Instant Pot Pinto Beans

Instant Pot Pinto Beans are a super easy and much faster way to cook dry pinto beans, and they're great for meal prepping. Plus, there's no soaking required, and you'll save a few pennies too!

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• Ingredients You Need
• Equipment You Need
• How to Make Instant Pot Pinto Beans
• Tips & Tidbits
• Recipes Using Pinto Beans to Try
• 📋Recipe

Dry beans cooked to perfection in just over an hour without having to soak them overnight? That's exactly what you get when you cook your pinto beans in the Instant Pot, and then you can use them in all your favorite recipes!

If you haven't yet tried cooking dry beans in your Instant Pot, you definitely should! It's actually one of the things I do most with mine (check out my recipes for Instant Pot Black Beans and Instant Pot Chickpeas).

Sure, canned beans are great to have (and I always keep some of them around too), but I just love the texture and taste of home-cooked beans so much better. I can cook them exactly how I like them (just slightly firm), and so can you!

Also, they freeze exceptionally well, so if you don't need those beans you just cooked for tonight's dinner - or if you just want to stock up - portion them out, put them in freezer bags, and freeze them to use another time.

Plus, dry beans are usually less expensive than canned beans, so you can also save a little money by cooking dry beans!

Right now at my local store, a one-pound bag of dry pinto beans is $1.25 and a 15.5-ounce can of pinto beans is $1. Once cooked, the pound of dry beans will give you the equivalent of three cans of beans. That's $1.75 saved (hey, every little bit helps)!

Tips & Tidbits

• The fresher the beans, the easier they will be to cook. Dry beans last a long time in the pantry, but the older they are, the longer they may take to cook.
• When cooking beans in the Instant Pot, never fill the pot more than halfway full to avoid overflow. The beans will expand during cooking, and you need to allow room. This is why you need to use either a 6 or 8-quart Instant Pot (do not use a 3-quart Instant Pot).
• Soaking the beans is not required. However, if you would like to soak them overnight first, discard the soaking liquid and use fresh water to cook the beans, and reduce the cooking time to 20 minutes (the 20-minutes of natural pressure release stays the same).
• If you experience digestive issues when eating beans, soaking the beans before cooking can help reduce the gassiness.
• There is some debate about whether adding salt to the cooking water prevents beans from cooking properly. I've cooked my beans with and without salt and never noticed a major difference. Add salt if you'd like!
• The easiest and best way to freeze cooked beans is to allow them to cool, divide them into portions of 1¾ cups each (which is about how much is in a can of beans) or a quantity you commonly use, place them in a freezer bag, remove as much air as possible, and freeze.
• Unless you plan to use them all at once, don't freeze the whole batch in a big bag because - trust me - it will be a nightmare trying to take out (more like chisel off) just the quantity you need for a recipe.
• This recipe should give you beans that are slightly firm and not mushy. If you like you beans cooked more or less, adjust the cooking time accordingly.

This recipe using one pound of dried beans will give you enough cooked beans to be the equivalent of about three 15.5 to 16-ounce cans of pinto beans (each can has is about 1¾ cups of beans without the liquid).

Recipes Using Pinto Beans to Try

If you make this recipe, I'd love to know how it went! Please leave a comment and star rating below. Thanks!

📋Recipe