Seriously Delicious Instant Pot Recipes You Have To Try

The Instant Pot is a miraculous thing. In fact, you can prepare creamy risotto in just six minutes without the constant stirring. You can also whip up beef stew that tastes like it was lovingly braised for hours, but cooks in just 15 minutes. Plus, with digital controls and failsafe tech, there's no fear of lids exploding like back in the day of using old-school pressure cookers.

Will your friends know that you didn't spend the entire day preparing fresh tomato sauce? Nope. Can you still make baked beans from scratch if you forgot to soak the dried beans overnight? Yes. Can you make desserts in an Instant Pot? Of course — including a custardy pumpkin pie with browned butter, which is included in this tasty roundup.

While you can use your Instant Pot to slow-cook dishes throughout the day, the recipes below take advantage of the kitchen tool's ability to get breakfast, lunch, dinner, or dessert on the table quickly. Whether you're cooking for a crowd or for one lucky person, these Instant Pot recipes are sure to be fan favorites.

With an Instant Pot, anyone can make a perfectly al dente risotto that's creamy, dreamy, and perfect for impressing family or a date. After sautéing onions, garlic, and mushrooms with dried thyme, all you do is add rice and broth. Then, pressure cook the dish on high for only six minutes. That's at least 15 minutes less stirring and worrying about burning your dinner than most risotto dishes call for. The tasty result will speak for itself. You'll never want to spend extra time over a hot skillet again.

An Instant Pot isn't going to give you the smoky, crusted ribs of barbecue fame, but that's totally okay. No rib lover will complain about savoring these juicy, tender baby back Instant Pot ribs for dinner, especially if you finish preparing them under the broiler with a tangy barbecue sauce. Besides, with just five ingredients and a 35-minute cooking time, it doesn't get any easier to whip up a meal than this.

This traditional Italian soup combines bacon, sausage, potatoes, kale, cream, and Parmesan cheese, and it comes together in less than 30 minutes. This Instant Pot zuppa tuscana is a soup for anyone who doesn't think soup is a meal. And it's a meal for anyone who already (rightfully) knows that it is. The cream and kale add a little richness and nutritional content, while the meats flavor the chicken broth in this recipe. The result is a fairly low-carb soup that's guaranteed to provide leftovers — unless you just can't stop back for another delicious bowl. No one could blame you for that.

These Instant Pot loaded mashed potatoes might be the only recipe on this list that requires you to cook something outside of the Instant Pot: the bacon. Although this is a quick extra step, the bacon is certainly a crispy and essential addition to these loaded mashed potatoes. The extra effort is worth it, and you don't even need a second pot on top of the stove. Instead of boiling and draining the potatoes, you cook them in broth and mash them along with the other ingredients, including milk, sour cream, cheddar cheese, butter, and green onions.

If you're a meat lover who's dreaming of tacos, enchiladas, burritos, quesadillas, or fajitas, these Instant Pot pork carnitas are sure to be your new best friend. Who has the time to slow-braise pork shoulder for hours in the oven? By using an Instant Pot, you'll get super tender pork every time you make a meal. No liquid can evaporate, so the meat will stay moist and juicy for when it's time to serve. Consider adding some tortillas, rice, salsa, and guacamole on the side for a well-rounded meal.

Beef stew is an underrated dish that every meat lover should know how to prepare. It usually takes a fair bit of effort and a lot of patience, but the Instant Pot changes all that. Instead of worrying if there's enough liquid in the pot or if the beef is drying out, all you do is brown the cubed meat, add your broth and vegetables, cook it for 15 minutes on high pressure, and then let the pressure release. When you feel that whoosh of warm air as you lift the lid and smell the comforting aroma of homemade beef stew, you'll probably feel a little bad for anyone who doesn't own an Instant Pot.

The name says it all. The result of this Instant Pot snickerdoodle French toast casserole is a cinnamon-scented bread pudding-type dish you're completely allowed to eat for breakfast. Brioche makes this recipe feel a little bit fancy, but all the more delicious for using eggy, fluffy bread in place of generic sandwich bread. Snickerdoodle spicing brings the high-brow nature of the ingredient down to a respectable medium-low. But the key is the high-pressure cooking that steams the dish quickly, while keeping it moist and custardy. And if you want a nice, caramelized top, you just put the dish under the broiler to finish it off before serving.

This Instant Pot recipe simplifies spaghetti and meatballs in three key ways. It gives you an option of homemade or frozen meatballs, it lets you make your own homemade tomato sauce or use canned, and it lets you add the pasta directly into the sauce. That means there will be less clean-up and your one-pot meal can be as simple as you'd like. You don't even need to sear your meatballs first, and you can add as much cheese as you want. That kind of flexibility will make this recipe a go-to for weeknights and weekends alike.

These Instant Pot baked beans go from dry to cooked in less than two hours with no need to soak the dry beans overnight. The bacon and sweet barbecue-style sauce will prove how much better homemade baked beans are than canned beans. The one-pot process is simple and can be tailored to your culinary needs. For instance, vegetarians can leave out the bacon, and spice lovers can pile on the hot peppers. Either way, you'll have a sweet-and-sour batch of beans that will keep you looking forward to breakfast, lunch, and/or dinner for days (the recipe serves 12, after all). The best part is, using one pot makes it an easy clean-up.

There's nothing quite as comforting at the end of a long day as enjoying corn-rich and meaty Instant Pot pozole. This verde version of the traditionally slow-cooked Mexican dish calls for tomatillos and canned chopped green chillies, plus an essential ingredient: white hominy. The ground cumin and oregano season the juicy pork (although you could substitute with chicken or other meats instead), while lime adds a floral, acidic note. This meal is bound to fill you up.

You'll be surprised to hear that pie doesn't actually have to bake in the oven. This recipe for Instant Pot pumpkin pie is a case in point. A little bit of water in the bottom of the pot steams the inserted baking dish and guarantees a custardy, silky filling. By making a pie this way, there's no risk of the water evaporating and ending up with a burnt or overly dry dessert. 

You might think pastry would be a bad idea in what's essentially a high-pressure steamer. Surprisingly, the crumbled cookie crust means there's no gloopy pastry, and the browned butter cooked at high pressure results in a super rich, caramelized flavor. Instant dessert victory.

This might revolutionize the way you cook chicken. Need some meat for tacos? How about for a sandwich or salad? Or do you simply want something to pair with rice and vegetables? Instead of sautéing chicken breasts or broiling them — which can tend to dry out the already lean meat — this method for Instant Pot chicken cooks them in broth, so they're done faster and stay moist. You are also not using any extra fats to cook with, so it's a lean and tasty way to prepare the meat.