While checking the sale flyers for my grocery stores last week I noticed that Whole Foods had beef stew meat on sale for $3.99/lb. and I was ALL OVER that. I was finally able to swing by yesterday, the last day of the sale, and pick up some of the beef, along with all the other ingredients to make this amazing Instant Pot Beef Stew.
Why Use an Instant Pot?
My Slow Cooker Rosemary Garlic Beef Stew is pretty hard to beat, but I wanted to try making a stew in my Instant Pot because A) it’s a lot faster and B) I can do all the steps, including browning the beef, in one pot which means a lot less dishes to clean. YAY!
Do I HAVE to Use an Instant Pot for this Beef Stew?
Ever since the Instant Pot took the cooking world by storm there have been several other multi-cookers to hit the market. You don’t have to use an Instant Pot for this. You can use any other cooker that has both a sauté and a pressure cooking feature, or just use a plain old pressure cooker and do the browning through deglazing steps in a skillet before transferring everything to the pressure cooker.
OR if you don’t have a pressure cooker, you can use a slow cooker just as I did for my Slow Cooker Rosemary Garlic Beef Stew.
Flavor Profile
This recipe starts similarly to the Rosemary Garlic Beef Stew, but I played around with the vegetable mix, using less potatoes and adding in mushrooms and pearl onions. I also skipped the Dijon and added just a little tomato paste for a more traditional beef stew flavor. This Instant Pot Beef Stew turned out so tender and amazing that my boyfriend said, “Is this healthy? Because I could this every day.” Noted! :)
Instant Pot Beef Stew
Servings 6 (10 cups total)Ingredients
- 1 lb beef stew meat (cubed) ($3.99)
- Salt and pepper ($0.05)
- 2 Tbsp flour ($0.02)
- 2 Tbsp butter ($0.22)
- 2 cups beef broth* ($0.26)
- 1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce ($0.06)
- 1 Tbsp soy sauce ($0.10)
- 1/2 Tbsp brown sugar ($0.02)
- 2 cloves garlic, minced ($0.16)
- 2 Tbsp tomato paste ($0.13)
- 1 tsp dried rosemary ($0.10)
- 1 tsp dried thyme ($0.10)
- 14 oz bag frozen pearl onions ($2.97)
- 8 oz mushrooms ($1.90)
- 1 lb carrots ($0.99)
- 0.75 lb potatoes ($0.84)
Instructions
- Place the stew meat in a bowl and season lightly with salt and pepper. Add the flour and stir to coat.
- Place the butter in the Instant Pot and turn on the sauté function. Heat the butter until it is melted and sizzling, then add the stew meat. Brown the meat on all sides. Don’t stir too often as this will prevent the meat from achieving a nice brown, crispy exterior. The flour may coat the bottom of the pot and that is okay, just don’t let it burn.
- Pour the beef broth into the pot and stir to dissolve the browned bits from the bottom of the pot. Once dissolved, add the Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, brown sugar, minced garlic, tomato paste, rosemary, and thyme.
- Wash and quarter the mushrooms. Peel and slice the carrots into one-inch sections. Wash the potatoes well, peel if desired, then chop into one-inch cubes. Add the pearl onions (no need to thaw), mushrooms, carrots, and potatoes to the Instant Pot. Give all the ingredients in the pot a good stir.
- Close the lid on the Instant Pot and close the steam valve. Press the “meat/stew” button, or set the cooker to 35 minutes of high pressure. After 35 minutes of high pressure, allow the cooker to naturally cool and release pressure.
- Once the pressure has released, open the steam valve then carefully open the lid. Give the stew a good stir, taste, and adjust the salt if needed. Serve hot with crusty bread.
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Notes
Nutrition
Love Instant Pot Recipes? Check out my Pressure Cooker Chicken and Rice!
How to Make Beef Stew in an Instant Pot – Step by Step Photos
Place one pound of stew meat in a bowl and season with a pinch of salt and pepper. Add 2 Tbsp flour and stir until the meat is coated in the flour.
Add 2 Tbsp butter to the Instant Pot and turn on the sauté function. Heat the butter until it is melted and sizzling, then add the stew meat (and any leftover flour from the bowl). Brown the meat on all sides. Be sure not to stir the meat too often because this can prevent it from forming a nice brown crust. You do not need to cook the beef pieces completely through at this point. Just get a nice brown color on the outside.
Add 2 cups beef broth and stir to dissolve all of the browned bits from the bottom of the pot. Once everything is dissolved off the bottom, add 1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce, 1 Tbsp soy sauce, 1/2 Tbsp brown sugar, 2 cloves of minced garlic, 2 Tbsp tomato paste, 1 tsp dried rosemary, and 1 tsp dried thyme.
Wash and quarter the mushrooms. Peel and slice the carrots into one-inch sections. Wash the potatoes well, then cut into one-inch cubes. Add the frozen pearl onions, mushrooms, carrots, and potatoes to the pot. I totally forgot to get a photo of the pearl onions for anyone who is unfamiliar, but here is a link to the pearl onions that I bought. They are small, sweet onions about the size of large grapes. Give everything a brief stir to combine.
Close the lid on the Instant Pot, close the steam valve, then press the “meat/stew” button. This will set the cooker to 35 minutes of high pressure. It takes about 10-15 minutes to get up to pressure, then natural pressure release will take another 15 minutes or so. (Yes, I did paint that “5” on this photo because apparently the numbers on the display flicker at a speed faster than our eyes can see, but slower than my camera shutter. :P )
After the pressure naturally releases, open the steam valve then carefully open the lid. This is what you’ll see. Give it a good stir.
And then it will look more like beef stew! It may seem a bit watery at first, but as the temperature comes down from “molten” to just “really hot” it will thicken a bit. It’s always a good idea to give the stew a final taste and adjust the salt if needed.
And that’s how easy it is to make Instant Pot Beef Stew (or any other multi-cooker beef stew). I highly recommend a good crusty bread to go along with it. I added a touch of parsley for color, but the flavor of the stew is just fine on its own.
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We have a large family. I would need to double the recipe or more. I just bought a 10 quart insta pot. Using this stew recipe is it possible to at least double it?
The only complaint I got from my family was that there weren’t enough leftovers! The only change I made was substituting diced onion for the pearl since they weren’t available at my grocery store. Will make again!
The stew was so good my husband asked for a 2nd bowl (just like in that old Foldger’s Coffee ad). This morning I realized I added two cubes of ginger, not garlic. Well, might add 2 cubes ginger + garlic in the future. I also couldn’t find the pearl onions, so just added a sliced yellow. Love the flexibility of the recipe.
Best stew I have ever had. We didn’t have pearl onions so we just used a Spanish onion but it was still incredible.
I followed the recipe as closely as I could and added a bit more broth than stated out of fear that the pressure cooker wouldn’t fully pressurize as I saw in another comment. This one isn’t my favorite, It may be the broth I used or just the fact that I may have added too much. However, my dad quite enjoyed it, and the beef came out nicely. But I probably wouldn’t make again.
After building the recipe in my 6 qt. InstaPot, I never got to high pressure and ended up with food burn.
The Pot was emptied and sure enough there was food burn; so I had to clean the pot and reset. When I checked
troubleshooting the lack of pressure, I discovered the primary cause is due to lack of liquid in the pot. I added two cups additional beef broth, tbsp of beef better than bouillon and re-sealed the pot. After that, the pot worked just fine.
Such a good base stew recipe. I just use chopped onion and sauté after I brown the meat, I then deglaze with a 1/4 cup red wine. I use baby potatoes cut in half and keep the carrots in fairly big pieces. Also add a couple bay leaves. Once the NR is done I add some frozen peas and let cool a bit. Delicious.
Thank you Cheryl!
Hello, I have an instant pot 3 quart mini. Can you tell me how to adjust this recipe for the 3 quart size instant pot?
Unfortunately I’ve never cooked with an IP mini, so I’m not sure if any special precautions need to be taken when scaling the recipe down to that size.
I’ve made this in a mini Instant Pot and didn’t substantially alter the recipe in any way. I just eyeballed how many carrots and potatoes I could add to keep the stew at the max line. It always comes out delicious.
Thanks for sharing Susan!
I have made this multiple times, as it’s delicious. Like some recipes, this is a great starting point, and it has the flexibility for more or less of any of the ingredients – just make sure to scrape that bottom with a good wooden spoon, and be thorough – you don’t want to be caught on the BURN. Fragment sentence, but good advice – Veg does tend to be soft, but like other comments say, it’s your preference, adjust the time, but meat may not be as tender.
Mad this recipe tonight, and it was excellent. One comment is that we could have gone with 30 minutes of pressure cooking and a quick release. As is, the vegetables were a bit too soft.
I have made this recipe several times, it always turns out delicious!!
I made this a couple times for pot lucks and then brought something other than this stew to a pot luck and people asked for the beef stew. Thought people might get hoard of it and I got a huge NO WAY!!! Great recipe actually the first thing I cooked in my instant pot!!! Stew so full of flavor.
I couldn’t find any frozen pearl onions, will using unfrozen change anything? And do you chop the onion? I’m just confused about putting a whole onion into the stew
If you have fresh pearl onions it shouldn’t be any different (and no chopping because they are small). If you are talking about a whole fresh onion, yes, you should chop it. :)
I’ve made this several times. I often use more meat than the recipe calls for & I use any veggies I have available. It is SO GOOD and so filling! I like to use Penzey’s beef broth for a really beefy flavor.
Made this last night! Meat and veggies turned out very tender! I omitted the mushrooms as I am allergic. Used a chopped up red onion since I had an almost whole one left from another recipe :)
I also used 1 pound of baby carrots because I love them!
For the NPR, I did about 25 minutes and then QR the last bit. Will definitely be adding to our dinner rotation!!