Instant Pot Chorizo Beans
You can make these beans in an Instant Pot or in a regular pot. I’ve had my Instant Pot for over a year but only in the last couple months have I been using it regularly. I have a hard time learning new technology — yes I realize that it’s super lame to describe an electric pressure cooker as “new technology” — and honestly, all the buttons and options and things just made me think “blech” when I took it out of the box and so I put it right back in the box and hid it in a cabinet for 6 months.
All that is to say, once I finally tried it out, I do enjoy using it especially for beans and meat and other things that take a long time to cook (ex: spicy pickled beets). I make these chorizo beans in mine and now you can, too!
These beans are fantastic on their own with a slice of cornbread, or serve with some chili-cheese enchiladas and Mexican rice.
And if you can’t find fresh (uncured) Mexican chorizo, use a hot Italian sausage or breakfast sausage instead.
PrintInstant Pot Chorizo Beans
- Yield: 6 cups 1x
Ingredients
1/2 pound fresh (Mexican) chorizo sausage
1 small onion, diced (about 1 cup)
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 pound dried pinto beans
4 cups water or chicken broth (**more if cooking stovetop)
Garnish: cilantro and/or lime wedges
Instructions
Using the ‘saute’ function on your Instant Pot (or using the ‘stove + large pot’ function on your stove 😉 ) cook the chorizo and onions together for a few minutes until the chorizo is crumbled up a bit and nearly cooked through.
Add the garlic and stir for a few seconds.
Add remaining ingredients. For Instant Pot, switch function to ‘beans’ and seal the lid. Cook for 30 minutes on high pressure. For a regular pot on the stove, add remaining ingredients and cover. Turn heat to high and bring to boil. Then crack the lid and reduce heat; let beans simmer for about 2 hours. **You will need to check them every 30 minutes to make sure they have plenty of liquid. Add more water or broth as needed**
Once finished cooking, allow pressure to release naturally. This will take 5-10 minutes. Stir the beans and taste for salt and add more if needed.
Stovetop instructions: the beans are ready when they are all tender and easy to squish between two fingers. Taste them for salt and add more if needed.
Like all beans, these get better each time they are reheated and they’ll keep in the fridge for a week. So eat your beans!
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1/2 cup
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When I was a kid growing up in California, I had no idea what chorizo was. As soon as I read this recipe, I immediately realized that my favorite aunt, who lived in San Antonio, was using chorizo in her beans instead of ground beef like my mother. Guess who’s beans tasted so much better to me? If it weren’t raining so hard, I’d be headed to a grocery store for chorizo and pinto beans. As soon as Harvey gets his ass out of town, i’ll be making this.
As far as the Instant Pot goes, buying one was a game changer for me. But even a computer/gadget geek like me was intimidated at first. Fortunately, I no longer have to dig into the manual. I now use it to make rice, risotto, quinoa, Marcella Hazan’s ragù bolognese, yogurt and, of course, beans* (being the impatient type I’ve only used the slow cooker function twice). In a lot of cases, there’s not a big savings of time over conventional cooking on the stove top, but being able to be hands off while making dishes that I occasionally screw up is a big, big deal (no more scorching the milk while making yogurt, etc.).
And then came game changer 2. I have to say that being impatient, I wholeheartedly welcomed the revisionist theory that beans don’t need to be pre-soaked. At first, anyway. Especially after I switched to using the Instant Pot, I began to notice that I didn’t like the inconsistent texture of the beans. I begrudgingly continued to eschew pre-soaking because the conventional practice of soaking overnight or for 12 hours has never suited my schedule. Being able to cook a pot of beans in under an hour ironically only accentuated my dislike. But then I read an article whose author soaked AND brined her beans for 24 hours before cooking them. This DID suit my schedule (though not my desire to make homemade hummus whenever the craving for it arose). The texture of the beans was perfect and, of course, they were more flavorful. Then I stumbled upon a blogger who came up with an Instant Pot technique that is, for me, yet another game changer: the Instant Pot pre-soak. Toss a pound of beans into the Instant Pot, add a couple of teaspoons of salt, add water and then pressure cook on high for 4 minutes. After 10 minutes in “keep warm” mode, do a quick release. Drain and rinse the beans. After that, proceed with your normal pressure cooking program. I’ve found that black beans and black-eyed peas take 15 minutes at high pressure. All other varieties (including chickpeas) take 25 minutes. I suspect that if using fresh dried beans a couple of minutes might be shaved off. Whatever the case, I love being able to cook a pot of beans to my notion of perfection in well under an hour.
* – So far, I’ve only had one massive failure with the Instant Pot: using Kenji Lopez-Alt’s method for making caramelized onions. I would not have dreamt that onions could sweat so much liquid. It took so long to reduce the liquid down to nothing that I could have made them conventionally on the stovetop in a third of the time. Judging from comments, it appears that no one except Kenji can get his method to work. In all fairness, though, I have to say that all of the rest of his Instant Recipes are right on the money. I highly recommend searching Serious Eats for “Instant Pot” (while you’re there, check out Daniel Gritzer’s recipe for Instant Pot chicken stock). It’s just that I find that making caramelized onions, the conventional way, is such sheer drudgery and I sooo wanted an easier, hands off method.
I am so glad that I Google led me to this recipe and article! I will try this recipe tonight with the helpful comment from The Other Randy. Thank you so much for posting!
Yay! Glad to help with your instant pot cooking!
This calls for 1/2 pound dry pinto beans. Should it be 1 pound of dry beans? Thanks!
No, I usually cook 1/2 pound of dried beans at a time for us. You can easily double the recipe, though
Does doubling the recipe change the cooking time?
It shouldn’t
This has become my favourite bean recipe. I never make it exactly the same way twice because I go with the cheapest sausage that’s on sale. I do like to use a dry-cured sausage they are more flavourful for a smaller quantity I find. I mince them small (1/4-1/2″) to better spread out the flavour and also to ensure tons of meat in every bite! I prefer to use dried flaked onion as I find it gives more flavor (And I never run out Of onions at an inopportune time) I also use black beans as I generally prefer them to pinto beans.
Bean recipes are so adaptable like that! Thanks for sharing your suggestions