Comfort food doesn’t get any better or easier than this Instant Pot Red Beans and Rice recipe.
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Pressure Cooker Red Beans and Rice
Red Beans and Rice is classic New Orleans comfort food. It’s traditionally slow simmered red beans with the Holy Trinity (celery, onion, and bell pepper), Cajun seasoning, and served over rice. It’s simple, easy to make, and ohhhh so good! Now with a pressure cooker red beans and rice can be cooked up in a lot less time because you can skip the step that requires you to pre-soak the beans. With this recipe, you’ll have dinner on the table in a little over an hour.
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Red Beans and Rice Recipe
Head to most any New Orleans restaurant on a Monday night and you’ll find Red Beans and Rice on the menu. Mondays were once the day the women did the laundry, back before you had washing machines. An easy red beans and rice recipe meant they could throw everything in a pot and then go on about their chores and laundry duties. Today laundry can be done any day, but the tradition remains to have Red Beans and Rice on Monday.
New Orleans Style Red Beans and Rice
On a girls trip to New Orleans, I ate my way around the city and had Red Beans and Rice at a few places. Each bowl was a little bit different, but they were all fantastic.
My favorite one was at Cafe Beignet served with French Bread and fresh beignets for dessert. When in NOLA, end every meal with beignets… right? After lunch that day, we hoped on a street car and toured Lafayette Cemetery #1 with friends Lisa, Honey, and Michelle from SimplifyLiveLove.com.
If you are looking to visit New Orleans in the near future, check out these New Orleans restaurants I couldn’t get enough of and the things to do in New Orleans for kids that I’d recommend.
Instant Pot Red Beans and Rice Recipe
This easy red beans and rice recipe is perfect for busy families, feeding a group, and making freezer meals. In a 6 quart Instant Pot/pressure cooker, you can make 6 servings in about an hour. If you want to make the dish stretch, you can add an additional cup of water to the ingredients before cooking or serve the finished dish with a few sides or a salad. You can also serve this Instant Pot Red Beans and Rice recipe as a side dish with a meat dish of pork chops or additional sausages. For our family, we like to serve it as a main dish with honeyed cornbread and a little Tabasco dashed on top.
Red Beans and Rice
My recipe below has some heat to it with the addition of cayenne red pepper and Creole/Cajun seasoning. If you don’t like spicy, cut the spices in half before cooking. You can always add additional Creole/Cajun seasoning or Tabasco to individual bowls. Either way will give you a great bowl of beans.
Note: this recipe doesn’t use smoked ham hocks. There have been a few times that I’ve gone to the store and haven’t found ham hocks for my beans. Therefor, I add a slice of smoked bacon to get that smoked pork flavor. Plus everything IS better with bacon… don’t you agree?
Instant Pot Red Beans and Rice Recipe
New Orleans Classic – Instant Pot Red Beans and Rice
Red Beans and Rice is classic New Orleans comfort food. Now with an Instant Pot or pressure cooker, you can create this dish in a fraction of the time. Perfect for weeknight dinners, groups, and freezer meals.
Ingredients
- 1/2 pound Andouille Sausage, sliced or casing removed and crumbled
- 1 slice smoked bacon, cut into 1/4” slices
- 1 large onion, chopped
- 1 bell pepper, deseeded and chopped
- 2 celery stalks, chopped
- 1 Tablespoon granulated garlic or 3 large cloves minced
- 1 Tablespoon dried parsley flake
- 1/2 teaspoon cayenne red pepper, more or less to taste
- 1 Tablespoon Creole/Cajun seasoning
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
- 1 teaspoon celery seed
- 1 pound dried red beans
- 6 cups water or vegetable broth
- 6 cups of white, long-grained rice, cooked according to package directions
- Optional garnish:dried parsley
Instructions
- Set pressure cooker to sauté.
- Once hot, add the sliced or crumbled Andouille sausage and bacon into the Instant Pot.
- Cook for sausage and bacon for 5-6 minutes, turning often. Note: Sausage should no longer be pink but not fully browned.
- Add onion, bell pepper, and celery to the sausage and bacon.
- Cook for additional 5 minutes until onions are translucent.
- Add remaining ingredients, garlic through water/vegetable broth.
- Stir well to combine being sure to remove anything sticking to the bottom of the pot.
- Add the pressure cooker lid and bring to pressure.
- Cook for 45 minutes on manual setting and then allow to naturally release for 10 minutes.
- Release any remaining pressure and remove the lid from the pressure cooker
- Taste the red beans and add additional sea salt, creole seasoning, and/or black pepper as needed.
- If red beans are still firm: return the pressure cooker lid, bring to pressure again, and cook on manual for an additional 10 minutes. Wait 5 minutes and do a manual release.
- To serve: place a 1 cup of white rice in a bowl and top with red beans and gravy/sauce/liquid. Top with a sprinkle of dried parsley (optional).
Nutrition Information:
Yield:
8Serving Size:
1Amount Per Serving: Calories: 349Total Fat: 9gSaturated Fat: 3gTrans Fat: 0gUnsaturated Fat: 5gCholesterol: 19mgSodium: 1199mgCarbohydrates: 53gFiber: 6gSugar: 3gProtein: 13g
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This looks really delicious! The hubs has been requesting cajun, so this is perfect.
It’s fantastic! He’ll love it
Red beans and rice are my favourite. I can’t wait to try this!
With the fall weather, it’s fantastic comfort food. If you like this, you may also like the Instant Pot Gumbo
Hi Nicky, I couldnt sleep so browsing my puter, I came upon your site and I like what I see. I am 71 years young and feed Triplet 20 yrs old grandsons, a 45 yr old son. my wife and I. I was gifted a power pressure cooker xl but could not find simple recipes. I wanted a ip but bad publicity about fire dangers. My daughter gave me a crockpot express pc and same problems about simple recipes. I need step by step recipes and there are tons o f them for the ip. Each pc has its own set of functions and I get so confuzed I use the stove. Is there any how to information available to adapt these diferent functions to your particular brand of pc? I live in louisiana so would love to try your version of gumbo and red beans and rice. Also do you have anything on fried cabbage? thank you, and happy holidays to you and yours. Jim
Beware no-presoak *kidney* beans in your Instant Pot. Kidneys have a toxin (lectins) in the skin; it’s important to presoak then *discard* the soak water – or use some other red / pink bean for this. I usually use ‘pink carribean beans’ – but that might be a local (New England) name for them.
Also, if you’re going to NOLA (and like to cook) check out Casa Pelican (across the river in Algeirs). Chef Karen runs it as a BnB – and *cooking school*. Totally worth it. I’m still using the kitchen tricks I learned from her. 🙂