Easy Recipes for the Electric Pressure Cooker / Instant Pot
A huge collection of the BEST easy to make recipes for the Instant Pot, Ninja Foodi, Crockpot Express, Power Pressure Cooker XL, or any other brand of electric pressure cooker!
Many of you got a beautiful, brand-new electric pressure cooker for Christmas, and you’re wondering what to cook first!
Today I’m highlighting a few of my favorite easy recipes for the Instant Pot, Power Pressure Cooker XL, or any brand of electric pressure cooker that are super easy and super delicious.
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First Pressure Cooker Recipes a Beginner Should Try
If you want to slowly get into pressure cooking, here are a few recipes that will get you more comfortable with your machine.
- Pressure Cooker / Instant Pot White Rice. This is possibly the most simple recipe you can make in the pressure cooker. It’s like the water test, but you get rice when it’s done. 🙂
- Instant Pot / Pressure Cooker Pulled BBQ Chicken. There’s a reason I selected this easy barbecue chicken recipe for my Make Your First Meal post. Just a few simple ingredients in the pot, add some sandwich rolls, and you have an easy dinner on the table!
- Pressure Cooker / Instant Pot Bow Tie Pasta. Make your meat sauce and your pasta at the same time in one pot.
45 Easy Electric Pressure Cooker Recipes for Instant Pot or ANY Brand
Use the below links to skip ahead to a specific category:
Easy Pressure Cooker Soup Recipes
The pressure cooker and soups are a perfect match. With many of these recipes, you just throw the ingredients into the pressure cooker and come back to a fabulous soup!
Easy Pressure Cooker Chicken Recipes
Chicken is one of my favorites to cook in the pressure cooker because it comes together quickly and you can cook diced chicken from frozen with no change to the cook time.
Easy Pressure Cooker Beef Recipes
Large cuts of meats that would cook all day long in the slow cooker are done in less than 90 minutes in the pressure cooker. Enjoy tender, juicy beef without having to cook all day.
Easy Pressure Cooker Pork Recipes
Don’t settle for dry, tough pork. Cooking pork in a pressure cooker using steam helps your meat to turn out perfect each time.
Easy and Quick Pressure Cooker Recipes
By cutting the meat into small pieces before cooking, you can have a great-tasting meal on the table quickly.
Easy Pressure Cooker Rice Recipes
When you have a pressure cooker you don’t need a rice cooker! The pressure cooker makes perfect rice every time. Here’s a couple of my favorite, easy-to-make rice recipes.
Easy Pressure Cooker Potato Recipes
Cook your potatoes without worrying about keeping an eye out so they don’t boil over. Simply add your potatoes to the pot and focus on getting the rest of your dinner on the table.
- Creamy Pressure Cooker Mashed Potatoes
- Quick Pressure Cooker Potato Salad (you cook the eggs and the potatoes at the same time!)
- Instant Pot Cheesy Potatoes Au Gratin
- Pressure Cooker Garlic Parmesan Red Potatoes
Easy Pressure Cooker Dessert Recipes
Desserts are my favorite part of the meal, and I have some fantastic dessert recipes for the pressure cooker. (I even made a book full of cheesecake, cake, pie, and other dessert recipes!)
Easy Pressure Cooker Breakfast Recipes
Your pressure cooker makes it easy to get a hot breakfast on the table even on a weekday.
How to Make These Easy Recipes in Any Brand of Electric Pressure Cooker
All of my recipes are written to work in ANY brand of electric pressure cooker, including
- Instant Pot (all models Duo, Ultra, Max, Nova, Evo, etc.)
- Power Pressure Cooker XL
- Power Quick Pot
- Ninja Foodi
- Mealthy MultiPot
- Crockpot Express
- Breville Fast Slow Pro
- Farberware
- Power Cooker
- Cooks Essentials
- Nuwave
- Cosori
It’s impossible to list all the brands. If you have a question about a specific brand, check out my Electric Pressure Cooker Facebook Group. We have over 10,000 members, and odds are someone else will have your machine!)
>> That’s it! You’ve completed the Getting Started Guide!
Now that you’re more comfortable using your pressure cooker, try adapting your favorite recipes for the pressure cooker.
Before long you’ll be wondering how you ever cooked without your pressure cooker, and whipping up more sophisticated desserts like my Nutella Rolo Cheesecake.
The Getting Started Guide Series
- Introduction: How to Use Your Instant Pot or Electric Pressure Cooker
- Pressure Cooker Parts Reference Guide
- Choosing a Pressure Release Method
- Water Test Run for the Instant Pot / Electric Pressure Cooker
- Make Your First Meal in Your Pressure Cooker / Instant Pot
- Easy Recipes to Make in Your New Instant Pot / Electric Pressure Cooker
Other How To Guides
- How to Know Which Instant Pot Button You Should Use?
- How to Get a Pan Out of the Pressure Cooker / Instant Pot
- How to Use the Pot-in-Pot Method in Your Pressure Cooker / Instant Pot
- How to Convert a Recipe to a Pressure Cooker Recipe
- How to Pressure Cook Frozen Chicken Breasts
- How to Cook Pasta in the Instant Pot / Electric Pressure Cooker
- How to Make Perfect Pressure Cooker Cheesecake
- How to Make Eggs in the Instant Pot / Pressure Cooker
Get More Pressure Cooking Today Recipes
Here at Pressure Cooking Today, we believe in making real food with fresh and familiar ingredients.
🥘 Browse my collection of the best pressure cooker recipes here on my website (some of my most popular recipes include Instant Pot Beef and Broccoli and Instant Pot
💬 Follow Pressure Cooking Today on Facebook and Instagram for the latest updates. Or join my Electric Pressure Cooker Facebook Group to connect with other pressure cooking fans.
✉️ Or you can join my free email list! You’ll get just one email a week with my latest recipes.
🥧 If you’re interested in more than just pressure cooker recipes, I share my other adventures in the kitchen over at Barbara Bakes. You’ll find some amazing breakfasts and breads, along with the best dessert recipes! Check it out today!
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This post should be very helpful, especially for new pressure cooker owners which, as of Christmas or other holiday celebrations, should be huge in number.
I especially like that Barbara is sharing a few of HER FAVORITE recipes. I’ve made a number of Barbara’s recipes and I must say, I’ve never had one I didn’t like. In fact, when I’m looking for a recipe for a particular dish, I typically check to see if Barbara has a recipe for that dish.
Thanks so much Sigrid! Wish you a wonderful New Year!
What a great post, Barbara, thanks! Bookmarking for later, ‘what can I make for dinner tonight?’ 😂 Love looking through your recipes, but before you know it, an hour or more has gone by & still haven’t started cooking. Lots of stuff to quickly pick out & get to cooking fast here!
So nice – thanks Jan!
What’s the best way to cook 4 leg quarters in my ten quart crockpot pressure cooker?
Hi Noah – I haven’t done leg quarters, but for chicken legs, I like to pressure cook them for 4 minutes on high pressure, do a 10-minute natural release and then finish them with some barbecue sauce on the grill until the sauce gets caramelized and sticky. I assume this method would work great for leg quarters as well. The chicken leg recipe is on page 131 of my cookbook. https://amzn.to/2YqPCok
Can I brown ground meat in the elechomes electric pressure cooker? I want to do sloppy joes.
Hi Barbara – you should be able to use the meat setting with the lid off to brown and saute. It looks similar to the PPC XL https://www.pressurecookingtoday.com/how-to-use-the-power-pressure-cooker-xl/
Can you make bread in the ambiano pressure cooker?
Hi Brenda – I’m not familiar with the Ambiano pressure cooker. I haven’t tried making bread in the pressure cooker, but have seen people make dense brown bread in a can. Others have used the warm setting to rise bread dough.
I would like to know how to cook Frozen Meats like Pork Shoulder Steaks or Pork Chops in my Spt Electric Pressure Cooker…… Please Help Thanks
Hi Kateella – for meats that aren’t very thick like chicken breasts and pork chops, you don’t have to add any extra cook time. For thicker meats, you’ll want to add about 5 minutes per pound for frozen meats.
I’m with the lady who got a 2 qt pressure cooker. I, too, desperately need easy recipes for a 2 qt cooker. Open to any help!
I don’t currently have any recipes for the 2 quart, but many of the recipes can be divided in half and made without changing the cook time. Just be sure you use enough liquid to come to pressure – generally 1 cup, 1/2 cup with recipes like chicken that will release liquid as they come to pressure. Keep a notebook and pretty soon you’ll have lots of recipes ready to go.
Have you had any success finding recipes for the 2 qt?
Kateela & S J: my first pressure cooker was a Cosori 2 qt & was my only cooker for a long time. Barbara’s recipes usually halve perfectly, same cook times. The only thing you need to watch out for is not exceeding your max fill, or half fill for beans, pastas, frothy foods & make sure you use your model’s minimum recommended liquid. If half recipe is too much for your pot, just reduce everything a bit more, keeping ingredient/liquid ratios the same. (Online cooking calculators are great or some apps allow you to scale recipes ½, ¼, etc. I use recipe app called ‘Paprika’ on my tablet, add Barbara’s recipe to the app, then use the app to calculate the reductions by selecting ½, ¼ recipe, etc, app does calculations for you.) As Barbara recommends, keep notes so you can tweak a recipe if need be – very seldom necessary with her recipes though. Once Instant Pot released the 3-qt, I cook mainly in 2 of those, use the 2-qt now mostly for sides or rice. For meats, like a roast, I just have the meat department cut it in half or thirds for me, then wrap & freeze. You can also bring your pot with you when grocery shopping until you are able to eyeball what fits 😉 One of those frozen Cornish hens from Walmart fit perfectly – whole or cut up (plus, cute). Again, you can totally cook any of Barbara’s recipes in a 2-qt – never had a fail yet & had no idea what I was doing when I first started. Then once you get the hang of it, super easy to halve most any 6-qt recipe down to 2-qt. Hope this helps & have fun!
Great advice – thanks so much Jan!!
I am looking for a receipt for chicken tangine made in an instapot. Thanks
I haven’t tried it, but I did find this recipe online http://www.biggirlssmallkitchen.com/2017/04/instantpot-pressure-cooker-chicken-tagine-recipe.html that looks great.
How do you use the steamer function with this cooker??
Hi Donna – which pressure cooker do you have? Most pressure cookers the steam function is a pressure cooking function. https://www.pressurecookingtoday.com/instant-pot-duo-and-smartcooker/
I JUST RECEIVED THE INSTANT POT ELECTRIC PRESSURE COOKER. IT DOES NOT TELL HOW TO DETERMIN THE TIME TO COOK IF YOU HAVE A SMALLER SIZE ROAST. IS THERE A GUIDE FOR PORK AND BEEF THAT WILL TELL YOU HOW LONG TO COOK A 2# WHEN THE RECIPE CALLS FOR A 4# ROAST.
Generally I would cut the recipe time in half if the roast is half as thick as the recipe specifies.
Awesome website!!! Thank you!
Hi Barbara I have Instant Pot pressure cooker.
Can you recommend a receipt of a bread
and a kind of sponge cakes.
Which mode I need to use? Do I need a water?
In instruction I did not find which mode can give me the highest temperature.
Hi Vera – here’s more information about which button to use https://www.pressurecookingtoday.com/instant-pot-duo-and-smartcooker/. Here’s a recipe for a cake https://www.pressurecookingtoday.com/pressure-cooker-pumpkin-chocolate-chip-bundt-cake/. There’s a couple more in my cookbook. http://amzn.to/2BlOQNT Have fun!
Looking forward to many exciting recipes.
Thanks Jan – have fun!
I am trying to cook scalloped potatoes and thick cut browned porkchops together in pressure pot I don’t know how long or which setting to use. I don’t want mushy potatoes. It’s 6 sliced potatoes and 6 porkchops
Hi Karol – for best results, you’ll want to do them separately. Here’s my scalloped potato recipe https://www.pressurecookingtoday.com/cheesy-potatoes-au-gratin/ and my favorite pork chop recipe https://www.pressurecookingtoday.com/easy-pork-chops-in-mushroom-gravy/
I have 4 chicken legs (drums only) I want to cook w/BBQ sauce in my 7-in-1 Farberware pressure cooker. But cannot find a recipe for this
Hi Kristina – you can cook them just like these wings https://www.pressurecookingtoday.com/pressure-cooker-bbq-wings/ Enjoy!
This is the recipe that came with my Farberware pressure cooker for BBQ’d chicken.
! small onion diced, 2 TBL of butter, 8 pieces of chicken with skin removed, 1 1/2 cup of your favorite BBQ sauce, 1/2 cup of water, 1/4 tsp salt, 1/2 teaspoon of pepper, 1/4 teaspoon of garlic powder. Select setting SEAR-ROAST, leaving the lid off heat the butter until it is melted, then add onion. Cook until they are soft. Stirring often. Press the STOP button to turn the machines heating element off. Mix the garlic powder, salt and pepper together and rub all over the chicken pieces. Place the chicken into the pressure cooker. Mix the BBQ sauce and water together and pour over chicken. Lock lid on cooker and select chicken setting.
I have just bought a electric pressure cooker. I have looked all over but recipes all appear too exotic for me.
Hi Margaret – what recipes are you looking for?
I just ordered a 2 quart pressure cooker. I am cooking for one so I don’t need large quantities. Do you have some tips for downsizing recipes to fit a small pot?
Hi Jeri – I don’t have any experience using a 2 quart pressure cooker. But a couple of things to be aware of. You’ll still need to use enough liquid to bring it to pressure, about 1/2 cup. Your time to come to pressure will be shorter, so you may have to increase the cook time to compensate. Have fun! Let me know how it goes.
Hi Barbara,
Great site!! You have some wonderful recipes. I also want to compliment your layout… the recipes are easy to find, understand, and especially print (1 page, not the whole site lol). Thank you and keep up the great work.
God Bless,
Lori
Thanks! That’s so nice Lori 🙂 Have fun!
I just received a stovetop pressure cooker for Christmas. Yay!
Never cooked with one but am excited to try it.
I noticed your potato salad recipe and had a question–you obviously use an electric pc–you said to set for 4 minutes for cooking eggs/potatoes.
What does that translate to with stovetop? Once steam starts to escape, then time 4 minutes and do quick release?
Yay! How exciting. You’ll want to wait until your stovetop pressure cooker comes to high pressure and then start timing. The electrics don’t start counting down the time until they’ve reached pressure. Have fun!
Where can I find accessories for my XL Pressure cooker, such as steamer baskets and springform pans, trivets, etc.?
Hi Joy – here’s some of my favorites from Amazon https://www.pressurecookingtoday.com/best-pressure-cooker-accessories/
Santa is evidently bringing me a Farberware 7-1-programmable electric pressure cooker. I had my heart set on an Instant pot. I am most concerned with the non-stick pot as opposed to the stainless steel. is it worth making an exchange or will it be OK. i also notice the majority of recipes, tips, and instructions online are for the instant pot and that concerns me. Barely a mention of Farberware pots.
Hi Nana – I’ve never used the Farberware, but most of the pressure cooker work similarly so recipes and tips should all work with it. If you’re not opposed to the non-stick pot for health reasons (I’m not) and you don’t want to upset Santa, then I wouldn’t exchange. Instead, you may find you need two pressure cookers – one to cook the main dish and one to cook the side dish – then buy yourself that Instant Pot you want 🙂
Nana, I recently joined some pressure cooking groups. saw your 15 month old post. Hope you love your pressure cooker. Did you see the different ways to clean your non-stick pot, without scrubbing.You can watch videos on YouTube.Just put in your brand of PC. There is plenty of websites for pressure cooking. I have 3 pressure cooker, have been pressure cooking over 15 years.