101 Instant Pot Recipes For The Complete Beginner

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Beginner Instant Pot Recipes. Introducing you to our full list of 101 instant pot beginner recipes.

The perfect collection of basic instant pot recipes, starting with getting the instant pot out of the box and doing the instant pot water test, right through to 101 easy to follow instant pot recipes for the complete beginner.

Updated for 2022 with new instant pot beginner recipes that are replacing the old!

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Beginner Instant Pot Recipes

Welcome to my Beginner Instant Pot Recipes and more specifically 101 Instant Pot Recipes For The Complete Beginner.

I wanted to put something together that would help those of you that are just starting out with their Instant Pot and want easy to follow Instant Pot recipes for beginners.

Or those of you that have had it a while but want to try some new basic instant pot recipes.

These beginner Instant Pot Recipes has been updated in the November of 2022 and 2021, the April of 2020 and September of 2018 after originally being written in February of 2017.

I like to update it when I can as I add new basic instant pot recipes, that I feel are essential for you to learn first.

Back in early 2017 I was just a few months into my own Instant Pot journey and now I want to share even more of my Instant Pot knowledge.

When you first get an Instant Pot it is like you are that teenager that is learning to cook for the first time.

It is something new and you are often having issues with it and its quite a scary experience.

But I notice that far too many people don’t start at the beginning, instead they jump straight in with a complicated recipe.

Yet if you were a child your parents wouldn’t let you loose with filleting fish, they would make you peel loads of potatoes with an old potato peeler.

Or like the culinary school Gordon Ramsay and Julia Childs attended you would peel a huge amount of onions.

So that is exactly what you should do with your Instant Pot. Start right at the beginning.

101 instant pot recipes bundle

Learn how to use the Instant Pot from scratch and learn the bare bones of cooking before you advance to complicated instant pot cheesecakes or instant pot yoghurt.

Let’s steam vegetables in the instant pot, lets learn how to make one pot meals, lets cook frozen meat until it comes out perfectly tender and juicy.

Is Your Instant Pot STILL Sat In The Box?

Is Your Instant Pot Still In Its Box

If this is YOU don’t worry it is a lot more common than you think. Because electric pressure cooking can be so different to what you are used to it can feel very daunting and it might be sat in the box for months.

I’m a member of an Instant Pot for beginners FB group and it amazes me how many times I see posts, where they have returned the Instant Pot as they are frightened it will go wrong, or one meal they did turned out badly.

Or from my point of view I always remember the mushy peas on the ceiling whenever I went around to my Grandmas for dinner.

But those were the old-style manual pressure cookers that sat on the stove and things have improved a lot since the 1980’s.

With the Instant Pot recipes below, I have covered all the instant pot beginner basics to get you started in the kitchen and build up your confidence with your Instant Pot.

Do things step by step with something different every day or so and you will soon be a pro and wonder why you didn’t get an Instant Pot Pressure Cooker years ago. I know I regret waiting until 2016 to get mine!

101 instant pot recipes bundle

Instant Pot Mini Recipes For Beginners

Most of our beginner instant pot recipes are based around servings of 1-4.

Apart from fitting a big whole chicken into the instant pot mini, all other of our 101 beginner recipes are easy to adapt to the instant pot mini.

If in doubt change the servings to 2 and then they will easily fit in the instant pot mini.

Though, I also recommend this instant pot mini cookbook from my friend Heather, which is specific to the mini 3 quart.

101 Instant Pot Recipes For Beginners

Before you cook any of our delicious beginner instant pot recipes and if your instant pot is brand new, you need to start with the instant pot water test.

The water test, if you are not familiar with it, is basically a quick test to make sure you have a working instant pot.

You are bringing your instant pot to pressure and then if it works, then you are ready to progress to your first instant pot recipe.

instant pot water test at recipethis.com

Here is the full list of our vegetables to cook in the Instant Pot in alphabetical order:

Or let’s take some delicious vegetables and make them into quick sides:

Instant Pot Potato Recipes

After the basic vegetables nothing beats a potato, does it? We all love potatoes, and the humble spud can be very versatile.

We go through 2 large bags of 3 kilo spuds a week and it makes cooking very frugal. You just add potatoes to a small dish of food and suddenly you have a great feast.

Here is our favourite Instant Pot Potato Recipes for beginners:

instant pot breakfast potatoes at recipethis.com

We have two versions of the baked potato (or as us Brits call it jacket potatoes). One has more time on releasing pressure and the other is quick release depending on how you prefer to use the Instant Pot.

Instant Pot Eggs

Instant Pot Boiled Eggs – One of the first things you should learn to make in your Instant Pot is eggs. They make it so easy and make egg timers a thing of the past.

Follow our egg ideas to learn how to make Instant Pot Boiled Eggs that can be turned into instant pot egg salad or our instant pot soft boiled eggs for boiled eggs and soldiers.

Or even better is our Instant Pot egg loaf. It teaches you how to make a huge loaf of eggs, that can then be chopped up and made into egg mayonnaise.

It must be the best egg hack that you will ever discover.

Or the best way to do eggs is to crack the eggs into your egg bites mould to make the best instant pot no peel boiled eggs.

Or if you have not learnt how to make instant pot egg bites yet, then this is our version without cottage cheese.

101 instant pot recipes bundle

Instant Pot Meals

I love one pot meals and that is a fantastic feature of the instant pot. The idea that you can load into the instant pot basic ingredients and make a delicious meal out of it.

Here is a big list of lots of favourite instant pot meals to try:

Instant Pot Soup Recipes

I love soup but sometimes soup can be boring. It will be like something that is only meant for the cabbage soup diet and can be a complete turn off.

But what about some delicious hearty soups that don’t say baby food that you can cook in your Instant Pot?

Starting with Instant Pot Ham Bone & Bean Soup that we originally made in France with spare ham shanks that shouts out “EAT ME NOW”.  

Or my I’m too tired to cook dinner and I have nothing in the fridge soup is our instant pot soup with frozen vegetables. It is amazing and I could eat it every day!

instant pot frozen veggie soup at recipethis.com

Here are some more delicious soup recipes for you to test drive in your Instant Pot:

Everyday Instant Pot Recipes

Here is a collection of some of our favourite everyday instant pot recipes. Recipes that us Milner’s cook on a regular basis in our instant pot and ones we probably wouldn’t make as much if we didn’t have an instant pot.

Amazing Instant Pot Meat & Fish Recipes

I love cooking meat in the instant pot and this section is dedicated to delicious meat in the instant pot. Perfect for quick dinners, cheap dinners and more.


The Instant Pot Pressure Cooker

Thanks for reading all about our favourite beginner Instant Pot recipes and we hope that we have inspired you to get your Instant Pot out of the box, complete the water test and get cooking in your Instant Pot.

We are all new once and once you get into it you will love the freedom of cooking in the electric pressure cooker.

The Instant Pot that we own is this one and it has been amazing for loads of family friendly meals. If you don’t have one already here is our Instant Pot Review.

Further Reading

We also have a few extra articles that can help you get to grips with your new Instant Pot Pressure Cooker:

We also recommend that you join our newsletter at recipethis.com too. You can do so on this link and then you will be informed whenever we have new Instant Pot recipes.

As we are always adding new ones regularly and sharing new tips about using your Instant Pot Pressure Cooker.

Instant Pot For Beginners PDF Cookbook

101 instant pot binder

If you would like to get all the recipes mentioned above, along with all the extra tutorials, then click on the image above or click here.

We have put it together after many, many requests for a PDF version of all the recipes we have featured, that can act as your bible for getting used to your Instant Pot.

Well THIS IS IT.

Also, don’t forget to let us know how you get along with the recipes and how you are finding using the Instant Pot.

Can’t read it now? Then pin it for later!

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Instant pot best ever recipes for the beginner from RecipeThis.com
Instant Pot | Instant Pot Best Ever Potato Recipes From RecipeThis.com
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Recipe This

Hi! I am Sam and along with my chef hubby Dom we love sharing with you easy everyday recipes using kitchen gadgets. We are also the authors of The Complete Air Fryer Cookbook, an amazing air fryer cookbook filled with 140+ everyday air fryer recipes. Beyond the air fryer we also love the instant pot, slow cooker, soup maker, ninja foodi, pie marker and several other kitchen gadgets. CLICKING HERE →

80 thoughts on “101 Instant Pot Recipes For The Complete Beginner”

  1. I just bought the 3-quart Mini. Do you have any recipes for that size IP? Also, everything is in grams and milliliters. Can you add the conversions to pounds and ounces to your recipes? Thanks!

    Reply
    • Hi Susan,

      With that size IP if you half the ingredients because ours is the 6 quart IP and it should work out ok. Also changing the timings slightly would be a good idea.

      With regards to the recipes been in grams and milliliters this is because this is how we have been using since we were small. We are changing over our recipe plugin in the next week and the new one has a gadget where if you click a button it will change all ingredients into the US measurements and vice versa.

      So please stay tuned for when the new recipe plugin gets rolled out.

      Many Thanks.

      Sam

      Reply
  2. Two things:
    1) this is a dumb question but when you say Instant Pot are you speaking of all pressure cookers or a certain type or brand?
    2) can you add me to your email list?
    Thank you.

    Reply
    • Hi Gina,

      Not dumb at all.

      Instant Pot is just a brand of electric pressure cookers, just like crockpot is a brand of slow cookers.

      Plus we have added you to our mailing list.

      Kind regards

      Sam
      X

      Reply
  3. I have a 2 qt pressure cooker and it is very hard to find recipes for that size. I am new to pressure cooking. Do you have tips on converting larger recipes to fit a 2 qt pressure cooker?

    Reply
    • Hi Stephanie,

      From what i have read online the 2qt pressure cooker needs less water and gets to max pressure quicker. Also the amount of food would be smaller. So i would try a few recipes and try and bring the quantity down to 2 people from 4. On our site you can do this by clicking on the serving number and you will see a slider and then you can choose how many servings you want by dragging it from the left to the right and the recipe changes depending on the servings. Reduce the cooking time by a quarter i would say and see how that goes. Try our broccoli recipe as it was one of the first things we cooked in our instant pot and you can find it here:

      http://recipethis.com/instant-pot-2-minute-steamed-broccoli/

      We cooked ours for 2 minutes so try it for 1 minute and see how it turns out then i would try the baked potatoes and it should give you a good start on how quicker it actually cooks compared to our 6qt. Sorry for the long winded answer 🙂

      Kind Regards

      Sam
      X

      Reply
  4. I received an Instant Pot for Christmas and can’t wait to get started. Would add me to your email list Please. I appreciate it, Thank you!

    Reply
    • Hi Debbie,

      Wow along time. We have had ours for just over a year and would not be without it now 🙂

      Kind regards

      Sam

      Reply
  5. Hi! I have the Power Pressure Cooker XL and I can’t wait to get started. Please add me to your email list & recipes. I appreciate it, Thank you!

    Reply
  6. You’re British, aren’t you? It’s the “sat” vs. “sitting” that gives it away. “Is your Instant Pot still sitting in its box?” is the way we’d say it in the U.S. And mine isn’t! Love your recipes.

    Reply
    • Hi Jenny,

      Yes we are. We were both raised in Yorkshire and are now British Expats living in Portugal.

      There are others that would give it away too ?

      Zucchini vs courgette
      Rising flour vs raising flour
      Proving vs proofing
      Egg plant vs aubergiene
      Cups vs grams

      Though we try to show the alternative when we can ?

      Kind regards

      Sam
      X

      Reply
  7. Is a pressure cooker the same as a instant pot? I have a pressure cooker and wanted to do some of these recipes and wasn’t sure if it was the same!

    Reply
  8. I just purchased an instant pot and shall receive it in a few days, I was on line looking for receipes. Could you please add me to your mailing list? It would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance. Donna

    Reply
  9. Hi. I woukd like to be added please. I have purchased the instant pot. All new cooking experience for me.

    Thank you for sharing your posts.

    Regards
    Katherine

    Reply
    • Hi Judy,

      Glad you are finding the blog informative. I have added your email address so you should receive a confirm email.

      Many Thanks 🙂

      Reply

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