Instant Pot Tender Salsa Beef—a super easy 5 ingredient and 5 minute prep recipe. A Mexican twist on comfort food.
Related: SLOW COOKER Tender Salsa Beef recipe
Instant Pot Tender Salsa Beef
Greg found a version of this recipe on Taste of Home and suggested that it would be a good one to make in the Instant Pot. He was right, it is a perfect fit for the Instant Pot. The meat is pressure cooked until tender and then shredded and served with the tasty juices. The first time I made this we ate it in tacos and the second time I made it we ate it over rice. Both were so good!
For this recipe you can use a chuck roast, chuck steaks or beef stew meat. They’ll have different cooking times but all will be tasty! You can even cook your meat from frozen. That’s what I did! I love that you can cook frozen meat in the Instant Pot.
Related: Instant Pot 5-Ingredient Pot Roast Dinner
Make this dump and go, easy 5-ingredient dinner soon!
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42 Amazing Instant Pot and Slow Cooker Meat Recipes
What Pressure Cooker Did You Use?
To make Instant Pot Tender Salsa Beef 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.
Want more tried and true Instant Pot recipes?
The 365 Days of Slow and Pressure Cooking website has 3-4 new Instant Pot recipes a week! If you sign up for my emails (fill out the gray form below) you’ll receive an email each time something new is on the site. You can also join the 365 Days of Instant Pot Recipes Facebook group which is run by my husband Greg and myself. If you’re a visual learner consider subscribing to my YouTube channel where I share Instant Pot stuff with you weekly.
Instant Pot Tender Salsa Beef
- Prep Time: 5 minutes
- Cook Time: 60 minutes (plus full natural pressure release)
- Total Time: 90 minutes
- Yield: 4–6 servings 1x
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup water or beef broth
- 2 pounds beef chuck roast, beef chuck steaks or beef stew meat
- 1 1/2 cups picante sauce (I use mild)
- 1 Tbsp brown sugar
- 1 Tbsp soy sauce
- 1 Tbsp minced garlic
- Green onions for garnish, optional
Instructions
- Add water or broth to the Instant Pot. Add beef into the pot. Pour picante sauce on top of the beef. Add in the brown sugar, soy sauce and garlic.
- Cover the Instant Pot and secure the lid. Make sure the valve is set to sealing. Set the manual/pressure cook button to 20 minutes per inch of thickness of the meat. For stew meat use 20 minutes. If you use a roast that is 3 inches thick then you’d set the time to 60 minutes. Allow time for a full natural pressure release or at least 20 minute natural pressure release. Remove the lid.
- Remove the meat and shred on a platter. Drizzle some of the juices from the Instant Pot over the meat.
Notes
There are lots of ways you can eat this meat. Plain, with baked potatoes or mashed potatoes, over salad, in tacos, over rice, etc.
If your meat is frozen add 10 extra minutes of pressure cooking time.
- Category: Beef
- Method: Instant Pot
*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.
This was super easy and turned out great! I used 2 packages of stew meat from the grass fed eighth of a cow we bought, and Pace hot picante. We thickened the sauce with a bit of corn starch and enjoyed it all over rice. Definitely keeping this one handy.
★★★★★
Sounds like a tasty dinner, Lance!
Turned out good. I used a bit more than 2 lbs. of stew meat which was still slightly frozen. Due to this, cooked for 25 minutes and used full natural release (took 29 minutes). It was nice and tender. Left it in small cubes and served it over both jasmine rice and salad greens.
★★★★★
I love that you can throw frozen meat into the Instant Pot! It really is a game changer 🙂
Could I use regular salsa instead of picante sauce?
Yes you can any jarred salsa should be fine. I wouldn’t use fresh salsa though. It won’t hold up well to pressure cooking.
I cooked this for dinner Sunday. The link dropped in my email just as I was trying to figure out what to do with my chuck roast so I figured it was meant to be. It turned out delicious, but a bit tougher than I would have liked. My roast was almost 4 lbs and about 4″ thick so I used the 2X calculator for the recipe and pressured it for 80 minutes. By the time I let the little bit of residual pressure out of the pot it had NPR’ed for 48 minutes. I though about putting it back in the IP for another 20 minutes of cook time to really get it tender, but having done a very long NPR I didn’t know if that would be a good idea or not so I didn’t. I’d love to hear some thoughts on whether I should have done that or not.
As I said the flavor was amazing and I will make it again, but next time I will probably make it in the Crock Pot. As much as I love the IP, roasts always seem to do better that way for me.
I am sorry it wasn’t as tender as you would have liked. I would think that 80 minutes plus that NPR time would be more than enough time to get tender. I guess next time you could add more time, maybe another 20?
This sounds delicious!!! We love roasts cooked in the instantpot! Comes out tender and tastes like it was cooked all day. I agree with you on cooking from frozen. Great timesaver!! Ok ok I forget to take the meat out a lot!! 🙂 looking forward to trying this yummy sounding dish!
I think you’ll really like it Maya!