This post may contain affiliate links and ads. Read our disclosure policy here.
Easiest Instant Pot Pot Roast Recipe
I know that when you see “Instant Pot Recipe” you probably already figured that it would be easy. But I am telling you – I do believe this Instant Pot Pot Roast Recipe is about as easy as it gets. I know this because it was so simple and quick to make, we made it on two different nights during our big huge summer road trip to Yellowstone. This recipe was simple enough to prep the veggies ahead of time, dump everything in the Instant Pot, enjoy time with the kids on the campground playground, and then eat a savory and delicious dinner that had cooked itself in just under an hour.
I have this Instant Pot and it has become a staple, not just in our kitchen, but now we take it on camping trips too! I love how we can have the taste and quality of a slow cooked meal in so little time.
We knew that we wanted to have this meal twice during our vacation, so the night before we left home, I prepped the veggies (enough for two meals). I put each meal’s veggies in a gallon freezer bag and stacked the bags in the refrigerator. We bought a roast at ALDI before we left home (one big enough for two dinners) and added half of the roast to the Instant Pot each night.
Ingredients (for 1 meal):
1 bag baby carrots (rinsed)
4-5 medium red potatoes (rinsed, halved)
4 medium yellow onions (peeled, halved)
1-2 lb roast
2-3 cups vegetable broth
1 packet pot roast seasoning
How to make:
1. Put all veggies in Instant Pot.
2. Place roast on top of veggies.
3. Add vegetable broth.
4. Sprinkle seasoning on top.
5. Close Instant Pot and set to “Meat/Stew” mode. Set timer for 30 minutes.
That’s it! We let the IP natural release the pressure for a few minutes and then popped it onto quick release to speed up the process.
The end result was DELICIOUS!
Other posts you might enjoy…
How long do you cook it? It doesn’t say.
30 minutes on meat/stew mode is what we use!
Does cooking time change if the roast is frozen?
Yes – I would imagine a frozen roast would take a good bit longer, but I can’t say an exact estimate as we have always used defrosted meat.
How many people does this serve?
Servings will vary slightly based on the size of the roast, but for us this meal made dinner for 4 (2 adults, 2 kids) and we had leftovers for 2 adults for lunch the next day.
Thanks… Going camping and doing this recipe for 6 adults and 4 kids so total of 10 people Saturday night so just trying to figure out how much extra we’ll need.
Oh fun! It would probably make enough if you used a fairly big roast… not sure how big your IP is. We have the 6 quart and it might have been too small to feed that many. If you have a bigger IP OR if you have a friend who will lend you their IP so you can have 2 smaller roasts going, that would work too.
I have always done the slow cooker pot roast seasoning by McCormick with 3 lbs chuck roast (whole), seasoning mix stirred with 1 cup of water poured over the roast and veggies, 1 bag of baby carrots, halved red potatoes, and a diced onion sprinkled with salt and pepper. Would your instructions work for that as well since it is similar to yours?
Also, I have a newer IP, would I use the pressure cook setting instead? It seems that setting is used more often than the meat setting with the newer models.
Yes, the same instructions should work! I might increase the water to 2 cups to ensure that the IP has enough liquid to create the steam required to build pressure. The meat mode IS a pressure cook mode, so for a 1-2 lb roast, I’d typically cook it on meat mode for 30 minutes. For a 3 lb roast, you might want to increase the cook time a little (approx 40 minutes total).
How can I successfully downsize this for a 3 quart unit? I always have trouble with this. Any help will be appreciated. Thank you
I’m not great with that either, but, since I used a 6 qt, I’d just start by halving the roast size and veggies that I used!