Quick Instant Pot Beef Stew
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With a minimum of work and time, you can have an old-fashioned favorite comfort food for dinner tonight. This Instant Pot Beef Stew tastes like you spent all day making it but surprisingly it takes just 15 minutes of real work! This easy recipe is perfect for busy weeknights when you have just a fraction of the time needed to make a classic beef stew.
Tender chunks of beef, hearty broth, and perfectly cooked vegetables are the stars of this homemade beef stew. Serve big bowls of beef stew with hearty bread, and if you have any time earlier in the day make this peasant bread!
Ingredients for Instant Pot Beef Stew
- light olive oil or vegetable oil
- all-purpose flour
- garlic powder
- salt
- black pepper
- beef stew meat
- potatoes
- carrots
- celery
- onions
- Italian seasoning
- tomato paste *optional*
- bay leaf
- garlic
- beef broth you can beef stock or vegetable broth
- corn starch
- water
- parsley (garnish only)
- Instant Pot
- wooden spoon
- medium bowl for dredging beef
To Tomato Paste Or Not
A lot of stew recipes call for tomato paste, and I’ve always used it in most stew recipes. One time one child asked if we could “just brown beef stew, I don’t like the tomato mom” so I left it out. We liked it just fine that way, it was more of a brown beef stew. These days I make it with OR without tomato paste, and we like it both ways. The one child still prefers it without tomato paste. He says it doesn’t taste “as good” but they eat it just not with as much gusto as brown beef stew.
You can add 1/2-1 TBSP of tomato paste as written in this recipe or leave it out. It adds a depth of flavor to the stew. Some people say it thickens the stew but I don’t think it does unless you also cook it down.
Wondering how to just get ONE Tablespoon of tomato paste? I used to as well and kept wondering until I bought Tomato Paste in a TUBE!! You can open it,use a tiny bit, put the lid on, and store it in the fridge until you need it again.
About that Stew Meat
For this recipe, you can use ANY kind of beef you happen to have. It doesn’t’ HAVE to be stew meat. Stew meat is awesome because it’s already cut up and it usually has a little fat in it which makes for tender meat in the stew.
BUT
Cooking this stew in the Instant Pot (or pressure cooker) means every cut of beef will be tender. So you can buy cheaper cuts, save money, and feed everyone at the same time.
Cuts of beef you might use include:
- chuck roast
- round steak
- seven bone roast
- sirloin roast
- rump roast
All of those will be tender after 10 minutes in the pressure cooker.
What I like to do is buy a big roast, on sale, obviously. And then I cut it all up in stew-meat size pieces. And then I freeze individual bags of cut stew meat that’s ready to roll when I want dinner fast.
Change It Up
Add more vegetables to this recipe. Vegetables that can add would include:
- Cabbage
- Sweet Potatoes
- Zucchini
- Crookneck Squash
- Cubed Winter Squash
Use my fabulous Instant Pot Vegetable Broth in this soup. It’s a totally hands-off recipe, put everything in the pot, turn it on, and walk away.
I like to make that one at night and then cool it down in the morning and freeze it or store it for any soups I’m making that week. Talk about CHEAP FOOD, this Instant Pot Vegetable Broth is basically free because you use vegetable scraps. FREE FOOD!
You can ALSO change up your ingredients and make this Slow Cooker Beef Stew. This stew cooks all day and is waiting for you when you’re ready to eat!
Instant Pot Beef Stew
Ingredients
- 2 TBSP cooking oil
- 2 TBSP flour
- 1 tsp garlic powder
- 1 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp black pepper
- 1 pound beef cut in bite size pieces
- 2 1/2 cups potatoes peeled and chopped
- 1 cup carrots
- 1 cup celery sliced
- 1/2 cup onions chopped
- pinch Italian seasoning
- 1 teaspoon garlic minced
- 1 quart low sodium beef broth you can beef stock or vegetable broth
- 2 TBSP Corn Starch
- 1/2 cup water
Instructions
- turn the Instant Pot to saute
- add 1 TBSP oil
- mix the flour, salt, pepper, and garlic powder together
- toss the beef with the flour
- when the Instant Pot is hot add half of the beef and quickly brown it
- remove it to a plate once browned
- repeat with the remaining oil and beef
- once the beef is all browned set it aside
- turn off the Instant Pot
- use about 1 cup of the broth to deglaze the hot Instant Pot, don’t let it cool down before deglazing the heat and water will steam off the browned bits be sure to completely clean the bottom of the pan it will keep the stew from scorching and it adds a lot of flavor!
- once the inner pot is cleaned of all the browned bits layer in the beef, then the potatoes, then mix up the carrots, celery, and onion
- sprinkle on the Italian Seasoning and minced garlic
- pour the broth over making sure to poke down any vegetables above the broth
- put on the lid, set to seal, press manual, and set the timer to 10 minutes
- once the timer goes off let it natural release for 10 minutes
- mix the corn starch and water together
- open the Instant Pot
- add a scoop of hot broth to the corn starch mixture, pour it all back in, turn the pot to saute and just thicken the stew up a bit, this step takes 2-3 minutes but makes the stew nice and thick
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