31 Quick Dinner Recipes for Your Instant Pot or Pressure Cooker

The pressure cooker is a miracle worker: There's no better way to make a quick weeknight dinner that tastes like it took all day.

The Serious Eats Team

Updated September 25, 2023

Butter chicken in a white bowl — Serious Eats / Vicky Wasik

It seems like we're always talking about how crazy life is, and how we don't have quite as much time to spend in the kitchen as we might like. Fortunately, there's a secret weapon that we can turn to when we 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 butter chicken, beef chili, 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.

Harissa (Armenian Wheat and Chicken Porridge)
Serious Eats / Andrew Janjigian
Harissa—also known as herisseh, harisa, or keshkeg—is a wheat berry and meat porridge. The meat in question is usually chicken or lamb (occasionally beef), and the wheat is usually korkot, or “shelled” wheat, meaning wheat berries that have had their tough hulls removed, making them (somewhat) quicker to cook. The porridge is far more than the sum of its parts, with a little assist from spiced brown butter for flavor, and a pressure cooker for quick cooking.
Harissa (Armenian Wheat and Chicken Porridge)
Pressure Cooker Corn Risotto
Serious Eats / 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'll 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. Once the rice is cooked, it's given even more corn flavor from a mixture of whole corn kernels and a smooth corn purée.
Pressure Cooker Corn Risotto Recipe
Pressure Cooker Chunky Beef and Bean Chili
Serious Eats / 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.
Pressure Cooker Chunky Beef and Bean Chili Recipe
Pressure Cooker Red Wine–Braised Beef Short Ribs
Serious Eats / 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.
Pressure Cooker Red Wine–Braised Beef Short Ribs Recipe
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Pressure Cooker Jewish-Style Braised Brisket With Onions and Carrots
Serious Eats / 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.
Pressure Cooker Jewish-Style Braised Brisket With Onions and Carrots Recipe
Pressure Cooker Mushroom Risotto
Serious Eats / Mariel De La Cruz
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.
Pressure Cooker Mushroom Risotto Recipe
30-Minute Pressure Cooker Split Pea and Ham Soup
Serious Eats / 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 here!
30-Minute Pressure Cooker Split Pea and Ham Soup Recipe
Pressure Cooker Ribollita (Tuscan Bean and Vegetable Stew)
Serious Eats / 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 a while 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.
Pressure Cooker Ribollita (Tuscan Bean and Vegetable Stew) Recipe
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Better Pressure Cooker Butter Chicken
Serious Eats / Vicky Wasik
The goal of this recipe is to provide you with a better version of pressure-cooker butter chicken, one that hits all of the characteristic notes of a butter chicken—mildly spiced tomato-based sauce; tender, charred chicken pieces; a mother's love's worth of butter and cream folded in at the end—without being too taxing to prepare. We may be a bit biased, but we think it delivers!
Better Pressure Cooker Butter Chicken Recipe
Quick and Easy Pressure Cooker Chicken, Lentil, and Bacon Stew With Carrots
Serious Eats / J. Kenji López-Alt
To give you an idea of just how magical the pressure cooker is, we 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.
Quick and Easy Pressure Cooker Chicken, Lentil, and Bacon Stew With Carrots
30-Minute Pressure Cooker Chicken With Chickpeas, Tomatoes, and Chorizo
Serious Eats / 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.
30-Minute Pressure Cooker Chicken With Chickpeas, Tomatoes, and Chorizo Recipe
Pressure Cooker French Onion Soup
Serious Eats / 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.
Pressure Cooker French Onion Soup Recipe
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Pressure Cooker American Beef Stew
Serious Eats / 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.
Pressure Cooker Beef and Vegetable Stew Recipe
Pressure Cooker Thai Green Chicken Curry With Eggplant and Kabocha Squash
Serious Eats / 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.
Pressure Cooker Thai Green Chicken Curry With Eggplant and Kabocha Squash Recipe
Quick and Easy Pressure Cooker Chicken and Black Bean Stew
Serious Eats / 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.
Quick and Easy Pressure Cooker Chicken and Black Bean Stew Recipe
Pressure Cooker Black Bean Soup With Sausage and Cumin-Lime Sour Cream
Serious Eats / 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
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Easy Vegan Pressure Cooker Miso Risotto
Serious Eats / 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
Pressure Cooker Butternut Squash Risotto With Frizzled Sage and Brown Butter
Serious Eats / 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.
Pressure Cooker Butternut Squash Risotto With Frizzled Sage and Brown Butter Recipe
Pressure Cooker Beef Barley Soup
Serious Eats / 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.
Pressure Cooker Beef Barley Soup Recipe
Colombian Chicken Stew With Potatoes, Tomato, and Onion
Serious Eats / 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.
Colombian Chicken Stew With Potatoes, Tomato, and Onion Recipe
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Quick and Easy Dairy- and Fat-Free Colombian Vegetable Soup (Ajiaco Negro)
Serious Eats / 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.
Quick and Easy Dairy- and Fat-Free Colombian Vegetable Soup (Ajiaco Negro) Recipe
Pressure Cooker Corn Soup
Serious Eats / 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.
Pressure Cooker Corn Soup Recipe
Easy Pressure Cooker Chicken and Chickpea Masala
Serious Eats / 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.
Easy Pressure Cooker Chicken and Chickpea Masala Recipe
30-Minute Pressure Cooker Pho Ga (Vietnamese Chicken Noodle Soup)
Serious Eats / 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.
30-Minute Pressure Cooker Pho Ga (Vietnamese Chicken Noodle Soup) Recipe
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1-Hour Pressure Cooker Texas-Style Chile Con Carne
Serious Eats / 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.
1-Hour Pressure Cooker Texas-Style Chili con Carne Recipe
Tamale Pie With Braised Skirt Steak, Charred Corn, and Brown Butter Cornbread Crust
Serious Eats / 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 chiles, 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.
The Best Tamale Pie With Braised Skirt Steak, Charred Corn, and Brown Butter Cornbread Crust Recipe
Easy Pressure Cooker Green Chili With Chicken
Serious Eats / 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.
Chicken Chile Verde Pressure Cooker Recipe
Easy Pressure Cooker Chicken Enchiladas
Serious Eats / 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.
Easy Pressure Cooker Chicken Enchiladas Recipe
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Easy Pressure Cooker Pork Chile Verde
Serious Eats / Eric Kleinberg
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 chiles—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.
Get the recipe for Easy Pressure Cooker Pork Chile Verde
Pressure Cooker Ragù Bolognese
Serious Eats / 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.
Pressure Cooker Ragù Bolognese Recipe
Pressure Cooker Tomato Sauce
Serious Eats / J. Kenji López-Alt
Homemade tomato sauce on a weeknight in the 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!
Pressure Cooker Tomato Sauce Recipe

31 Quick Dinner Recipes for Your Instant Pot or Pressure Cooker

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