt

Life is a little crazy right now, and I don't have quite as much time to spend in the kitchen as I might like. Fortunately, I have a secret weapon that I can turn to when I want to make awesome food with minimal effort: a pressure cooker. There's a reason that Instant Pots and other pressure cookers have become an object of obsession; there's no better way to make a quick weeknight dinner that tastes like it took all day. If you're looking to put your pressure cooker to use (or looking for a reason to invest in one), check out the recipes below for dishes like black bean and sausage soup, Thai green chicken curry, and savory vegan risotto flavored with miso.

Don't have a pressure cooker yet? Check out our guide to the best stovetop and electric models.

Quick and Easy Pressure Cooker Chicken, Lentil, and Bacon Stew With Carrots

Photograph: J. Kenji López-Alt

To give you an idea of just how magical the pressure cooker is, I'd recommend making a batch of this chicken and lentil stew. Twenty minutes at high pressure makes the chicken fall-apart tender and cooks the lentils perfectly. Bacon or pancetta adds richness, and a sprinkle of sherry vinegar keeps the dish bright.

Get the recipe for Quick and Easy Pressure Cooker Chicken, Lentil, and Bacon Stew With Carrots
30-Minute Pressure Cooker Chicken With Chickpeas, Tomatoes, and Chorizo

Photograph: J. Kenji López-Alt

The secret to this recipe is the addition of canned fire-roasted tomatoes, which add lots of flavor while requiring hardly any effort. We bolster the dish's savory side with Spanish chorizo and smoked paprika, and add chicken and canned chickpeas for a dinner that's as hearty as it is easy.

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Pressure Cooker French Onion Soup

Photograph: J. Kenji López-Alt

French onion soup is a simple dish that nevertheless can take forever to make—those caramelized onions need to cook and cook and cook. We've come up with a few different shortcuts to speed the process along, but the pressure cooker is the best way to cut down on that caramelizing time. Once the onions are done, we add chicken stock and herbs, then bake the soup in bowls topped with toast and Gruyère.

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Pressure Cooker American Beef Stew

Photograph: J. Kenji López-Alt

If you don't have a whole afternoon to make a pot of stew, this recipe cuts the time needed in half, while resulting in a finished product that's just as good. As in the original recipe, we brown the meat in big chunks to keep it from drying out and use two separate batches of vegetables—one for the cooking process and one for serving.

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Pressure Cooker Thai Green Chicken Curry With Eggplant and Kabocha Squash

Photograph: J. Kenji López-Alt

We often think of pressure cookers as good for tough cuts of meat, but chicken can also benefit from this style of cooking. Here, it gets rich flavor from coconut milk and Thai green curry paste, plus fresh garlic, ginger, Thai chilies, and spices like cumin and coriander. Eggplant and squash break down and thicken the excess liquid, making for a fantastically intense chicken stew. You'll stir in fresh spinach and herbs at the last minute before serving.

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Quick and Easy Pressure Cooker Chicken and Black Bean Stew

Photograph: J. Kenji López-Alt

Sort of a grown-up version of pork and beans, this stew is made with chicken legs, black beans, andouille sausage, and spicy Hatch chilies. Even though it starts with unsoaked beans, this whole dish comes together in just an hour. Serve it with cilantro and lime wedges for a bit of freshness, plus a dollop of rich sour cream.

Get the recipe for Quick and Easy Pressure Cooker Chicken and Black Bean Stew
Pressure Cooker Black Bean Soup With Sausage and Cumin-Lime Sour Cream

Photograph: Vicky Wasik

This black bean soup tastes like it's been cooking all day, but it actually takes just an hour. We make it with a little andouille, plus browned mushrooms for extra flavor. Add six cups of chicken stock, set the pressure cooker for 40 minutes, and go enjoy your evening instead of tending to the stove.

Get the recipe for Pressure Cooker Black Bean Soup With Sausage and Cumin-Lime Sour Cream
Easy Vegan Pressure Cooker Miso Risotto

Photograph: J. Kenji López-Alt

Risotto scares a lot of home cooks, because they've been told that it's hard to do well and requires constant attention. That's not really true—but stovetop risotto does take quite a bit of time. A pressure cooker, on the other hand, allows you to make perfect risotto in mere minutes, with hardly any stirring required—we use it for this amazingly creamy vegan risotto, made with umami-rich miso paste.

Get the recipe for Easy Vegan Pressure Cooker Miso Risotto

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Pressure Cooker Mushroom Risotto

Photograph: J. Kenji López-Alt

A testament to the power of the pressure cooker, this risotto takes more time to prep than it does to cook. We infuse it with tons of mushroom flavor by using mixed fresh mushrooms, dried porcini, and mushroom stock. We mix in a tablespoon of light miso and just two teaspoons of soy sauce for extra depth, plus heavy cream if we want it really rich.

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Pressure Cooker Butternut Squash Risotto With Frizzled Sage and Brown Butter

Photograph: Vicky Wasik

Bringing the most sweetness out of squash requires roasting it for a long time—not what we want out of a quick pressure cooker recipe. To give the squash a head start, we toss it with maple syrup and apple before putting it into the oven. We then blend it into a smooth purée and mix it into the risotto along with whole cubes of roasted squash, then finish with browned butter and fried sage leaves. The roasting and puréeing steps mean this dish is still fairly labor-intensive, but the results are so worth it.

Get the recipe for Pressure Cooker Butternut Squash Risotto With Frizzled Sage and Brown Butter
30-Minute Pressure Cooker Split Pea and Ham Soup

Photograph: J. Kenji López-Alt

This easy soup can be made in half an hour with onion, garlic, celery, ham, chicken stock, and dried split peas. The pressure cooker makes short work of the split peas, but the coolest part is that when you use the quick release on your cooker: The soup comes to a sudden, vigorous boil that's strong enough to purée it—no need for a blender.

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Pressure Cooker Beef Barley Soup

Photograph: Vicky Wasik

This hearty, warming soup is excellent with beef chuck or oxtail, but especially delicious when made with bone-in short ribs. Our classic beef barley soup is made on the stovetop, but the recipe adapts to the pressure cooker wonderfully. The big difference is that you can decrease the amount of chicken stock you use, because the meat and vegetables release moisture that won't evaporate in the cooker.

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Colombian Chicken Stew With Potatoes, Tomato, and Onion

Photograph: J. Kenji López-Alt

Pressure cookers are indispensable in Bogotá, Colombia—when you're 8,000 feet up in the mountains, cooking on the stovetop can be incredibly slow. This stew is delicious even if you're at sea level, though. It's made with just chicken, potatoes, tomatoes, onion, and a bay leaf, which release enough liquid to make a flavorful broth with no stock or water added.

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Quick and Easy Dairy- and Fat-Free Colombian Vegetable Soup (Ajiaco Negro)

Photograph: J. Kenji López-Alt

This creamy vegan soup is made with potatoes, carrots, corn, fava beans, peas, and broth. The potatoes break down and make the soup as creamy as dairy would, without covering up the flavor of the vegetables. This is actually a pretty easy dish to make on the stovetop, but it's even more weeknight-friendly in a pressure cooker.

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Pressure Cooker Corn Soup

Photograph: J. Kenji López-Alt

The pressure cooker is so good at extracting flavors that you can make an intense corn soup even when it's not corn season. The key is to cook not just the kernels but also the cobs—they add flavor and release starch that helps thicken up the final product.

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Easy Pressure Cooker Chicken and Chickpea Masala

Photograph: J. Kenji López-Alt

My first significant exposure to pressure cookers came on a visit to India, where virtually every cook I met used one daily. In this recipe, we use the pressure cooker to make short work of an Indian-inspired chicken and chickpea curry. Rather than take the time to put together an elaborate curry powder, we go with a simple mixture of cumin, paprika, coriander, turmeric, and black pepper.

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30-Minute Pressure Cooker Pho Ga (Vietnamese Chicken Noodle Soup)

Photograph: J. Kenji López-Alt

Making pho the traditional way means letting it simmer for hours and hours, but in a pressure cooker, you can do it in just 30 minutes. Flavored with star anise, cinnamon, cloves, fennel seed, and coriander, this broth is great ladled over noodles and topped with fresh herbs.

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1-Hour Pressure Cooker Texas-Style Chile Con Carne

Photograph: J. Kenji López-Alt

Chili recipes may call for all kinds of ingredients: sometimes beans, sometimes tomatoes, sometimes even sweet potatoes. But if you ask a Texan, the only things that belong in chili are beef and peppers. Here's a fast technique that makes a great bowl of Texas red.

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The Best Tamale Pie With Braised Skirt Steak, Charred Corn, and Brown Butter Cornbread Crust

Photograph: J. Kenji López-Alt

Classic tamale pie—chili topped with cornbread—is usually made with ground beef. This recipe goes a step further and replaces the ground beef with tender skirt steak, which we pair with charred corn, dried chilies, olives, and cheese. We cook it all until the beef is falling apart (a much faster process in the pressure cooker), then top it with nutty cornbread that's flavored with browned butter.

Get the recipe for The Best Tamale Pie With Braised Skirt Steak, Charred Corn, and Brown Butter Cornbread Crust
Easy Pressure Cooker Green Chili With Chicken

Photograph: J. Kenji López-Alt

This tart tomatillo-based green chili is made with a trio of peppers: earthy Poblanos, spicy jalapeños, and grassy Anaheims (or Hatch chilies, if you can get them). The recipe couldn't be easier—just cook everything together, remove and shred the chicken, blend the sauce, and it's ready to eat.

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Easy Pressure Cooker Pork Chile Verde

Photograph: J. Kenji López-Alt

The same pressure cooker technique used for Kenji's chicken chile verde can be applied to pork as well, with fantastic results. We cut the pork shoulder into fairly large chunks, which makes it easier to fish out later, and combine it with garlic, onion, tomatillos, and a variety of green chilies—that combination of Poblanos, jalapeños, and Anaheims works great here. Let it all heat together in the pressure cooker until the meat is tender and juicy, then remove the pork, purée the sauce with an immersion blender, and serve.

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Easy Pressure Cooker Chicken Enchiladas

Photograph: J. Kenji López-Alt

A pressure cooker is one of the best tools for enchilada-making—use it to cook down chicken and vegetables, and you'll get a filling and a sauce at the same time. We dump everything into the pot without searing because the ingredients are plenty flavorful as they are. After the chicken and sauce are done, just roll up the enchiladas, dip them, and bake them for 15 to 20 minutes under a blanket of cheese.

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Pressure Cooker Ragù Bolognese

Photograph: J. Kenji López-Alt

This method gives you a rich Bolognese in half the time it would take in a Dutch oven. We make our ragù with pork and beef—some recipes use veal, but it's expensive and mostly just adds gelatin. We leave it out and add a few powdered-gelatin packets instead.

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Pressure Cooker Tomato Sauce

Photograph: J. Kenji López-Alt

Homemade tomato sauce on a weeknight, in winter? It's totally possible—the pressure cooker excels at making things taste like they've cooked for hours. We're obviously not using fresh tomatoes this time of year; just make sure you're working with high-quality canned whole tomatoes. Then sauce your pasta the right way!

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Pressure Cooker Ribollita (Tuscan Bean and Vegetable Stew)

Photographs: Vicky Wasik

Ribollita is an Italian soup that traditionally makes the most of leftovers, by cooking day-old vegetable stew along with stale bread and dried beans. The final result is wonderfully flavorful, but takes awhile to bring together. Here, we make the soup from scratch in a pressure cooker, where the beans become perfectly tender, the bread absorbs plenty of liquid, and the vegetables impart the broth with all of their flavor.

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Pressure Cooker Jewish-Style Braised Brisket With Onions and Carrots

Photograph: Vicky Wasik

Making Jewish-style braised brisket the traditional way can take . . . awhile. But in a pressure cooker, the drawn-out process is simplified and sped up, so you can have sweet, fall-apart brisket in just a fraction of the time it usually takes to put the dish on the table.

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Pressure Cooker Red Wine–Braised Beef Short Ribs

Photograph: Vicky Wasik

It normally takes a good half-day to make classic red wine–braised beef short ribs. That's how long it takes for the sauce to become shiny and beautiful, the meat to loosen from the bone, and the accompanying vegetables to cook. In a pressure cooker, we achieve all of those same markers of success in three hours. Even in the pressure cooker, this might not be a weeknight cooking project, but the shortened cooking time transforms these beef short ribs into an effortless and luxurious weekend dinner.

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Pressure Cooker Chunky Beef and Bean Chili

Photograph: Vicky Wasik

This classic beef-and-bean chili is complete with chunks of tender beef short rib, red kidney beans, rich tomato flavor, and much more. The pressure cooker reduces cooking time dramatically, and a few flavor-deepening tricks (coffee, dark chocolate, and fish sauce) take this chili to the next level.

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Pressure Cooker Corn Risotto

Photograph: Vicky Wasik

You've probably been told on several occasions that risotto will only taste right if you stand over the pot stirring tirelessly the entire time it cooks. Well, we're here to tell you that you can make risotto in your pressure cooker. And it will be really, really good. To make this corn risotto, corn cobs are added to the pressure cooker to impart the rice with sweet corn flavor. And once the rice is cooked, it's given even more corn flavor from a mixture of whole corn kernels and a smooth corn purée.

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