My Top 15 Vegan INSTANT POT Recipes

If you just received an Instant Pot as a gift, or if you're looking for super simple laid-back meals, then this video is for you. Today, I wanna show you 15 of the best vegan Instant Pot meals. And for our first meal, we're gonna start with lentil sloppy joes. We'll start by chopping some carrots, an onion, and a large bell pepper. Then you'll turn on the saute function, and saute pepper, onion, and carrots. We'll add water since we don't use oil to saute. And we'll add three cloves of garlic. Then we'll add one six ounce can of tomato paste, and one can of tomato sauce. This is actually a little bigger, so you want about one 10 to 14 ounce can, which means half of that. Then you'll add one and a half cups of green lentils. Then two cups of veggie broth. And I use water and this veggie broth paste. Then you'll add two tablespoons of brown sugar. You can totally use maple syrup, but brown sugar's a lot cheaper, and this is all about cheat meals. So two tablespoons of brown sugar. Then you'll add one to two teaspoons of chili powder, depending on your preference, so how spicy you like it, or your kids like it. I'm gonna do one and a half. Then we'll add one teaspoon cumin, and a half a teaspoon of salt. Then we'll finish it off with two tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce. You can also use soy sauce. Mix all of that together. Lentils are already starting to cook. You'll also want to add in a half a teaspoon of smoked paprika. And this is completely optional, but if you have liquid smoke, add a teaspoon of liquid smoke, your favorite flavor of liquid smoke. I got mine from Amazon, and it has lasted me years, literally years. And then we'll cook on high pressure for 12 minutes. Now to save money for the Sloppy Joes, I'm using rolls instead of actual buns. It was a lot cheaper. All right, Sloppy Joes are done. Here it is. It makes a big batch, and you can even freeze it for later. Delicious. Now let's try it out. The flavor's not too strong. It's really yummy. My kids will absolutely love this. And if you don't want to use roll or bread, you can actually put this on top of a sweet potato, and it would be delicious. Any potato. It would be so yummy. For this second meal, it's honestly a family favorite. It's one of my go-to meals that my husband so lovingly named Almost Rotten Vegetable Soup. The first step in Almost Rotten Vegetable Soup is to open your fridge and see which veggies are about to go bad, and pull them out. We got some cauliflower, celery, carrots back in there. Ah, some green beans. So many carrots. And carrots, and carrots. I think I'm gonna add some carrots, yeah? Peppers and, oh, some purple cabbage. Who knows how old that is, but we'll use it. Jalapeno peppers, maybe not today. Guys, I have six kids. Nothing ever stays clean for long. So much cleaner now. After finding the veggies in your fridge, and possibly cleaning out your fridge, then you'll need to find a starch. You can use rice or potatoes, and these potatoes are about to go bad, so I'm gonna use these, but you'll want either or, and you'll also want to add some beans. Next, you'll grab some frozen peas and corn in your freezer, and then we are good to dump it all in. You'll also want to grab an onion. So let's chop everything up. My kid ate some and put it back in. I like to use the leaves from the celery. I think they actually add a lot of flavor. Once the chopper gets full, I add it to my Instant Pot. You do want to make sure to wash them before you chop them. Add this in. Now for the potatoes. Look at this beautiful mix of potatoes. We have purple potatoes, white potato, red potatoes. We'll add these in too. Almost full. I'm gonna add in some frozen peas and some frozen corn. Sometimes I'll save these till the very end after it's cooked to cool it down for my kids. We're just gonna cook it at the beginning now. That's good. And I'll add in four to five cups of veggie broth. And five. We'll make all that in. The veggies do cook down, so it doesn't look like a lot of water here, but it is. Now the secret ingredient to this whole soup is Old Bay seasoning. Yes, this is what makes it so good. We'll add one tablespoon here, and that's all the spices you'll need. Then I'll pressure cook it on high for 18 minutes. While that's cooking, I've rinsed off some of the veggie scraps, and I'm gonna add it to my bag of veggie straps that I will use to make homemade veggie broth once the bag gets full. I store this in my freezer. Okay, the almost rotten veggie soup is done cooking. You can see there's a good amount of liquid, and it tastes pretty good, but I want it to go next level. So let me show you. We're gonna take the juice from this soup. So we want at least a cup, possibly a little bit more. Try not to get the veggies in there. And we're gonna add it to a blender. A little bit more juice without the veggies. Perfect, so you have a good amount of juice there. Then we'll take some cashews and add it to our blender. I'm gonna take one cup. Then I'll blend this into a cream. Now, this can depend on you if you want it to be a little bit more creamy than this. You can add maybe a cup and a half, just a couple more, just kind of based off of your preference. If you're going for low fat, you can add less, or you can even just do soy milk instead and add a little bit of soy milk to make this more creamy. Oh, look at how creamy that is. Look at how creamy. Once you take the time to blend the cashews in your blender, it turns into this delicious cream. Seriously, it's so thick, so delicious, and it's gonna make our soup so yummy. Just make sure that you got all those cashews nice and creamed. Yum. All right, let's add in that cream. And even if there's a couple of chunks, that's okay. It's soup. It's pretty forgiving. It's important that you use the broth to cream everything. Otherwise, it can be too watery. If you just put in water, it loses a lot of the flavor. And now you have a creamy, delicious, almost rotten vegetable soup. If you taste it, you want a little more spice, you can even add some more Old Bay seasoning. Kind of make this your own. So creamy, so yummy. Look at that. I tasted this and it needs just a little bit of extra salt. I'm gonna add that in. Sometimes when you add the cashews, it kind of dulls the flavor a little bit. So taste, add salt and pepper as needed. Perfect. This is perfect. So good. You can seriously add anything to the soup and it always turns out fantastic. Like mushrooms, beans, anything else you could have added in. And it tastes really good. This is one of the easiest and most delicious soups you will ever make in the Instant Pot. And the perfect way to use those veggies that are about to go rotten. Yeah. And for number three, this is honestly one of the most delicious breakfasts of all time. It is lemon poppy seed oatmeal. You can make it beforehand or even just the morning of. It is so good. Before you go to bed, you will take one cup of steel cut oats, two cups water. And then on top of that, you'll also add one cup of your favorite plant-based milk. I'm going to be using soy milk here. Then you'll want about a fourth of a teaspoon of salt and a fourth a cup of your sweetener of choice. I'm just using regular sugar, but you can use coconut sugar or maple syrup. So a fourth a cup. You'll mix all that together and then cook so that it's ready right before you wake up in the morning. If your Instant Pot has this delay start option, you can delay the start of the cooking process to about a half an hour before you're waking up. However, if it doesn't have that option, you could always just do the slow cooker option instead and do it again for about six to eight hours on low, slow cooking. Now, since I'm actually cooking it this morning and not the night before, I'm just gonna pressure cook it for five minutes on high. While the silquetas are cooking or even just right before you go to bed, you'll want to zest two lemons and then juice them after they are zested. Make sure you do zest them though. This is where a lot of the lemon flavor comes from for the lemon poppy seeds. Now that the lemons are zested, let's go ahead and get the juice out of them. So we'll just get the juice of these two lemons, add them to our little bowl. Now this recipe can be found in our spring meal guide and it's very springy, really refreshing from all of this lemon flavor. To the lemon juice, you'll also add one teaspoon of vanilla. If you're cooking the silquetas at night so that they're ready to go in the morning, then you'll place the lemon juice in the fridge until morning. Otherwise, just keep it to the side. Once the silquetas are done, you'll open it up, mix everything around, it's nice and thick, and then let's add in the flavor. So you'll add in your vanilla and lemon juice mix with the zest. All you do is mix that in. Then you'll add two tablespoons of poppy seeds. If you do not have poppy seeds, you can also use chia seeds here. Now taste and enjoy. You can always add more sweetener if you like this a little bit sweeter. I'm going to add just a little bit of maple syrup to sweeten this up just a little bit more, but that's up to you. It's pretty sweet on its own. It just depends on your preference. Sometimes, depending on the size of your lemons, it may be a little more lemony, so adding that extra sweetener can help. This makes about three to four servings. This breakfast will be a huge hit in your family, and similar to the muffins, it's more like dessert than actually breakfast. Mm, that's really good. Such a great way to mix up your typical oatmeal. Lemony and sweet. Just be warned that you'll probably have to check your teeth for poppy seeds after. Number four is my go-to pinto beans. Everyone loves this one. I make this all the time. Now, the problem is I'm not much of a person that plans in advance, and so I usually don't actually soak my dry beans overnight, and in the past, when I would put them directly into the Instant Pot and cook them with the water and make the seasonings in the water, we would all get a little bit gassy. So here is what I do in order to reduce the gas, even if I did not soak my beans overnight. I will be cooking my beans in a bunch of water. I don't measure it. It's usually about three times the amount of water as the beans, and I add the beans and one tablespoon of salt. Yes, a tablespoon of salt, but don't worry. We are gonna be rinsing most of this out. Put on the lid and cook on high for 30 minutes. Now, because that's going to take about a half an hour, I'm going to also put some rice in my rice cooker so that that will be done too. The beans are done, and this is where my secret sauce comes in. You will drain all of the water out of the beans. This is key. All of it. Yes, all of it. I know it tastes better with the water it's cooked in. I get that, but if we did not soak the beans overnight, you don't want it to be gassy, and this will help reduce the gas. Then you rinse the beans. You can taste them, make sure they're cooked the way you like. Rinse out the pan and put them back in. It's time to add some flavor back in. About two cups of water, two tablespoons of veggie broth paste. Now, of course, you can just do two cups of veggie broth instead. Then we will add one tablespoon of oregano, one tablespoon of cumin. We'll finish this off with the juice of one lime. Now I push saute for just about five minutes to let the flavors marinate together. This is seriously one of our go-to dinners that I'm constantly making at least once a week in my Instant Pot. Number five is a delicious madras lentils recipe. My kids absolutely love those bags from Costco of madras lentils. Their favorite snack is to come home from school, grab some rice with those madras lentils, and sometimes they'll even just eat them by themselves. But they're not cheap, and so I'm excited to make a big batch. Everyone loves this meal, and it's super easy to make beforehand so I can go off, go to sports, go to soccer, go to dance, and dinner's already done. We'll begin by chopping up an onion and a bell pepper. We'll turn on the saute function for about five minutes. Then I will add my pepper and onion with a little bit of water, just a little bit. And we'll add four cloves minced garlic. One time I had a teenager help me make a meal when she was babysitting when my kids were young, and she added the cloves of garlic whole, completely whole, to the meal in the Instant Pot. So definitely mince it. And you'll add about two tablespoons of grated ginger, fresh ginger. If you only have dried ginger, that's just fine too. Just tastes a little better when it is fresh. You'll add one teaspoon smoked paprika, one teaspoon cumin, one teaspoon salt, and one teaspoon of garam masala. Now I bought this off of Amazon a long time ago, and I've used it probably for about two years now. This smells amazing. It smells so good. You can see the water has mostly evaporated. You'll add a 14-ounce can of tomato sauce. This can's only eight ounces, so I have to add a little bit more. Now this is madras lentils, so we'll need to add one cup of lentils. There's one cup of lentils. I'm also going to turn off the saute function. Then add a can of rinsed small red beans. Now this recipe does call for chili powder, actually two teaspoons. I am leaving it out just because I'm afraid my kids won't eat it if it's too spicy. The last thing to add is two cups of veggie broth. I just use water and two teaspoons of the Better Than Bouillon veggie paste, but any type of veggie broth works. Now we'll close the lid. Cook on high for 23 minutes. That's because I have green lentils. If it was red lentils, it would just be 18 minutes. Now while that's cooking, I'm going to make up a bunch of rice in my rice cooker. All right, it is done. This recipe does not call for coconut milk, but if you wanted to, if you really like the flavor and the taste, you could add a little bit of coconut milk to it after it's cooked. It's good. What would you rate it? Eight out of 10. An eight out of 10. For number six, we're making a yummy and super simple tortilla soup. Start by turning on the saute function on the Instant Pot, and then we'll saute one red onion. You'll let that saute for a minute or two, and then you will add one jar of salsa verde. This recipe also calls for jalapenos, but I'm not adding them because I'll get enough heat from just the salsa verde. You can also use tomatillo salsa if you don't have salsa verde. I'll add one teaspoon of cumin. Then you'll add two cans of white beans. Usually, you'll want to use cannellini beans, but I only have one, so I'm gonna use pinto beans as well. The two together will work great. Make sure the beans are rinsed and drained. Now, the recipe calls for two cups cooked rice. Instead, I'm going to add 3 1⁄4 cup uncooked rice and add an extra cup of veggie broth. I always like to rinse out my rice before I put it in the soup, and so that already has a little bit of liquid, so the extra cup will be perfect. And then the recipe calls for four cups veggie broth. I always use veggie paste with water, and I'm going to add five cups because of the uncooked rice. Five teaspoons of this broth. That's it, and because the rice is not cooked, we will pressure cook for about 20 minutes, and then it should be good to go. Soup is done. Now, we just need to add some fresh lime juice. You can garnish with green onions, cilantro, spinach, tomatoes, add anything else you want to it, and then definitely serve with either some chips or tortillas. And continuing on with this soup theme, we're making a black bean soup for number seven. You can make this soup over rice, or you can also make it with chips or even in a tortilla and take out all the extra liquid. Or just eat it as is because this soup is delicious. Let's make it. Because this is dump and go, I'm literally just going to throw everything inside my Instant Pot. You can choose to saute the veggies beforehand, but I figure they're going to get cooked anyway. Why spend the time? Especially when you're a mom of six and you need to get to places. You'll start by adding one cup of dry black beans to your Instant Pot. Then we'll quickly dice one yellow onion, medium sized. Of course, I use my chopper. Makes it go a lot faster. We'll add the onion to the Instant Pot. Next is three cloves of garlic. Then you'll dice two stalks of celery. And I'm going to use my chopper again because it makes it really, really small. And we'll throw in that celery. Then we'll add in one red bell pepper. The easiest way to cut a bell pepper is to turn it upside down and then just cut it along the natural lines. And then you just kind of peel it off. And then you use the magic chopper. And in two seconds, you have a chopped red bell pepper. We'll add that in. And then the last veggie is optional, but I happen to have a zucchini. So it's like, you might as well give the soup a little bit more veggies, a little bit more bulk, and then you'll chop up that zucchini. I love dump and go recipes because it's a great way to use veggies that were about to go bad. And let's throw that in as well. Perfect. Love it, love it, love it. You know what? I'm also going to throw in a carrot. So we're just going to take some of my baby carrots, chop them up. About the size of one medium carrot. All right, now we're ready. Let's add in all that flavor and spices and some diced tomatoes. One can of petite diced tomatoes with the liquid. Then we'll add four cups veggie broth. I'm just going to fill up my little container here. Okay, I added four cups water and then I'll do four teaspoons of veggie bouillon paste. I'm always generous with the paste. I'll mix that in there. Then we'll add a teaspoon of smoked paprika for that smoky flavor. You can also use liquid smoke if you want a little bit more of a smoky flavor in the black bean soup. Then we'll add in one teaspoon of oregano, one teaspoon of coriander, one teaspoon of cumin. And then as an option, you can do chili powder. Now I'm going to use a half a teaspoon. If you do not like things spicy at all, you can omit the chili powder. But just, I feel like a half a teaspoon doesn't make that big of a difference. My kids don't think it's too spicy. Then we'll add in some pepper just to taste, just half a teaspoon-ish of pepper. And then we'll start with about a half a teaspoon of salt. And then of course you can add more later on if you feel like it needs more. And now we're ready to cook this thing. I'm going to pressure cook this for 45 minutes. Now I did not soak my beans at all beforehand, so I need to cook it for the full 45 minutes. However, if you happen to prefer to soak your beans, then you can cook them for about 30 minutes. So all depends on how ready those beans are to be cooked. Black bean soup. It's really good. You want to try it? Yeah. You want to try it? I want to try it! It's hot, hot. I know it's hot. Still good. Still good? This honestly surprised me how delicious this black bean soup was. For number eight, we're going a little unconventional and making artichokes. Did you know that you can make artichokes in your Instant Pot? Let me show you how easy it is. I still remember the very first time I had a steamed artichoke. I was probably eight years old, and I remember our whole family had one and we dipped each leaf in butter, and I thought it was the most delicious thing of all time. But you know what? After I've made more artichokes, especially after going plant-based, I found what's even more delicious than dipping artichokes in butter is dipping it in oil, vinegar, and a little bit of salt. So let's go ahead and make artichokes the plant-based way. We first want to prep the artichokes by kind of cutting off the top, and then you want to just snip off some of the edges. This is not necessary. It just makes it a little bit more pleasant. So nothing sharp injures your children. Next, you'll want to cut off the stem, and then just maybe a couple of the leaves. Not too many, though. We'll repeat the process with these two, and we're ready to put them in the Instant Pot. My little metal thing for steaming. Then we'll put in the artichoke and then one cup of water. We'll close the lid, pressure cook on high for 10 minutes, and then we'll start. While that's cooking, let's make the dip. It is equal parts olive oil and vinegar, and then you'll add salt to taste. Now, of course, you can take out the olive oil if you are completely oil-free. Take two tablespoons of olive oil, two tablespoons of vinegar. We'll mix that around. My cute little helper. Okay, let this naturally release, and now it's ready. Look at those beauties. Whoo! All right, let's pull them out. So you'll go ahead and take off the leaf, and you'll see all of that yummy meat of the artichoke, and you'll dip it in your vinegar oil concoction, and then drag it across the bottom teeth. Now, I love vinegar and oil. You could also do balsamic vinegar and oil. You could do just oil with salt and some pepper. You can make this your own and choose to just kind of have fun with the dip, but I love the tang of a little bit of vinegar. Hey, real quick. Have you signed up for my free one-week meal guide? It is a delicious week of whole food plant-based recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks. Plus, I even include a shopping list. If you haven't already grabbed it, make sure to click on the link below. It is the perfect way to start out a new year nice and fresh, full of delicious, healthy recipes. So click on it, and I will send it right to your inbox. Now, let's go back to the instant pot recipes. Number nine is a black bean and salsa casserole. Super easy, and all my kids love it. You'll first make sure to write down the name of whatever it is you're making on your bag, and then how long it takes to cook it. Now, my instructions are for the instant pot, but honestly, you could do this for the slow cooker or any of your preferred cooking methods. Then I'm using these handy-dandy bag holders, and I'm going to make two extra meals while I'm making my current dinner. So I'll put these bags on two of these holders and then put all the ingredients in all three things at the same time. Two bags and one instant pot. Now, you can use any type of veggie broth, but because I'm using veggie bouillon, the easiest way to mix it is just to use my blender. And since I'm making three different meals, and each meal will require two cups of veggie broth, I'm going to add in six teaspoons of veggie bouillon and six cups of water. Blend it all together so it's nice and easy. Each meal requires about two cans worth of beans. Now, you can do this in a couple of ways. You can add either two and a half cup of cooked beans that maybe you cooked a big batch on your own, or you can add even a can of black beans and then a can of kidney beans. I'm using a mix of cooked beans, kidney beans, and black beans because that's what was in my pantry. Then you'll add one cup of corn. I prefer frozen corn, but canned corn works great here too. Next is one and a half cups of brown rice. Then you'll add a half a cup of diced red onions. I just diced about an onion and a half, and then added about a half a cup to each meal. Next is two cups of veggie broth. As you saw before, I already mixed up this veggie broth in my blender so that it's nice and incorporated and I can easily add it to each bag and meal. Then one eight ounce can of diced green chilies. One can of diced tomatoes. My favorite is petite diced if you can find it. One cup of your favorite kind of salsa. And for the seasonings, just to keep it simple, we're going to do two tablespoons of taco seasoning in each meal. Then you'll mix all of this up. And then we'll close these off and seal them. Once it is frozen, it's going to take about 25 minutes to cook. But if you're cooking it fresh, you can honestly cook it at 22 minutes and be just fine. Number 10 is a delicious and hearty lentil soup. Everyone needs a good lentil soup recipe. Now this recipe makes for a huge amount of lentil soup. So I'm only making one extra meal because that's all I have on hand. Now on this bag, I wrote what it is, the lentil soup. And I'm going to want to add seven cups water. Obviously, this bag is not big enough to add all of the broth. So instead, I'll just add that veggie broth paste. And then before I cook it, I can add the rest. All right, let's put it together. I have one pot for dinner tonight and one for later. I just finished chopping two onions and I'll go ahead and add half to each. Next is four cloves garlic. Four cloves minced garlic. And then three carrots each. Let's chop those up. Split it up between the two. Each one gets four stalks of celery. Lost celery. All right, half and half. So great to get two meals done with the same amount of work. Seriously, it's really not that much extra work to just do another bag. Each one then gets four potatoes. Here's four for one. This whole thing would take so much longer if I didn't have this awesome chopper. I love it. Four for the other bag. Next, we'll put in an entire 16-ounce bag of lentils into each one. And then you can either add a can of diced tomatoes to each one or just dice up some tomatoes, which is what I'm going to do because I have a ton of extra tomatoes I want to use up. Let's finish it off with our spices. So we'll add two teaspoons of cumin. One teaspoon turmeric. A half a teaspoon of curry powder. One teaspoon of salt in each one. And then seven cups veggie broth for the one I'm cooking now. Seven teaspoons of veggie broth paste for the one for later. Six, seven, four, two, seven. And this is five cups. I almost forgot. We need to add a half a teaspoon of cayenne pepper to each one. You honestly don't taste it. It just gives it a little bit extra depth of flavor. It's not going to be that spicy. So even if you don't, like my kids don't like spicy things, but this doesn't change it that much. All right, now we are ready to cook. We're going to cook this on high pressure for 20 minutes. Otherwise, if it came straight out of the freezer, I would add a few more minutes. So closer to 25. Then we'll seal this one up and put it straight into the freezer. If I had had more potatoes and lentils, I easily could have made a second batch. But sometimes you just got to make do with what you have. You want to make sure that that broth doesn't just stick to the bag because otherwise it's going to freeze. So see if you can even let it get in there pretty deep. This delicious lentil soup. For number 11, I wanted to show you how to cook chickpeas to make them taste like butter. These things are so good. If you've never tried pressure cooker chickpeas, you need to. Way better than the canned stuff. You'll first start by buying a bag of dried chickpeas. Honestly, they are a quarter of the price of canned chickpeas. So it's worth it just for the savings. Then you'll soak the chickpeas overnight. And I'm going to show you how I do it. I added two pounds of chickpeas. And so this is about 12 cups of water. Now here is the secret ingredient. So this is baking soda. And you'll add about a teaspoon of baking soda to make it super soft. And then this will soak overnight. If you don't want to soak your chickpeas overnight, or if you don't have time to soak them overnight, instead you can just place this in a pan over the stove on high until it boils. And then turn it off and let it soak for one hour in boiling hot water. Otherwise, I'm just going to let this sit overnight. Now it's time for bed. It is the morning. You can see that the chickpeas have soaked overnight and have gotten a lot bigger. And luckily I had just the perfect amount of water. They all stayed underwater. I'm going to rinse these and then add them to my Instant Pot. To minimize gas and bloating, it's important that you do not cook your chickpeas in the water that you have been soaking them in. I'm just going to rinse these out. Now you'll want to add just enough water to cover the chickpeas, about two inches. So I don't even measure it. It's just enough water to cover the chickpeas and then a little bit above. This is optional, but I also like to add just a little bit of dried kombu. I just do it to help to minimize the gas and bloating. Any type of seaweed works. So whatever seaweed you happen to have on hand, that will work. This is two pounds of chickpeas. So I'm adding a tablespoon of salt. If you have just one pound, you would do half of a tablespoon. I know it sounds like a lot, but I will be rinsing this water afterwards. But this is what's going to give the chickpeas the flavor. And the secret ingredient yet again is to add a little bit of baking soda. I'm just going to add about half of a teaspoon here, and this is going to help really soften those chickpeas. And it's time to cook. Because I already soaked the chickpeas, I only need to cook them in my pressure cooker for 17 minutes. If I did not soak the chickpeas overnight, I would need to cook these for at least 40 minutes in the Instant Pot. And just to be clear, any type of pressure cooker works. It doesn't need to be an Instant Pot brand. If you don't have an Instant Pot or pressure cooker, you can easily cook those chickpeas over the stove. You just boil them for about 90 minutes, and that's only after you've soaked them overnight. Chickpeas are done. I'm just letting it release that extra little bit of pressure, and then we'll open it up. Ooh, look at that. Yum, yum. We'll take out the kombu. Some people use this in different recipes, so you can always save it. Adds a lot of flavor if it works with the recipe you're making. We're going to rinse and drain all these chickpeas. So get rid of all that water. If these chickpeas are too soft for your liking, just omit all of the baking soda. The baking soda is what really brings it over the top. So if you're cooking chickpeas, you don't even have time to soak them but want them really soft, add the baking soda. If you're soaking them and don't want them as mushy and soft as these are, then omit it. It's just a really good trick to have in your back pocket when you need it. Let's make hummus with these really soft chickpeas, and we'll do it in our blender. So you'll add about two and a half cups of chickpeas, which is about the same amount as a typical can of chickpeas. Next, we'll add the juice of a lemon, and then a fourth of a cup of tahini. Then we'll add one teaspoon of garlic powder. I prefer garlic powder over fresh garlic. I just think it tastes a little better, but you can choose if you want up to four cloves of garlic, fresh minced garlic instead. Then a half a teaspoon of salt. So we'll mix all this together in our blender, just on low until it's nice and smooth. I'm going to turn it up a little bit higher and then a little bit more. It gets so much more smooth in a blender than a food processor, so it's also a great tip. I'm going to add two tablespoons of water to help it blend a little bit more easily, just so we can get it even smoother. Yeah, there we go. Perfect. I'm gonna taste it. Wow, that is good. That is really good. Now we'll store this hummus in the fridge. It lasts up to seven days. Honestly, sometimes even longer. Now for number 12, since I've already showed you how to make black beans, pinto beans, and chickpeas, now let's make some red beans. Here is red beans and rice. Now, unlike other recipes where you can kind of get away with not having to soak your beans, when it comes to red beans like kidney beans, you definitely want to soak them beforehand. These have been soaking overnight for about eight hours. You'll first start by draining and rinsing the red beans. You'll chop an onion, a pepper, and four stalks of celery. Now you could saute these vegetables right away in the Instant Pot, but I honestly don't even bother. I'm just gonna put them in, and we're just gonna dump and go. Save some time. Then you'll add four cloves of minced garlic, the kidney beans that have already been rinsed and drained, four cups of veggie broth. I just use the veggie broth paste. I'm gonna throw in five for good measure because I kind of eyeballed my four cups. Now for the spices. You'll add two teaspoons of thyme, two teaspoons of oregano, two bay leaves, and two teaspoons smoked paprika. Then you'll also add a teaspoon of liquid smoke and some black pepper. Close the lid and cook. You'll pressure cook this on high for 30 minutes. While that's cooking, you'll also want to place your rice in your rice cooker, and then go for a walk. Walk away. Go have fun. Do some reading. Dinner will be done in 30 minutes. The red beans are done. Releasing it after about five minutes of letting it sit. All right, you'll mix everything. Pull out the bay leaves and add in some green onions and cilantro. Then serve over rice. You can also add some hot sauce to this to make it a little bit more spicy if that's how you prefer. The flavor is so yummy. It's good. Now for number 13, I wanted to do something a little bit different and show you how you can make vegan instant pot yogurt. It is delicious, and once you've tried it, you may never go back. It's crazy how easy it is to actually make. Now for the yogurt, you want to make it at night. All my kids are in bed, and now it's time to put it together because it's going to take about 15 to 17 hours in order to make the yogurt, and you want all that time to go by while you're sleeping instead of waiting in the middle of the day. You want to make sure your instant pot is very, very, very clean. So I'm going to use just some baking soda after already cleaning everything out just to do another round. Make sure it's super duper clean. You can also like boil some water and run some boiling water over everything too. You also want to clean either a big bowl or two jars that you can place inside the instant pot to put the actual milk in to become yogurt. Because of the size, I'm actually going to use these two jars because I can fit more in it than just one bowl that would go inside. It's a little trickier to put in and take out. Now to make the yogurt, it requires two ingredients. Number one, we're going to use soy milk that only contains soybeans and water. That's it. There can't be any fillers. So make sure whatever milk you decide to use does not contain any fillers. The second thing is you can use actually a probiotic pill or take some type of store-bought yogurt and then you'll just add a spoonful of that as long as it has the probiotics already in it with live active cultures. Then you can just take that and then add it in and I'll show you how to do it. We'll split up the milk into these two jars. I use about a carton and a half. We'll take a big spoonful of the probiotic yogurt and add it to each jar and we'll mix that up. Let's add it to our pressure cooker. Make sure the vent is sealed. Then you'll hit the yogurt button. We're gonna do low temp and time to 14 hours and that's it. Start. Time for bed and we'll check on it in the morning in 14 hours. Okay, it is the next day. I actually checked on this earlier in the afternoon once the timer ran out and it was still pretty watery and so I set the timer again and you can see it's a lot thicker. It's like more like jello whereas before it was watery. So sometimes you might need to add more time. So I'm gonna go ahead and take this out. Now I want to turn this into more of a Greek style yogurt which is higher in protein so I just have my strainer on top of a bowl with a cheesecloth and I'm just gonna strain out the extra liquid. So we'll just put it in here and then I'll have it sit overnight and then I'll have Greek yogurt in the morning. To cover it, I'm just gonna place a plate on top and put it in the fridge. It is the next morning. Let's take out our yogurt and it is ready to go. All right, here it is. Now this is what's leftover. It's actually pretty nutritious. You could add this to smoothies if you want instead of just throwing it out but here is our Greek style soy yogurt. It's thick. It's full of protein. I'm gonna add it to my jar and just keep it in the fridge and it's a lot less expensive than the other yogurt that you can buy at the grocery store and while it did take some time, it's actually not very labor intensive since your Instant Pot does all the work. Honestly, the hardest part on all this was making sure my Instant Pot was super clean. That's it. If you've seen my other videos, you know not all my appliances are very clean most of the time. This recipe ended up making a little bit more than just one jar's worth which is perfect because I can eat some now and store the rest for later. This recipe is completely unsweetened which makes it perfect for like a mayonnaise or a sour cream or anything in savory recipes and then to eat it like yogurt, I'm just gonna add some maple syrup. Stir it in. I'll add some yummy granola and strawberries. So good. All right, let's taste it. Mmm, it's tangy, yogurt-y. It's really good and very inexpensive. Some final tips just so that you're aware, if you buy store-bought milk, then you do not need to boil your milk before you put in the probiotic yogurt or the probiotic capsules. You can just put in the milk, put in the yogurt just like I did, then put it in your Instant Pot. However, if you're making a homemade oat milk or a homemade almond milk and turning that into yogurt, you will need to boil it first. Then make sure that it actually cools down before you put in the probiotics because otherwise it will completely kill them off. So it needs to cool down before you put in the probiotic yogurt or the probiotic capsules. Lastly, my yogurt ended up taking a little bit longer to make because I had been storing the soy milk in the fridge. So because it was cold when I put in the probiotic yogurt, ended up taking significantly longer. It took the rest of the day in order to become that yogurt, which is fine with me. It actually was really convenient to start making it at night, then the next evening start to strain it so that I could then have it for the following morning. So it's a two day process, but totally worth it and not a lot of work. For number 14, we're making the meal I make when I don't wanna cook and don't wanna order pizza. It's just a super easy meatball and veggie meal. All you need is pasta sauce, some frozen green beans and some frozen veggie meatballs. Afterwards, you'll dip it all with some bread. My kids love this meal because of the bread. It's similar to pizza. It's so delicious and super simple. You'll first just open your bag of meatballs. Now for my family of eight, I generally double this recipe, but for demonstration purposes, I'm just gonna do one regular recipe. So one bag of meatballs and then one bag, just small 12 ounce bag of green beans or honestly whatever vegetable your family will eat. Everyone in my family will eat green beans. That's why I throw them in. And it goes really well with marinara sauce. And then you'll top it off with some pasta sauce. This is just a mushroom based pasta sauce. There we go. And then use your discretion with how much you wanna use. I'm just gonna throw all of it in there, make it kind of soupy because then we can dip the bread in it afterwards. And that's why this is a great replacement for pizza because with the bread and the pasta sauce, it's pretty similar to pizza. Then we'll cook it for five minutes. While that is cooking, I'll cut up the bread. All right, it is done. All you needed to do was just cook this until everything was warmed through. It didn't really need to be in the Instant Pot. So whatever's easiest for you. You can easily add more water if you want it to be more soupy too. My one warning is it did burn just a little bit on the bottom. So to add a little bit more water or even just cook it for one minute in the Instant Pot instead of five. This is such a super simple and delicious meal. How easy, amazing. It's a perfect swap for pizza. And I would argue it's a little bit better for you too. Plus who doesn't love bread? And now for number 15, we are saving some dishes by making shepherd's pie in the Instant Pot instead of the traditional way. For the vegan lentil shepherd's pie, I used my best friend, the chopper to chop up my onion. I also use my best friend, the chopper to chop up these mushrooms super small so that hopefully my kids won't even notice. Then we're gonna throw in three cloves of minced garlic. Next, I'm putting in one cup of green lentils or brown. Next, we're gonna add two tablespoons of soy sauce. Then we'll do one tablespoon of vegan Worcestershire sauce and two tablespoons of tomato paste. Then we'll add one teaspoon of rosemary, one teaspoon of thyme, a half a teaspoon of smoked paprika. I like this just because it adds a little bit more of a smoky flavor. And this one's completely optional. So if you don't have it or don't wanna use it, that's fine. But I'm just gonna add a little squirt of liquid smoke. It's gonna be about a teaspoon. Next, we'll add one teaspoon of salt. I'm using light salt to keep it light and pepper to taste. Then we'll finish it off with some veggie broth and I'm gonna use some veggie bouillon instead of just the veggie broth. And it's about two cups. So I have one teaspoon of the bouillon and then another teaspoon. And I'm always very generous with my teaspoons. I like it flavorful. And then I'll add two cups of water. Here's one and two. Okay, so now you really wanna mix everything together very well. We want that veggie bouillon mixed in, the tomato paste mixed in because we're gonna add the potatoes on top. And so we want all of everything else mixed in really well, all that flavor in there. And we will add frozen veggies at the end of this to cool it down. But for right now, it's just the beef. Lots of flavor. It smells so good. Perfect. Next, I just wanna put in this little trivet thing, a little basket so that we can put the potatoes on top. I've washed the potatoes and I'm just gonna put them in as many as I can fit. There we go. Let's put on the lid. All right, we're gonna pressure cook on high for 20 minutes. And then I'll let it naturally release after the 20 minutes. All right, the lentil shepherd's pie is done. So now we'll just take out these potatoes and mash them. Put them in a separate bowl. And we'll take out this little trivet. Next, I'm gonna open up these frozen bags of veggies. We're just gonna throw in about a cup of corn, about half of this bag. And then these peas and corn. Perfect. And then we'll mix everything in and it will cool down the mixture so it's not so hot. But that's gonna be the bottom of our shepherd's pie. Okay, so now for the potatoes, I'm gonna add some garlic powder. I'm gonna add in some nutritional yeast and some salt. Okay, let's mash that up. I love instant pot potatoes. They're so easy to mash. Probably should have grabbed a bigger bowl. And then just any type of unsweetened, unflavored plant milk. And you'll add about a cup just to make these nice and creamy. And if you wanna add more garlic powder, more salt, just get them to a flavor that you like. I also like to add some pepper. Onion powder as well. Mix this all in really well. A little more salt. All right, and then all we do is add this on top of the topping so the kids can just scoop it out as one. The other option if you're lazy like me is just keep them separate. And you can just do a scoop of one and then put those scoop of potatoes on top. And both potatoes and the lentils. Awesome flavor. And way easier than making a huge mess of my kitchen. Emmy, what do you think? Emmeline. Wait, wait. Now there actually is one more recipe that I should have included in 15 of the best instant pot meals. But because I've included it in so many other videos, I decided to leave it out. So if you wanna check it out, it's my lasagna soup. And I've included it in this last video, three of the best red lentil recipes. So make sure to check that one out as well if you haven't already.