I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I love my Instant Pot. I love it so much that I hug it after I set it up because I know that in just a few short minutes, something tasty will emerge. From chickpea curry to the best fall-apart Mexican pork tacos, the Instant Pot is my go-to for weeknight dinners. Click here to see my five can’t miss Instant Pot recipes!
1. Creamy Chickpea Curry
This Instant Pot chickpea curry has everything you need — tender chickpeas, carrots and onions swimming in a creamy, tomato-based curry sauce. We eat this curry at least once every other week because it’s flavorful and filling. Best of all — in the Instant Pot, it cooks in mere minutes. Plus, it’s vegetarian, gluten-free and dairy free, for those with dietary restrictions.
2. Easy Shredded Chicken
This Instant Pot chicken should be a staple in your cooking arsenal if for no other reason that it is the foundation for so many other dishes you can make. The chicken requires only three ingredients (including the whole chicken itself) and, after 30 minutes in an Instant Pot, comes out juicy, tender and ready for all sorts of fun, from a generous coating of barbecue sauce to a toss of mayo and mustard with chopped celery for a tasty chicken salad. This chicken shows up in our regular dinner rotation dressed up in all sorts of different disguises, and the result is always the same — delicious dinner.
3. Pancetta and Bean Soup
The real gift that the Instant Pot gives all of us is the gift of time. There’s no need to spend hours over a hot stove, stirring a pot of simmering beans while wondering what your real friends are up to outside. This pancetta and bean soup, made with a mix of green lentils, black eyed peas, black beans and pinto beans, is the best of what the Instant Pot can do. The soup itself is a broth of chopped tomatoes and chicken stock, and when garnished with chopped cilantro, it’s both fresh and smoky.
4. Chicken Soup with Homemade Gnocchi
Gnocchi – pillowy pasta made out of potatoes and flour – is much easier to make from scratch than you think. Sure, it makes a HUGE mess, and that in and of itself can be enough of a deterrent from making this recipe for chicken soup with homemade gnocchi, ever. But the good news is that the chicken soup these puffy little fellas float in is easy to make in an Instant Pot, cutting down serious cooking and kitchen time.
5. Mexican Pork Pibil Tacos
This recipe for Mexican pork pibil came to me by way of my cookbook club, which reviewed The Really Quite Good British Cookbook at our first cookbook club meeting. The original recipe calls for making the pork in a low oven, which takes several hours. With an Instant Pot, this pork shoulder is fall apart and perfect under an hour. I love mine on top of rice with pickled radishes, but it’s just as good folded inside some soft flour tortillas with shredded lettuce.
So, what are you waiting for? It’s Instant Pot time!
