Quick Soak Beans in the Instant Pot
Planning to use dried beans in your Instant Pot? You can presoak them in water overnight, pressure cook your recipe a lot longer, which sometimes has uncertain results, or quick soak the beans using your Instant Pot before adding them to your recipe. I like to do Instant Pot quick soak beans when using them in recipes because it tends to make the recipes uniform in terms of trusting that my beans will come out fully cooked, and it is a lot quicker than soaking the beans overnight. It also make the beans less likely to cause gas.
Want a great recipe for using your Instant Pot quick soaked beans? Try our Instant Pot Cajun Red Beans and Rice or our Instant Pot Refried Beans!
Quick soaking beans in the Instant Pot is really quite easy. So here is how to do it.
How to Quick Soak Beans in the Instant Pot
Take your beans, in my case here, I am quick soaking one bag of red kidney beans, and add them to the pot with enough water to cover the beans by about an inch or so. Add a few teaspoons of salt. This helps soften the skins. You can omit the salt though if desired.
Next pressure cook on high pressure for five minutes and allow for a natural release. Drain off the liquid and your beans are ready for your recipe!
You do get some broken beans doing this, while soaking overnight can prevent that, but you are likely going to get broken beans when doing your recipe anyway. So in the end it matters little.
A Few Notes on Using Beans in the Instant Pot
The recipe here is based on a one pound bag of dried beans which comes to two cups dried. Beans tend to come out around triple the amount when cooked. So keep that in mind when measuring beans. You don’t need a magic amount of water, simply make sure that you are using at least the minimum required for your Instant Pot size and that the beans are covered by about an inch of water.
This recipe is also based on a 6 Qt. Instant Pot and using red kidney beans. And 8 Qt might cook them quicker and different beans may or may not quick soak faster. One reader reported that her white navy beans were nearly fully cooked in an 8 Qt. at 5 minutes. For that I suggest trying 2-3 minutes of pressure. (see the comments for her experience).
If substituting canned beans for dried beans and vice versa, one pound of dried beans once cooked is equal to about three 15.5 ounce cans.
Note that this is just the presoak of your beans. They will not be fully cooked. To fully cook, you will need more pressure time. If you wish to pressure cook the beans the entire way, most can be done in 30 minutes of high pressure, while some, especially chick peas, can take up t 45. But that can be inconsistent and leave some beans not fully cooked. I find that it is more consistent to quick soak, then do my recipe separately using the quick soaked beans, even if my recipe will pressure cook as long as 30 minutes.
Quick Soak Beans in the Instant Pot
How to quick soak beans in the Instant Pot. Use this to get a head start on Instant Pot cooking with dried beans.
Ingredients
- 2 cups (1 lb bag) dried beans
- 2 t. salt
- Enough water to fully cover the beans
Instructions
- Place beans in the Instant Pot
- Cover beans with water by approximately one inch above the beans
- Pressure cook on high pressure for 5 minutes
- Natural pressure release
Notes
Note that this is based on a 6 Qt pot and red kidney beans. For an 8 Qt pot you may find that 2-3 minutes pressure suffices. White beans might also require less time.
Nutrition Information:
Yield: 10 Serving Size: 1Amount Per Serving: Calories: 72Total Fat: 0gSaturated Fat: 0gTrans Fat: 0gUnsaturated Fat: 0gCholesterol: 0mgSodium: 727mgCarbohydrates: 16gFiber: 3gSugar: 6gProtein: 4g
I tend to buy canned beans because I’m awful at overnight soaking. Quick soaking is a great idea, and it sounds like a good way of avoiding the salt in canned products.
I don’t have an instant pot. Would you just do the same thing but for a longer time in a crock pot?
No, if you want to cook dried beans in a recipe in a crock pot, you need to either soak them in a pot of water overnight before-hand, or simmer them for 5 minutes in enough water to cover plus an inch or so, and then let that pot cool and the beans continue to soak for an hour (covered).
When you are ready to use the beans, drain and rinse and drain again before adding to your crock pot recipe.
(some people reuse some of the soaking water when cooking black beans)
I do this every week for cholent, where the beans (and meat and potato etc) are then cooked in a crock pot for 25 hours…
Beans are quite done by the end, little gas effect. Good luck.
I just tried this soaking method with my 8 quart Instant Pot and dry white navy beans. As instructed, I pressure cooked for 5 minutes then let the pressure release on its own. To my surprise, the beans were fully cooked with just a few al dente spots. Are your instructions for a 6 quart Instant Pot? There is a difference between cooking times with the 8 quart and 6 quart. I have an 8 quart and hard boiled eggs take just 3 minutes. In my mom’s smaller 6 quart IP, they take 5 minutes.
Instructions are for a 6 Qt pot and done with Red kidney beans. Yes, an 8 Qt will often cook quicker. But a quick soak will also often get them seemingly cooked, but very much “al dente” and not truly cooked through in spots. It is that second cooking that fully cooks the beans. I will update the post to make clear that this is for a 6 Qt and done with red beans and note your experience too. Thanks!
“6 grams of sugar and 727 mg of sodium” per serving. Really?
I’m omitting the salt for the pre-soak for sure however, there are 4,650 mg of sodium in 2 tsp table salt..divide by 10 servings = 465 mg/serving..still almost 1/2 a gram but better than 727b mg !
Hi! The recipe card for this site uses an automated service for nutritional calculations. It is not the most perfect system. It also has difficulty taking into account the totals in recipes such as this where much of the sodium will actually be discarded instead of consumed.
Ok, I tried this a few days ago with a one cup mixture of dried
black beans,
kidney beans,
pinto beans,
garbanzos,
and lima beans
The beans almost completely absorbed all the water and exploded 1/2 the lima beans. If I did this again I would use more than an inch over.
When I cooked them in the crockpot with meat, potatoes, onions, mushrooms and barley (and highly spiced broth), after about 13 hours (when it’s usually near done) the beans were not fully done as per usual. After 18 hours they were delicious.
Thanks for this recipe, but as I pay for electric while gas is included in my rent, I would only do this again to minimize the heat in my kitchen during the summer.
Well , what is it? Navy beans at 5 minutes, or 30 minutes. That is a lotta minutes between 5 minutes and 30 minutes.
Hi! As explained in the post, this is a recipe for quick soak beans. It does not fully cook them. You use 5 minutes with a natural release for that. Then cook the beans in your recipe using whatever time it recommends. 30 minutes is the amount of time to fully cook the beans without quick soaking.
How long to presoak/precook pinto beans?
Thanks to you quick-soak article, A never before occurrence just happened. My beans came out perfect. I quick-soaked pinto beans with 5 minute HIGH pressure and 1 hour slow release. I use to pressure cook pintos for 45-60 minutes without quick-soak and they were were always iffy with some hard shells. I can only assume, leaving them under hot pressure then hot sealed pot for 1 hour was a gentle secret. Now to season and make refried or freeze.
Thank you for the conversion info for # if cans in a 1 pound bag of dried beans. This will be very useful in the future