Instant Pot Salsa Rice–With just 5 ingredients and a few minutes you can make a delicious dinner that your family will love. A saucy, cheesy rice with browned sausage.
Get the SLOW COOKER salsa rice recipe here
Instant Pot Salsa Rice
I’ve been making what my family calls “salsa rice” for years on the stove. It has been our go to recipe that we make when we don’t know what else to make. It’s super fast and easy and tastes great. Plus it only takes 5 ingredients and I usually have all the ingredients on hand.\
We used to make this recipe with bite size pieces of chicken. But we found that sausage just had a lot more flavor. If you’d rather use chicken you can. Just add the water and rice to the Instant Pot and place uncooked chicken breasts on top and then pour the picante sauce over the chicken. Cut up the chicken once it has cooked.
You could also use ground beef in the place of ground sausage. I would definitely season the ground beef with a little salt and pepper while I browned it.
We eat brown rice in our home so that is what I used. I believe you could have great results with white rice as well. It just takes a lot less time to cook so pay attention to my notes in the recipe card below. If you want to cook chicken with the rice rice then you’ll need to cut the chicken into bite size pieces so that the rice and chicken cook at the same rate.
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Instant Pot Brown Rice Pilaf with Chicken Sausage
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What Pressure Cooker Did You Use?
To make Instant Pot Salsa Rice I used my 6 quart Instant Pot Duo 60 7 in 1*. I love this Instant Pot because it has the yogurt making function which I use almost weekly. It has two pressure settings (high and low), and there are also little slots in the handles so that you can rest the lid there instead of putting it down on your counter-top.
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Instant Pot Salsa Rice
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 22 minutes (plus 10 minute NPR)
- Total Time: 37 minutes
- Yield: 6 servings 1x
Description
With just 5 ingredients and a few minutes you can make a delicious dinner that your family will love. A saucy, cheesy rice with browned sausage.
Ingredients
- 1 pound ground sausage
- 1 1/4 cups uncooked brown rice
- 1 1/2 cups water
- 2 cups mild picante sauce (divided)
- 1 cup grated cheddar cheese
- Optional: sour cream, avocado, tortilla chips
Instructions
- Turn your Instant Pot to the saute setting. When the display says HOT add in the sausage. Break it up and brown the sausage. Drain off any excess grease.
- Add in the water and the rice. Dump 1 cup of the picante sauce on top. Don’t stir.
- Cover and secure the lid. Make sure the valve is set to sealing. Set the manual/pressure cook button to 22 minutes on high pressure. When the time is up let the pot sit there for 10 minutes (display will say L0:10). Then move the valve to venting.
- Stir in the remaining 1 cup of picante sauce and the grated cheddar.
- Scoop into bowls and top with any optional toppings you desire.
Notes
I used my 6 quart Instant Pot Duo 60 7 in 1*. You can make this with white rice too. Use 1 cup of white rice to 1 1/2 cups of water. Long grain white rice only needs 3 minutes of pressure cooking time plus a 10 minute natural pressure release. See the rice cooking chart below for other types of rice.
This recipe is gluten free.
- Method: Instant Pot
- Cuisine: Southwestern
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1/6 of recipe
- Calories: 479
- Sugar: 1 g
- Sodium: 768 mg
- Fat: 28 g
- Saturated Fat: 11 g
- Carbohydrates: 31 g
- Fiber: 1.5 g
- Protein: 22 g
- Cholesterol: 83 mg
Keywords: instant pot
Download and print off a PDF version of the rice cooking times cheat sheet here:
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*Karen Petersen is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.
If you use 96% lean ground beef and light cheese, this is a great WW meal!
Good tip. Thanks Regan!
Hi Karen, I happened to have everything so I made this today with Italian sausage. Because the sausage is strong I think next time I should add less cheese and experiment with different salsas. I had this with a stuffed jalapeño on top (chile relleno) and it was really good.
I recently started calorie counting so thanks for always including nutritional info.
★★★★★
Yum! Sounds so tasty Ricardo. You’re welcome!
Hi Karen, I did this recipe and I use 2 cups of the Tostidos Mild salsa but the vinegar overpowered everything…. I am having trouble finding picante sauce in Canada. Could you send me few names of picante sauce that you use. I am in Canada and right now I do all my shopping online via Loblaws, Walmart and Amazon. If you could send me your list of favorite sauces I will search for them. Thank you so much!
Hi Helene, I use pace’s picante sauce. The mild stuff!
Thank you so much Karen, in Canada the Pace’s mild salsa is everywhere, but I could not find the Pace’s Picante Sauce… perhaps I can make my own using tomato sauce as a base with some spices etc. – I can probably come up with something that would be better than salsa for this recipe. Thank you…
You’re welcome! Good luck to you!
Make a picante sauce..it doesn’t use tomato sauce.
Walmart has its own brand of Picante Sauce and there’s a Tostitos brand too, usually, also you can usually find it in the International foods near the Mexican food, I’ve seen different brands in that area. Good luck, hope you find some! 🙂
If wanting to use chicken, in the one paragraph you mention just to put the chicken breast on top of the rice and then cut up once cooked and in then in a following paragraph you mention that the chicken needs to be cut up in bite size pieces. So which way is it to be. I am new to using the instant pot want to get it right. Thanks for your recipes.
If using brown rice you can place the chicken on whole on top of the rice and then once it has cooked you cut it up.
If using white rice you would cut the chicken beforehand.
Do you leave the cooked ground sausage in the ipot while the rice is cooking? New to this ipot so want to make 💯 sure I get it right.
Thanks for all the great recipes and ideas.
Yes you do!
Hi Karen,
What kind of ground sausage does this recipe use, breakfast, Italian or other?
I usually use breakfast sausage but Italian works too.
This recipe looks tasty. Can I use chicken or turkey sausage? If so, does that impact the cooking time or any other factors? Thank you for sharing!
Yes that would work just fine. Keep the same directions and it should work out fine.
The recipe sounds delish. Thanks so much for the rice cheat sheet! I’m always confused about how much water/rice ratio with different rice … this will be very helpful -going in my book. I really appreciate all your detailed instructions and delicious recipes – thanks for all your hard work.
Thank you so much DJ! I’m glad I could be helpful to you 🙂
Can you put that rice cheat sheet into a printable format, like your recipes? That would be really handy!
Okay!!! I just added a pdf of it that you can download and print off. You can see it just above the cheat sheet and just below the recipe card.
I’ve been wanting an ipot salsa rice side dish recipe. Have you ever tried this, without meat, or pot-in-pot, in a smaller portion? Thanks!
I have tried it without meat and it works great. You’ll be able to skip the first step of browning the meat. I have not tried the pot in pot method. I would assume that you’d need more time to get the rice cooked all the way through.