How long to pressure cook beans?

Everyone enjoys a pot of red beans simmered slowly on the stove, but sometimes modern life doesn’t give us enough time to do it that way. In these situations, a pressure cooker can come to our rescue. Your red beans will be as tender and flavorful as if you had spent all day cooking them thanks to the high heat and pressure, which will enable you to cook them in as little as 30 minutes!

Despite the fact that pressure cookers have existed for a long time, modern technology has made them faster and safer than ever. With today’s cooking appliances, you can frequently prepare a healthy meal from scratch in less than 30 minutes. Dry beans are particularly well suited to the pressure cooker. Cooking beans in a pressure cooker cuts the time in the kitchen, including active preparation and passive cooking, to less than 30 minutes, compared to the typical low and slow method of several hours. Using water or another cooking liquid, pressure cookers quickly cook food inside a sealed container. Boiling the liquid inside the sealed pressure cooker first produces pressure. The trapped steam then increases the internal pressure and temperature. Foods cook quickly, saving both time and energy.

Do you need to soak beans before pressure cooking?

Beans don’t require soaking before being prepared in an Instant Pot. In a pressure cooker, unsoaked beans will cook evenly and fairly quickly. In my experience, pressure cooking causes unsoaked beans to separate less. So you can still make delicious pinto beans in your Instant Pot even if you forget to soak your dried beans or don’t want to.

However, cooking beans after soaking them for 8 to 12 hours might help them be easier to digest. Some of the beans’ gas-causing sugars can be eliminated by soaking. Soaked beans will also cook faster.

I soak my beans when I remember to do so because it takes practically no extra work. You can choose what suits your needs and schedule the best.

Natural Pressure Release or Quick Release?

One last point to discuss: the pressure release. Allowing your pressure cooker to naturally release the pressure for as long as possible before opening the pot, in my opinion, is worthwhile. Less blow-out beans are produced as a result, helping to offset some of the appearance issues, though you will still get some. If you do a quick release, the bean cooking liquid also has a tendency to foam up into the steam valve; letting the pot depressurize for as long as possible helps prevent this.

Typically, I let the pressure in the pot naturally release until I need the beans, at which point I press the pressure valve to let it out completely.

No Need to Soak (Really!)

And no, I dont soak my beans ahead of time. I freely admit that my initial experiments with no-soak beans were entirely the result of my own lack of preparation. When it comes to beans, I so rarely am able to balance my desire and my readiness. ).

But then I found that I didnt really need to. The beans cooked up just fine without the overnight soak. They are well suited for everything from tacos to quick bean soup because they are evenly cooked, tender, and creamy.

Instant Pot Pinto Beans | HOW TO MAKE PERFECT PINTO BEANS | NO soaking necessary