Okay, in addition to sewing, I am kind of really into cooking. I have been a little frustrated with sewing lately, or rather frustrated by slow progress on my current projects, so I'm going to talk about food! I got an Instant Pot last year, and it has definitely changed the way I cook. I use my Instant Pot to make honestly the best brown rice I've ever made, and I make a pot of beans every week to eat with whatever else I make. Having those two things available all the time makes it so easy to eat most/all of our meals at home and save so much money. So yeah, if you are trying to save some money and eat a little healthier, start making beans in your Instant Pot!
I started out making this recipe with black beans, but I switched to pinto beans when we moved to Hawaii and Costco had a 25 pound bag of pinto beans for $14. Both worked well, and this recipe could easily be adjusted for basically any other dried beans. I would just use the same amounts of salt and water/stock and switch up the seasonings.
Instant Pot Beans Recipe
1 lb pinto beans or black beans
veg stock + water to 6 cup line
1 tbls salt
2 bay leaves
1 tbls cumin
1 tbls Mexican oregano
1 tbls chili powder
1 tbls smoked paprika
1 tbls garlic
Cook on Manual Pressure for 25 minutes and let naturally release.
That's it! This is a really solid starting point for great beans in the Instant Pot. You can totally just follow that recipe and you should end up with great beans. HOWEVER, if you want more information, here are so many notes. I promise they're all related to the recipe.
Instant Pot Beans Recipe with SO MANY NOTES
First off, I highly recommend using an app like Google Notes to track what you use each time you make Instant Pot beans, or anything really. I tend to change up my recipe a little based on what spices I have available or what I'm going to be eating the beans with. It's a super easy way to think more about what you're cooking and how to improve it over time.
1 lb pinto beans - you can basically use this recipe for any kind of beans, obviously changing up seasonings a little based on the bean.
veg stock + water to 6 cup line - I use a mix of homemade veg stock and water, maybe 50/50, but you can do whatever. If you use all stock, you'll want to reduce the amount of salt, and if you use all water, you'll want to add more salt. I usually do 1.5 tbls salt if I use all water. Oh also, I always call it the 6 cup line, but because the Instant Pot is made in Canada, I think it's a weird metric equivalent of 6 cups or something? I dunno, just fill it to the line that says 6.
1 tbls salt - I'm a fan of salt, so I would guess 1 tbls would be the upper limit of salt you'll want to use. And again, If you use just vegetable stock and no water, you should reduce the salt (maybe 1/2 tablespoon?) and likewise you should go up to 1.5 tbls if you don't use any vegetable stock.
2 bay leaves - This is for good sized bay leaves you get from bulk bins; if you have tiny little bay leaves, maybe throw in four. Whatever, it'll be fine.
1 tbls cumin
1 tbls chili powder
1 tbls smoked paprika
1 tbls garlic
1 tbls Mexican oregano
- All of these are super flexible, based on preference or just what you have in your pantry. You can definitely add more chili powder if you're short on cumin, or vice versa. If you're short on chili powder, in addition to adding more cumin, you can add more garlic powder, oregano, cayenne, onion powder and/or paprika, as that's generally what's included in chili powder, but don't stress it too much. I've never actually used regular oregano in this recipe, but it would probably work nearly as well. You can also throw in a bunch of cloves of garlic in lieu of garlic powder; this worked really well with black beans. I used nearly a whole head of garlic cloves and skipped most of the other spices, and it turned out amazing. I'm honestly not sure how it would taste with pinto beans; I would probably still include a little bit of cumin and chili powder, but that's mostly because I love cumin and chili powder.
Cook on Manual Pressure for 25 minutes and let naturally release. - 25 minutes will give you well-cooked whole beans; I've recently gone up to 30 minutes, which results in even softer beans. The time will also vary a bit (probably just by a few minutes) based on the age of your beans. If you do 25 minutes and your beans still seem a bit undercooked, just throw them back in the Instant Pot for another couple minutes. If you don't have time to do natural release, add a few minutes to the cook time and just release the pressure immediately after cooking. The main reason to use natural release when cooking beans is it keeps the beans intact; sometimes when you use quick release, the change in pressure causes the beans to split open. Natural release can take 45 minutes, so if you're in a hurry, just use quick release and enjoy your still-delicious but possibly split-open beans.
Okay! If you follow this recipe, you will end up with really great beans! If you use this recipe to make beans in your Instant Pot, please let me know how it turned out!