9 Instant Pot Cabbage Recipes

We love Instant Pot cabbage recipes! If you love dishes like buttered cabbage and obsessed with your high pressure cooker or Ninja Foodi, we have a week worth of easy delicious side dishes here! Try our most popular Instant Pot fried cabbage and move on to others, let us know which is your favorite.

Pressure Cooker Cabbage Recipes

Serve it for dinner or a side dish, hearty with sausage or vegetarian without meat. Any way you serve it it’s just so good. You can make all of these as easy Ninja Foodi recipes as well. Both brands work the same.

Let’s start with info. on how to cut a cabbage, then you can choose which recipe you want to make and go from there. Keep in mind that it cooks very fast to soften and will shrink quite a bit. I wouldn’t recommend anything much smaller than 2×2″ squares or they will get too mushy.

How to Cook Cabbage in Instant Pot

Let’s start with an original of ours. We call it Instant Pot Mountain Dew stew and it’s always a hit. That one uses sliced kielbasa sausage. If you’d rather use ground beef and/or chicken, try our old fashioned cabbage soup here.

Rather have it cold as a side dish? Make dinner in your IP and serve it with red cabbage cole slaw. PLUS we will share how to make Instant Pot buttered cabbage below. You will be amazed just how creative you can get with this (sort of) neglected vegetable.

One of our favorite chopped cabbage dinners is our pressure cooker stuffed cabbage soup! We also have one that is a bit thicker and heartier. You can make vegetarian or we love to use half a lb. of spicy sausage and half ground beef too.

How to Cook Ninja Foodi Cabbage

You can use any brand you have. We do have a few Ninja Foodi cabbage recipes specifically too though. Typically you will use the lid that is not attached to steam with high pressure to make tender very quickly. If you like the edges crisp you would switch to the lid that is attached!

How long does it take cabbage to cook in soup?

Usually 5 minutes is it! We call this one above our Instant Pot stuffed cabbage casserole! It’s super easy with a quick cooking time. Everyone including my youngest daughter loved this recipe. You can make unstuffed cabbage casserole in the oven too. You will need:

1. Ground sausage – 1/2 spicy + 1/2 regular is my preference
   1. or ground beef
2. Cabbage
3. Beef or chicken broth
4. Spaghetti sauce
5. Rice – uncooked jasmine
6. Garlic
7. Can of tomato soup
8. Worcestershire sauce
9. Salt and pepper to taste

Of course you can add heat to any of these dishes with dry Sriracha or red pepper flakes too. Go light at first, taste and if you think it’s not enough you can add a bit more next time.

Instant Pot Cabbage and Sausage

Try our Instant Pot sausage and cabbage recipe! This one is a pretty hearty meal using ready made kielbasa or links of your choice. Sliced into bite size pieces it’s an easy one pot meal you can throw in all together. You will need:

1. Instant Pot pressure cooker
2. Cabbage
3. Ground sausage
4. Noodles
5. Broth
6. Onion
7. Diced tomatoes
8. Olive oil
9. Garlic

How Long to Pressure Cook Cabbage

That depends on what other ingredients you have in the pot. If it is just diced pieces you wouldn’t want much longer than 2 minutes or so to wilt and soften. In a soup or casserole though you may have to increase to 3 or 4.

How to Cook Instant Pot Cabbage with Bacon

Then we’ll move on to a classic dish. The best fried cabbage you’ll ever make. YES, this simple cabbage recipe base is from my grandma and I just adjusted it to make it in my “quick pot”. We have made this what we call stewed cabbage in a dutch oven on the stovetop too which takes longer but is just as killer. One is more buttered where this one just has light olive oil with seasonings.

It is so good I have even transitioned into my other favorite pot, with air fryer fried cabbage. Here’s what you’ll need to make this:

Healthy Instant Pot Cabbage Recipes

Now if you just want to make Instant Pot cabbage with simple seasonings I have a recipe for that too! Sometimes you don’t want to go through the mess of making Instant Pot stuffed cabbage and just want a simple side dish.

This comes in handy for that! Ingredients you’ll need:

1. 1 head of cabbage – cut the cabbage into quarters for best results
2. 1 cup water or vegetable broth
3. 3/4 tsp Old Bay seasoning
4. 1 tsp garlic salt
5. CrispLid if you want to turn your Instant Pot into an air fryer and crisp it right inside the pot
   1. or can put under your broiler if you want crispy ends

Instant Pot Cabbage Wedges

NOW we’re going to share how to make a batch of our DELICIOUS Instant Pot buttered cabbage! The full printable recipe is below but I like to explain how to make recipes in a pressure cooker step by step in case you’re new to this.

This one is SO easy and only requires 3 main ingredients. I add a bit of garlic salt at the end but seasoning with salt and pepper etc… is really up to you. Everyone likes theirs with more of less of this or that so I like it add that at the end. Here are the ingredients you will need:

Instant Pot Buttered Cabbage

1. Pressure cooker
   1. Ninja Foodi
   2. I always recommend a non stick pot if you have an Instant Pot
2. Head of cabbage
3. Stick of butter
4. Broth – I use what I have on hand so this time it was vegetable broth
   1. chicken broth and even beef broth lends a lot of flavor to this, use what you like best
5. Seasonings such as:
   1. garlic salt
   2. salt and pepper
   3. I actually love a sprinkle of Old Bay myself

You could even add a few tbsp. of real bacon bits in to the mix when it’s being cooked to add salt and BACON flavors!

How to Cook Cabbage in Pressure Cooker with butter

Now this is so easy you can literally prep everything and start your pot in under 5 minutes. If you are used to making buttered pressure cooker cabbage on your stovetop this isn’t much different except that you use a lot less liquid which means it comes out with a lot more flavor.

How do you cut cabbage for boiling?

• We’re not really boiling it using this method but you kinda’ follow the same rules as the “traditional method”. You’d cut cabbage into 1.5″x1.5″ squares. Of course this is an approximate measurement but you can see it below for your reference.
• On the stovetop you would bring a large pot of salted water to a boil, then add cabbage. Once it reached a boiling point you’d cook for about 5 minutes for shredded cabbage and 8-10 minutes for squares or wedges.
• We cooked for 4 minutes in the pressure cooker and it was perfect for us.

If you like it a bit firmer I would set to 2 minutes with the same 2 minute natural release time. Cut the end off of your head of cabbage first (the hard part where it was connected to the plant, you don’t want to eat that).

Then, cut it in half, put the flat end on your cutting board and cut a few time vertically, then a couple time horizontally so you cube cabbage into squares like you see here.

How to Make Instant Pot Steamed Cabbage

Pour your broth into the inner pot of your pressure cooker with your stick of butter. Throw your cubed cabbage leaves in on top of that. I like to kinda’ separate the leaves a bit when I add them.

• Discarding pieces that are very hard, near the end you cut off is a good idea too. They don’t have much flavor and aren’t my favorite personally. Add bacon bits add those to the very top if you want.
• Close your lid and steam valve. Set to high pressure for 4 minutes with a 2 minute natural release. Then do a quick release when done to release rest of pressure.
• For a bit firmer leaves set to 2 minutes initially with a 2 minute natural release

Gently stir once top is off, season to your liking and serve immediately for best results! Add 1/4 tsp garlic salt or more to taste.

If you wanted larger chunks you could cut the hard end off and then just quarter your head of cabbage as well. I don’t think this turns out quite as well because it won’t soak up the butter the way this does cut into smaller pieces.

Do you need to wash cabbage before cooking?

Even though the inside of cabbage is usually clean since the outer leaves protect it. You still may want to clean it with a quick gentle trip under the faucet. To preserve its vitamin C content you should only cut and rinse cabbage right before cooking or eating it, not beforehand.

• Generally when I buy it from the produce section of our local grocery store there is a plastic wrapping over it, unlike lettuce. This will keep it a bit cleaner but as with any vegetable it may have a bit of dirt and/or debris on the outside.
• I like to discard the 2 top leaves covering the outside because those are generally what has the dirt on it.

Do cabbage have worms?

No, they actually don’t. If you do find a surprising pest inside or on the surface it would be a tapeworm, you wouldn’t want to ingest those either though. These have a tendency to eat a number of plants from the cabbage family and whose larvae feed on cabbages and other cole crops.

This is what it looks like when it’s done!! Tender leaves that have soaked up all the flavors of the broth and butter below. Taste it first and see if you really want to add salt and pepper. A pinch of garlic salt or Old Bay is our favorite but you don’t need a lot so use a light hand if you do.

How long do you cook cabbage for? In a pressure cooker, not long. Less than 5 minutes usually does it. As you can see a whole cabbage cut into 4ths only takes 3 minutes to become tender. In the oven is closer to 12 minutes.

What goes well with cabbage?

Honestly you could easily add diced up precooked sausage into this buttered cabbage recipe below and it would add protein and a heartiness to the meal. Obviously Instant Pot corned beef and cabbage for St. Patricks’s Day.

That cut of meat is full of flavor so you don’t even need to add seasonings to it other than the spice packet included in the meat bag. SO good this should really be cooked year round, not just during the Irish holiday.

Basically, if you want to add a bit of crunch to any meal, and have a vegetable included, cabbage is a great choice. It is VERY inexpensive and after a few times serving it to my kids they now love anything I make with it.

How to Make Cabbage Taste Good

Many are amongst our favorite Instant Pot side dishes but here are a few other ideas including a few Crockpot cabbage recipes you can try too. Other ideas you can try with this same veggie would be to make;

• Sesame cole slaw
• Stuff cabbage rolls with burrito ingredients instead of using tortillas
• Apple slaw with honey lime dressing
• Pork and cabbage baked together
• Unstuffed cabbage casserole is one we shared above but you could make that on your stovetop too
• Pasta and potatoes with cabbage leaves cubed like we did here.

I encourage you to do the same, you may be surprised if you add some great seasonings your children might aquire a taste for it too.