Instant Pot Red Beans

I have shared my traditional red bean recipe in the crockpot, but since my Instant Pot purchase, I can make them so much quicker!

I start out with a 1# bag of red beans.

This is how I store my beans and rice in the pantry. It’s easier than stacking bags of beans. 2.5 cups of dried beans is equal to 1 pound.

I rinse my beans in hot water just to be sure they are clean. Then I add either chicken stock or broth. This gives you a nice, rich base for the beans. The sauce is just as important the beans.

You need about 5 cups of liquid for the first part of the cooking cycle.

As a general rule, you can’t cook south Louisiana food without onion. Grab a big one and dice it up! I like the sweet yellow ones.

Add some Cajun seasoning. This is the standard in our home.

Now it goes into the first cooking round. We are only cooking the dry beans at this point.

I set my Instant Pot to 45 min on the manual setting. You can also use the soup setting or meat setting for 35-45 min.

Be sure it’s sealed properly.

Then go do something fun for an hour or so.

I ran some errands, but here’s the beautiful thing. It doesn’t matter how long you leave the beans. The Instant Pot automatically switches to warm mode. Here’s what my Pot was doing when I returned to it:

Here’s what the beans look like at this point:

Now for the sausage. You can use any smokes sausage, but out favorite is Conecuh. It’s a small casing sausage made with quality ingredients.

Now to cut it up and add to the Pot.

With a larger diameter sausage, you may want to cut it smaller to make it spoon-sized.

Now for some garlic (1-2 Tbsp?), some extra seasoning, and another 40 minutes on soup setting.

After going to the barn for a while, I’m back to check on the beans. Again, the beauty is the automatic adjustment to low once the cooking cycle is over.

Now here’s a video clip of the beans at this point.

The color is a little off but not in real life, just on-camera.

These are ready to eat; however, we like our beans a little thicker. I will put them back on for 10-15 min.

Then to make rice and cornbread…

Here’s a sneak peak at the cornbread ingredients. I’ll make another post about that someday. 😊

Happy eating!!