Cooking Beans in a Pressure Cooker

Cooking beans in a pressure cooker has never been easier! There’s NO presoaking required for dry beans to become tender to make your favorite recipes.

• 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.

• As it states you’ll need plenty of water and a bit of time, followed by a natural release of steam.

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.

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:

1. First rinse your dry beans in a colander to get any debris off of them
2. Pour them into your pressure cooker now
3. Add your cooking liquid = 4 times the amount of beans (so 1 bag needs 8 cups of water or broth)
   1. do I need to soak beans before pressure cooking? NO, there is no need to soak your beans beforehand.
   2. 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
      1. you will always need at least a 1:4 ratio of beans to liquid
   3. do not fill past 3/4 line inside pot or it won’t reach pressure
4. Look at Instant Pot cook chart above and determine your pressure cooking time
   1. remember if it finishes and you decide you want them more tender you can just put the lid on and cook for longer, NO problem with that
   2. 15 – 30 minutes is typical to get tender cups of cooked beans
5. Close lid and steam valve and set to high pressure for the designated cook time. I suggest starting at the lowest time above if you like them a bit firmer.
6. When done do not release the pressure!! This is called a natural release.
   1. That means you don’t touch the steam valve. Do not do a quick release when cooking beans in a pressure cooker.

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. 😉

Instant Pot bean recipes you should try now!

• 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.
• Pressure cooker black beans are super flavorful with these spices
• We use leftover ham in it but bacon could be substituted too.
• Our 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 taco bowls.

Just remember the beans to water ratio pressure cooker directions and you really can create anything in your “magic pot”!

• Beans don’t have to be made plain, we hardly ever do. Even if we’re using them as a side dish I still always amp them up with diced chiles and seasonings.
• Add some chili powder for a bit of spice, dry Sriracha is another one of my favorite sources of heat.

What can I make with beans? Our favorite Instant Pot side dish is probably our homemade baked beans! 

1. Red bean curry is pretty darn yummy
2. Add them to stuffed zucchini boats
3. Chill them and add to some Greek chopped salad
4. Navy bean pesto
5. Cold 3 bean salad is always a winner of a side dish

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!

How much is a serving of dry beans?

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.

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.

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.
• White bean chicken chili Instant Pot recipe is great too.

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.

Here’s what you do to prepare this pressure cooker bean beef chili

1. Set pot to saute and add your olive oil, diced onions and stew meat. Brown meat on all sides, then turn pot off.
2. Add a bit of your broth just so you can deglaze your pot properly.
3. Then add all other ingredients and stir together.
4. Close lid and steam valve and set to high pressure for 40 minutes
5. Allow steam to naturally release steam completely before lifting lid off.
6. Stir and serve. We like to serve this over white rice, and add some feta cheese on top too.

This is one of our newest January Instant Pot 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.