My New Instant Pot! Corned Beef & Cabbage

My kids bought me an Instant Pot for my birthday. My son Seth has had one for several months & loves it, my DIL recently got one & loves it too!

But, I was not sure if it would be difficult to use, would I want to use one, how would I know what do, etc etc….  Well, there are a lot of resources on the internet, as well as my kids! There are Facebook pages dedicated to this & blogs galore. I decided to check out the recipes on the Instant Pot website, thinking that they would work for sure as the company would only want success stories!  The first thing I made was Corned Beef & Cabbage. It is actually the first recipe listed under the beef category on that site. I will put the recipe here as I made it, but I didn’t change much at all.

I have made corned beef & cabbage for years, always boiling it or putting it into a slow cooker. I also use a recipe for a sweet glazed corned beef from one of my favorite cook books that I will post another time. This beef, made int he Instant Pot, was extremely tender & delicious. Not chewy & stingy at all! The vegetables were nice as well. I know I am going to love using my Instant Pot!

Corned Beef & Cabbage in the Instant Pot

Ingredients

1 pickled corned beef brisket  *** I forgot to look at the weight but I would guess about 2.5 pounds

3 bay leaves

1 onion, cut into quarters

4 – 4 1/2 cups of water

• To be used after the meat is cooked:

4 carrots, peeled & cut into chunks

1 small cabbage, cut into quarters, or smaller

Method  *** I would suggest you checking out the recipe on the Instant Pot website to see how it is done if you are new to this!

1. Take the stainless steel vessel out of the pot. Alway put your ingredients into the vessel outside of the actual pot, that’s what the instructions say..
2. Rinse the spices off the corned beef brisket, then put it into the stainless steel vessel
3. Add the onion & bay leaves beside the brisket
4. Add the water… the original recipe says to add 4 cups of water, but there was quite a bit of brisket sticking out of the water so I added more to cover, but just …I did not add a lot more . that is why I have put 4 – 4 1/2 cups of water here
5. Put the vessel into the pot & put the lid on as per manufactures directions
6. I had a corned beef brisket that was 2 1/2 inches thick. In the recipe it says for a brisket that is 1 1/2 inches thick to pressure cook it for 70 minutes, adding 5 minutes for each extra inch. So I set the pot to 80 minutes high pressure.  Set your pot as per the manufacturers instructions… I am not going into that here! The pressure cooking method : high pressure...set the time for the size of your brisket…Pressure Release Method is Natural Release (-15 minutes) according to the recipe but it took longer for my machine to naturally release the pressure, Once your brisket is done & the pressure has released & it is safe to open your pot, take out the brisket, set it aside & take out most of the water, reserve this water,  leaving only 1 1/2 – 2 cups of water left in the pot. This is according to the original recipe
7. Add the carrots & cabbage to the remaining water *** I did not put potatoes in as is called for in the original recipe
8. Put the lid on, again as per manufactures instructions
9. The recipe says to put the pot on Pressure Cooking Method: high pressure for 2-3 minutes..  ***My vegetables were not cooked at this time, I re-did them for another 5 minutes & they were cooked then   Pressure Release Method,, quick release…. that is when you turn the valve… use an oven mitt & be careful as the steam comes out with a lot of force. Do not put your face over it to have a look! or your hand ! READ YOUR INSTRUCTIONS FOR USE BEFORE COOKING WITH THIS T AVOID INJURY  *** I do not want to be responsible for anyone using this incorrectly so do not use my recipe as a method for using your machine except for the times I had to use!
10. Open the lid carefully
11. Serve the beef with the vegetable.
    The recipe suggests using the the cooking liquid to store the meat and vegetable in to keep it moist. We did this but not sure it is necessary
     
     
     

    Enjoy!