If you are looking for a recipe to make in your pressure cooker, you can’t go wrong with this classic dish. Instant Pot Beef Stew is rich, tender and packed full of comfort food flavors.
Given that our temps here in Kansas City are sub-zero today, I think it’s the perfect day to share this warm comfort food dish. Instant Pot Beef Stew is the perfect meal to make when you need a rich and hearty meal but are short on time. Using the pressure cooker is a genius way to get tender and delicious beef stew without a lot of hassle. This version uses carrots and potatoes in a rich and hearty broth to fill you and warm you up. Easy to put together in minutes and let the Instant Pot handle all the hard work.
How do you make stew meat tender?
Because we all know that stew meat is plain tough. So that leaves us with the option of cooking it all day long, using another more expensive cut of meat, or better yet, using the Instant Pot!
In just 30 minutes or so of cooking time, the Instant Pot can make the toughest cut of stew meat totally tender.
Of course you could use another option as well, but there’s really no need.
How do you thicken beef stew?
You have a few options here as well including:
- flour
- cornstarch
- or my personal favorite option, tapioca pearls
When cooking recipes in the pressure cooker, it really important not to add any thickeners during the pressure cooking part of the process. If you do, the pot will either not come to pressure properly, the food may be to thick and burn to the bottom, or you could end up with one of the dreaded malfunction stories you’ve probably heard.
That leaves you to add either flour or cornstarch after the end of the cooking time, but the downside to this is that it will have a raw or mealy flavor or texture.
The good news is I’ve had great success adding tapioca pearls at the beginning of cooking time without making the soup overly thick and it does very well in the Instant Pot.
If you are more of a die hard slow cooker fan, make sure you check out my Slow Cooker Beef Stew recipe!!
Instant Pot Beef Stew
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 tablespoon butter
- 2 pounds stew meat
- 1 small sweet onion diced
- 4 carrots peeled and cut into large chunks
- 6 oz potatoes cut into large bite sized pieces
- 2 tablespoons small tapioca pearls
- 1 cup beef broth
- 2 tablespoons tomato paste
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 2 teaspoons herb and garlic seasoning
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
Instructions
- Heat oil and butter on sauté in Instant Pot
- Add beef and cook for 4-5 minutes, turning occasionally, until browned on all sides
- Turn off pot and add remaining ingredients, stirring to combine well
- Cover and set to manual high pressure for 35 minutes
- Allow natural pressure release then turn valve to release any remaining steam
- Stir well before serving
Notes
Nutrition
Tapioca pearls kept getting stuck to the bottom of the pot. I washed/dried the pot TWICE and still got the “burn” message.
It’ll probably be better if you added more liquid and thickened with tapioca AFTER the stew is done. Very disappointing.
I’m so sorry you’ve had this experience. I’ve made this recipe 10+ times and have never encountered the burn error. Which model do you have? One option would be to add more liquid for your particular Instant Pot model. Another would be to add tapioca powder stirred into a slurry after cooking. Unfortunately adding the tapioca pearls at the end likely wouldn’t work as they would not properly dissolve.