Here are the best healthy Instant Pot recipes to add to your repertoire! A pressure cooker is perfect for whipping up fresh and easy meals.
Got an Instant Pot or electric pressure cooker? Turns out, the Instant Pot can make eating healthy simple! While Alex and I were skeptical of the Instant Pot at first, once we finally got one we fell in love with its versatility.
Here, we’ve put together a list of all our favorite healthy Instant Pot recipes! There are a few main categories: dinner recipes like soups and pasta, side dishes, and basics like dried beans, and whole grains. We love using it for all three! (You can also use it for drinks, but that’s another other topic.) Keep reading for more about cooking in a pressure cooker, and all of the best healthy Instant Pot recipes.
Top healthy Instant Pot recipes!
Looking for a quick and easy weeknight pasta? This healthy Instant Pot spaghetti recipe is for when you just don’t want to have to think about dinner. And the flavor? Take it from one of our readers, who said: “Oh my, I scraped the bowl clean on this one! The flavor was awesome and it was so easy.” Scroll down for the recipe!
Next up in these favorite healthy Instant Pot recipes: chili! This vegetarian chili is full of big flavor! Instead of meat, this one features healthy plant-based proteins: two beans and lentils. But it keeps meat-lovers satisfied with lots of spices to make a hearty meal. Load it up with all the toppings for the full experience (use cashew cream for vegan).
This healthy Instant Pot recipe has become a fan favorite! Can you cook pasta in a pressure cooker without it turning to mush? Turns out, you can! This Instant Pot pasta mixes a marinara sauce with creamy goat cheese. It’s so seriously flavorful and a perfect easy weeknight dinner recipe: it's as simple as throwing a few ingredients in the pot and cooking for 5 minutes.
Here's another fan favorite Instant pot recipe: creamy wild rice soup! This soup is oh so comforting, featuring white beans, carrots, mushrooms and wild rice. And, it’s vegan! It’s naturally creamy using cashews blended with some of the soup to create a silky smooth texture. It makes for a filling and satisfying wild rice soup.
This healthy Instant Pot recipe is so delicious, you won't even remember that you're doing your body! You'll just feel like you're wrapped in a cozy hug. Did we mention it's a totally plant based main dish recipe, too? This vegan lentil soup is ready to amaze you.
This healthy Instant Pot tacos recipe features a smoky lentils and rice filling, spiced with smoked paprika, fennel, onion, and garlic. The recipe cooks up into a meaty, savory mix. Top with fresh veggies, salsa, and crunchy romaine for a tasty and filling plant-powered taco.
Use this Instant Pot sweet potatoes to make whole sweet potatoes that come out perfectly moist! Then follow our Sweet Potatoes with Thai Peanut Butter Sauce recipe, which tops them with a cabbage and bell pepper flaw, fresh cilantro, and a zingy peanut sauce.
Who could pass up Instant Pot loaded potato soup? This one is creamy with intermittent potato chunks, using no heavy cream at all! Old Bay gives it an irresistible undertone. And it’s so easy to make: you don’t even need a blender! Like any good recipe, the best part is the toppings. Load it up with whatever you like: here we used shredded cheese, sour cream, chives, and smoky, salty vegan bacon.
This healthy Instant Pot split pea soup recipe is the ultimate meal! It’s filling, plant based, and easy to make in a pressure cooker. This tasty dinner recipe is full of cozy, lightly smoky flavor. And all that's required is chopping an onion, celery and carrot. That's it! Let your Instant Pot do the rest of the work.
Stuffed squash is a delicious healthy dinner recipe, and here the Instant Pot makes both the squash and the rice! Tender acorn squash is draped with a savory, herb-laden pecan and rice stuffing that truly makes your kitchen smell like a fall paradise!
Spaghetti squash takes about 1 hour to roast in the oven: but the Instant Pot cuts that time in half! Spaghetti squash can be a healthy side dish recipe (try our Easy Pesto Spaghetti Squash), or used as part of a main dish. Our Spaghetti Squash Spaghetti is cooked with garlic and herbs, then doused in marinara sauce for a low-carb take on spaghetti.
This healthy and easy Instant Pot butternut squash soup is creamy and cozy with no creamy at all! It's spiced with sage, with a hint of cinnamon and a smoky undertone. The squash and carrot give it an electric orange hue, and it's rounded out with potato and apple for sweetness. Really, it's pure gold in a bowl!
Here’s a fun trick you can whip up with your pressure cooker: Instant Pot hummus! Sure, it’s easy to buy store-bought hummus. But for the very best creamy chickpea puree: homemade hummus is where it’s at! It’s a great trick using your Instant Pot, and perfect if you whip up a big batch of chickpeas.
Moving on to healthy Instant Pot side dish recipes! This steamed broccoli is so easy and has a cook time of Zero minutes. That's right, Zero minutes! Serve it with red onion, olive oil, and feta cheese, and it's a standout side dish that takes no effort at all.
Mashed potatoes are perfect in the Instant Pot! These healthy mashed potatoes are a blend of sweet potatoes and Yukon gold potatoes, and they come together into the perfectly fluffy, creamy texture. Use cream or non-dairy milk to bring it together, and top with chopped chives.
Here's another healthy Instant Pot recipe that makes a quick and easy side dish! This is the BEST way to eat cauliflower: mixed with lemon zest for brightness, Italian seasoning, and olive oil. It's got a Mediterranean flair and is so tasty, you won't be able to stop eating it!
Here's another seriously quick and healthy Instant Pot side dish recipe: green beans with lemon! It's so fast to steam green beans in a pressure cooker. Then mix with salt, olive oil and lemon zest for seriously fresh flavor.
One of the very best uses for your Instant Pot? Mashed potatoes. Yes, mashed potatoes are so much easier in a pressure cooker! You don’t have to worry about them boiling over on the stovetop, or keep testing them to see when they’re done. Nope, just throw them into the Instant Pot and press Go! This makes a large batch and is perfect for entertaining.
Can you use an Instant Pot for Brussels sprouts? Actually you can: and they turn out extremely tasty! They come out crisp tender and bright green. Mix them with butter, chives and Parmesan, and they're a super fast side dish. They're done in just under 15 minutes!
Healthy whole grains are perfect for cooking in the Instant Pot! Outside of rice, there are lots of different whole grains that come out perfectly in a pressure cooker. Here are all our master recipes:
Instant Pot Whole Grains
How to Cook Rice in an Instant Pot
Instant Pot Brown Rice
Instant Pot White Rice
Instant Pot Basmati Rice
Instant Pot Jasmine Rice
Instant Pot Quinoa
Instant Pot Farro
Instant Pot Bulgur Wheat
One of the very best ways to use an Instant Pot to make healthy recipes: cook dried beans! Dried beans are so much quicker in a pressure cooker: you can cook them in about 1 hour, versus 3 hours and an overnight soak. It's a total game changer. Here are all our master recipes.
Instant Pot Dried Beans / Legumes
Instant Pot Chickpeas
Instant Pot Black Beans
Instant Pot Black Eyed Peas
Instant Pot Pinto Beans
Instant Pot Lentils
The Instant Pot makes homemade applesauce: and it's a healthy spin with no added sugar! This recipe skips the extra sugars of the store bought kind. Throw the apples, water and a cinnamon stick into your Instant Pot and voila: sweet, tasty applesauce!
Here’s an easy, healthy breakfast recipe for weekdays or entertaining guests: Instant Pot oatmeal! If you’ve got a pressure cooker, oatmeal is even easier to make. The oats are toasted in butter until fragrant, then mixed with milk and cooked for just 3 minutes. (Vegan variation included.) What comes out is the creamiest, tastiest oatmeal you’ll make!
The Instant Pot can also make healthy breakfast recipes! (What can't it do, really?) This creamy steel cut oats recipe features an apple cinnamon flavor. Top it with cashew butter and fresh fruit, and it's a nutritious way to start the day.
Last up in our healthy Instant Pot recipes: eggs! Did you know you could cook hard boiled eggs in a pressure cooker? This method is totally hands off: you don’t have to wait for water to boil or worry about overcooking the eggs. The entire process takes about 20 minutes and couldn’t be simpler. And even better: boiling eggs in an Instant Pot makes for easy peel hard boiled eggs. (Really! We didn’t believe it until we tried it.)
What’s an Instant Pot?
An Instant Pot is a digital pressure cooker (Instant Pot is the brand name; Instapot is a slang variation). Here’s the Instant Pot we have. But there are lots of brands of electric pressure cookers! The concept is to cook foods at high pressure, which cuts down on cooking time. It’s the exact opposite of a crock pot or slow cooker, which has very long cook times.
Why cook with a pressure cooker?
Alex and I will be the first to admit: cooking with an Instant Pot is not something we ever expected to do. We’re pretty wary of adding new gadgets to our kitchen. If we add something new to our kitchen, we want to be confident it will be useful in the long term before committing precious cabinet space.
We were on the fence for years until we gave it a try. Now, we make so many different recipes in the Instant Pot (as you can see above). While it’s not a perfect solution to making fast meals, here are the major advantages we see:
- It’s usually pretty hands off. The nice thing about pressure cooking is you can “set it and forget it” in many cases. Recipes don’t require baby-sitting like they do on the stove or in the oven.
- It can be faster. The Instant Pot is not always faster! It depends on what you’re making. But some things it can shave the standard cook time in half: like cooking dried beans, spaghetti squash, or beets.
- It can extend your kitchen. It might sound silly, but one of the reasons we love the Instant Pot is that it gets extra pans off our stovetop or oven so that we can concentrate on cooking the rest of the meal.
What Instant Pot do you use?
Alex and I use an Instant Pot brand (Instant Pot is the brand name; Instapot is a slang variation). The pressure cooker we used to test all of these healthy recipe is the Instant Pot 6 Qt Multi-Use Programmable Pressure Cooker.
We can’t speak to other brands and types of Instant Pots. For example, we’ve heard that the Instant Pot Mini is pretty different and does not work as well as the standard size. So, only use the Instant Pot Mini for these recipes at your own risk!
The other pressure cooker we have experimented with is the Ambiano Digital Pressure Cooker that we used to make the steel cut oatmeal. We found that this pressure cooker performed similarly to our Instant Pot and the timing was interchangeable.
“Hidden” cook time with a pressure cooker
As Alex and I have come to understand our Instant Pot, we’ve learned a few things. The cook time for pressure cooker recipes can look deceptively short. Sweet potatoes cook for 16 minutes, and apple crisp cooks in 2 minutes, and broccoli in 0 minutes!
However, keep in mind that there are two additional times to add to the cook time.
- “Preheat” time: After you add the ingredients to the pot, the Instant Pot requires about time for “preheating” or coming up to pressure. This time can vary depending on the recipe and how much food is in the pressure cooker. It’s usually about 5 minutes, but can be up to 20 minutes (in our mashed potatoes for a crowd).
- Natural release time (depends on recipe): Some recipes call for a “cool down” process to release the pressure in the pot. A Quick Release means that the steam in the pot is released immediately and you can remove the lid. But some recipes call for a Natural Release, where you wait with the cover on for the pressure to naturally release from the pot.
Once you take into account these additional times, you can accurately estimate the time needed to cook using a pressure cooker! All our Instant Pot recipes have the preheat time (and Natural Release, if applicable) clearly marked. We want to help you understand how long the pressure cooker recipe will actually take to make.
Understanding the Instant Pot sealing ring
Your Instant Pot or pressure cooker comes with a plastic sealing ring on the inside of the lid. The sealing ring can sometimes pick up odors from the cooking. Here are a few tips on caring for the sealing ring:
- Make sure to remove the sealing ring and fully clean it after cooking.
- Store the Instant Pot with the lid upside down so the sealing ring is exposed to air, instead of with the lid closed onto the pot. This allows the sealing ring to air out between uses.
- To remove the odor from an Instant Pot sealing ring, soak it in vinegar for a few hours.
- Tip: If you use your Instant Pot often, consider purchasing two sealing rings. We have 2 Instant Pot sealing rings and use one for savory recipes and one for sweet recipes.
Looking for Instapot recipes?
Instapot, Instant Pot, and Electric Pressure Cooker are all different names for the same thing: a countertop appliance that cooks food using high pressure. Outside of the recipes above, here are our best pressure cooker and Instapot recipes:
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Healthy Instant Pot Recipes: Easy Spaghetti!
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 5 minutes
- Total Time: 20 minutes
- Yield: 3 to 4 1x
Description
Looking for a fast and easy dinner recipe? This Instant Pot spaghetti recipe is a total crowd pleaser and could not be easier to whip up.
Ingredients
- 2 cups water
- 28 ounce can crushed fire roasted tomatoes (or best quality crushed tomatoes)*
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
- 2 teaspoons garlic powder
- 1 teaspoon dried oregano
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 2 cups baby spinach leaves, tightly packed (or chopped spinach)
- 8 fresh basil leaves
- 8 ounces spaghetti (regular, not whole wheat)
- Soft goat cheese or Parmesan cheese, for serving (optional)
Instructions
- In a medium bowl, stir together the water, tomatoes and their juices, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, garlic powder, oregano, kosher salt, spinach, and whole basil leaves.
- Ladle just enough of the tomato mixture into the Instant Pot to cover the bottom.
- Break the spaghetti noodles in half. Working in batches, add the noodles to the Instant Pot in a fan shape so that they stack on each other, making as much space between the noodles as possible (if the noodles are directly next to each other they clump up — it doesn’t have to be perfect, just try to fan them out to make space).
- Pour remaining sauce over the spaghetti.
- Cook on high pressure for 6 minutes: Press the Pressure Cook button, making sure the “High Pressure” setting is selected, and set the time. Note that it takes about 10 minutes for the pot to “preheat” and come up to pressure before it starts cooking. (During cooking, avoid touching the metal part of the lid.)
- Quick release: Vent the remaining steam from the Instant Pot by moving the pressure release handle to “Venting”, covering your hand with a towel or hot pad. Never put your hands or face near the vent when releasing steam. Open the pressure cooker lid.
- Open the lid and stir, removing any clumps. Then remove the pot from the Instant Pot and allow to cool for 3 to 5 minutes for the sauce to thicken slightly. The sauce will thicken even more as it cools. If using, stir in goat cheese for a creamy sauce. Ladle into bowls and serve.
- Category: Main Dish
- Method: Instant Pot
- Cuisine: Italian
- Diet: Vegan
Keywords: Instant Pot Recipes, Healthy Instant Pot Recipes, Instant Pot Spaghetti, Instant Pot Pasta
Last updated: December 2020
