Instant Pot Cafe Rio Black Beans–from dried beans to cooked and seasoned in less than 45 minutes (no soaking required!). These black beans will be a hit at your next Mexican dinner.
Instant Pot Cafe Rio Black Beans
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These Instant Pot Cafe Rio black beans are seriously my favorite black beans of all time. I love the crockpot version of these dried black beans so I thought I’d give them a shot in my pressure cooker.
First off, I can’t believe how quickly dried beans can get cooked in the Instant Pot. It’s really amazing. Second, I didn’t pre-soak the dried black beans because unlike red beans you don’t have to. I’m usually in favor of soaking beans (if I remember to) just because I feel that the texture turns out better. If you do decide to soak your beans you’ll only need to set the timer on your Instant Pot for 10-15 minutes and you probably don’t need to add as much water (but it doesn’t hurt if you do).
For this recipe I set the timer to 23 minutes. The manual says to cook dried black beans for 20-25 minutes. I didn’t want my beans to be firm or crunchy so I opted to cook on the higher end of that range. My pot took about 10 minutes to come to pressure and then I let the pressure naturally release for another 10 minutes. So the total time on this recipe was 43 minutes. Not bad for DRIED BEANS! Seriously though. That is amazing.
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What Instant Pot Did You Use?
For this Instant Pot Cafe Rio Black Beans recipe I used this Instant Pot IP-LUX60 V3 Programmable Electric Pressure Cooker. It’s 6 quarts, so the same size as most slow cookers. It cost me around $80 on Amazon.
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Instant Pot Cafe Rio Black Beans
- Prep Time: 20 minutes
- Cook Time: 23 minutes
- Total Time: 43 minutes
- Yield: 6-8 servings 1x
Print Recipe
Pin RecipeIngredients
- 1 cup dry black beans (rinse them in a colander and pick out any rocks/dirt)?
- 4 cups water
- 1 1/2 Tbsp chicken bouillon
- 2 Tbsp dehydrated onion flakes
- 7 garlic cloves, peeled or 2 tsp garlic powder
- 3/4 tsp salt
- 1 bay leaf
- Red wine vinegar, to taste
Instructions
- Add all ingredients to the Instant Pot except the red wine vinegar.
- Cover and turn the valve to sealing. Press manual and push the timer to 23 minutes (if your beans are older you may want to cook for 25 minutes and if your beans are soaked you can cook for 15 minutes).
- When the timer beeps let the pressure release naturally for 10 minutes or so and then press the valve to venting.
- Remove the lid and add in some red wine vinegar to taste. I added in a couple tablespoons.
- Serve on salads, with rice, or with Mexican food. Store in an airtight container in the fridge for up to one week.
Notes
I used my 6 quart Instant Pot for this recipe.
–>>Click here for the SLOW COOKER VERSION of this recipe<<–
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I make this recipe almost every other week for something! So good!!! Thank you for sharing!!!
★★★★★
Wow! That’s awesome, thanks for sharing Amy!
I live in a high altitude state, so I cooked the beans for 25 minutes instead of 23. They were still hard after letting them sit for the additional 10 minutes. I cooked them for another 5 minutes with another 10 minutes of sit time, and they were done. My question is should I cook them for 35 minutes the next time? I’m thinking they were done after the two 10 minutes sit times (30 minutes total of pressure cooking time). Also 4 cups of water left a lot of leftover liquid. My next question is do you think cooking 2 cups of dried beans would be too much for that quantity of water? Thank you for your help with these questions.
★★★★★
I would do 30 minutes next time. I would do 5 cups of liquid for 2 cups of beans.
Sharon, High Altitude cooking is always a challenge and generally a matter of experimentation to get things “just right”. Pressure cooking should minimize the altitude issue however, since the outside air pressure should have very little to do with the pressure inside the pot. I wonder if it might simply be old beans? You might want to try a known fresh supply as part of your experiment. I would still err on the side of caution and go for the full 25 minutes and also a complete natural release.
Since you are experimenting, I would stick with 1 cup of beans to 4 cups of water that Karen calls for, and then boil off the excess liquid on saute mode (with no lid) to reduce the sauce and continue to cook the beans.
★★★★★
CORRECTIONS: apparently I am wrong and altitude does impact even pressure cooking in an Instant Pot. Rule of thumb is 5% increase for every 1000ft in elevation over 2000ft. So at 5000ft you would add 15% to the cooking time. (In this case an extra 3 minutes)
★★★★★
I cook beans and freeze them all the time! I use Ziplocs and freeze a couple of cups of beans in each bag. They taste great after thawing – texture is good too!
Great idea!
Have you frozen the leftover beans with success?
I haven’t tried, but I bet it would work great.
Delicious! I only had about a tablespoon of dehydrated onions. Didn’t matter. Still awesome. The only beans I’ll be making from now on! Yum!
★★★★★
Alright! This is awesome to hear.
If I double this recipe do I add more cooking time? Thanks for your time saving recipes. They look great!
No need to change the cooking time. The pot will take more time to come to pressure but cooking time will be the same!
That’s a good tip to know.