Cooking beans in a pressure cooker has never been easier! There’s NO soak to tender in your in a Ninja Foodi, pinto, kidney, black beans in pressure cooker Instant Pot or Crockpot Express.
This is how to cook beans in a pressure cooker works to get them nice and tender. If you’ve never cooked dry beans before, you’re in for a treat. Then you can make homemade side dishes and meals more often. One of many tips in our Instant Pot section of The Typical Mom blog.
Table of Contents
- How to Cook Instant Pot Dried Beans
- How to Cook Dry Beans in Ninja Foodi
- How do you Cook Beans in a Pressure Cooker
- How to Cook Beans in a Pressure Cooker Recipe
- Do I need to soak beans before pressure cooking?
- How much water do you put in a pressure cooker for beans?
- Do beans double in size when cooked?
- Bean Recipes You’ll Love
- How Long to Cook Dry Beans in an Instant Pot
- What is a serving size of beans?
How to Cook Instant Pot Dried Beans
To get started you should print out our free Instant Pot beans cook time sheet. This is a good starting point as far as how long each one will take to become tender. No matter which type you want for the recipe you want I have them all listed in that chart. I will explain some things to remember to put your mind at ease here too.
No matter what brand you’re using this timing will basically be the same. Crockpot Express and Ninja Foodi both have the pressure cook function which is what you’ll need and water. Enough liquid to cover and then some. Typically 3x as high as the amount of dry beans you are cooking.
How to Cook Dry Beans in Ninja Foodi
As it states you’ll need plenty of water and a bit of time, followed by a natural release of steam. The reason for this last step is to get more and more tender, don’t skip it. Whether you are making Pinto or more unusual varieties like tepary beans you want to do this for them all.
Variations in time will occur depending on how much you add and just how tender you want them. However, using this chart will be your first step in understanding how to cook beans in a pressure cooker. The name of the machine doesn’t matter. You just use the lid that is not attached for the Foodi.
You can enjoy them plain as a side dish with just salt and pepper or as a complete meal like our Instant Pot 15 Bean Soup here. We even share here how to cook red lentils Instant Pot style.
How do you Cook Beans in a Pressure Cooker
If you’re making 1 bag of dry beans (16 oz. is typical), this is what you do: First rinse your dry beans in a colander to get any debris off of them. Pour them into your pressure cooker now. You will include 4 times the amount of liquid to ratio of how much you are adding so just measure that.
The timing and instructions we explain here are for pots that plug in, not the old fashioned version you put on the stove. Those vary too much, electric pots will maintain an even temp and pressure throughout the process so all you have to do is set the time.
How to Cook Beans in a Pressure Cooker
Equipment
Ingredients
- 16 oz dry beans, 15 bean soup mix used
- 1 lb stew meat
- 1 small onion , diced
- 4 cup beef broth
- 1 can diced tomatoes, 28 oz
- 1.5 tsp salt
- 1 tsp cumin
- 1 tsp chili powder
- 1 tsp garlic powder
- 2 tbsp olive oil
Instructions
- Turn pressure cooker to saute mode and add olive oil, onions and beef.
- Saute until beef outsides have browned, then turn pot off. Add a bit of your broth and scrape bottom of pot to remove all stuck on meat pcs.
- Then add all other ingredients including remaining broth into your pot, stir.
- Close pressure cooker lid and steam valve and set to high pressure for 40 minutes.
- Allow a natural release for steam.
- Stir, add more broth if you want it thinner.
Video
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Do I need to soak beans before pressure cooking?
NO, there is no need to soak your beans beforehand for this high pressure method. Some still prefer to do this step anyway for gas purposes.
How much water do you put in a pressure cooker for beans?
It doesn’t matter whether you’re making kidney beans, black beans, or Northern beans, you will always need at least a 1:4 ratio of beans to liquid. Do not fill past 3/4 line inside pot or it won’t reach pressure
Do beans double in size when cooked?
Pretty much is the basic answer. Keep this in mind; 1 cup dry beans yields approximately 2 1/2 cups cooked beans so it’s like they double plus a bit. 😉
Bean Recipes You’ll Love
Let’s start with our Instant Pot ham and beans recipe. I begin here because this one is very simple, with few ingredients, and is really healthy. Instant Pot black beans and rice is super flavorful with these spices We use leftover ham in it but bacon could be substituted too. Our pressure cooker sausage soup uses dry Northern beans and comes out amazingly well too.
Here are some Instant Pot Pinto Beans from scratch. I add lots of diced chiles to add a bunch of flavor. They’re a great side dish or addition to burritos or pressure cooker taco bowls.
What can I make with beans? Our favorite Instant Pot side dish is probably our homemade baked beans! Red bean curry is pretty darn yummy. Add them to stuffed zucchini boats.
This is similar to our pressure cooker chili with dry beans however this was all cooked together. Our 5 ingredient Instant Pot chili is another version using canned beans. We chose those to make it cook very quickly but you could start with dry beans first I suppose. Instant Pot chicken chili is great too.
How Long to Cook Dry Beans in an Instant Pot
Now we have a NEW Instant Pot beef bean chili to share with y’all. Here’s a look at it at the beginning. You know what is different about this?? ALL the ingredients are cooked together. When you do it this way you don’t need quite as much liquid as you would with just water. Until you get the hang of the ratio method for something like this, I suggest following a recipe.
It is a bit like baked beans but heartier since it has stew meat inside. Cooking it for 40 minutes means the beef comes out super tender, and the dry beans will too.
This is one of our newest January recipes you should try. You can cook with dry beans in your slow cooker too like with our Crockpot black eyed peas recipe but of course it will take all day.
What is a serving size of beans?
Half cup of cooked beans is an average serving size for an adult. This goes for most legumes and grains. To put that in perspective; a can of beans contains about 1 and 3/4 cups which is over triple this serving size! As a general rule you should allow between 1/2 and 1 cup of dry beans person. So if you’re cooking 5 to 10 pounds of dried beans it would feed about 50 people. A one-pound bag of dried beans provides 10 servings of 1/2 cup.
You can cook beans in a pressure cooker with less water. They don’t need to be coverred with water because the pressurized steam cooks them. I cook two pounds of dryed beans in two cups of water and they turn out fine. I soak the beans first. Because you are heating up less water, pressure builds up in the pot faster and you save energy.
I have cooked many batches of pinto, as well as great northern beans, in both electric pressure cookers and conventional stove top pressure cookers, and I have never cooked these beans in 30 minutes. I generally cook my beans in my Instant pot in 65-75 minutes, 50-55 minutes in my conventional cooker. Why the difference in cooking time?
@Wayland,
Maybe you are overcooking your beans? Bean physics? Space aliens?