Pressure Cooker Pot Roast shaves some time off oven-cooked and slow cooker methods. You can also cook the veggies right in the pot, making it an easy one-pot meal.
Pot roast usually takes a long, long time to cook—all day in the slow cooker, or at least 3 hours in the oven. But when you make it the pressure cooker, you can have a tender, flavorful roast (complete with all the vegetables and sauce!) in about two hours.
Even better, the recipe is super flexible—you can start cooking the pot roast any time of day, leave it on the “Warm” function once cooking ends, and then complete the last few steps about 20 minutes before you want to eat.
Whether you’ve planned ahead or not, whether you’re home during the day or not, you can have a hot, beautiful pot roast on the table for dinner.
POT ROAST FOR CHILLY WINTER DAYS
When the weather turns chilly, I start craving hearty, braised dishes like pot roast. In this recipe, tangy balsamic vinegar, rosemary, and sweet onions combine to flavor the cooking liquid, which helps keep the pot roast moist during cooking.
Serve the extra cooking liquid on the side, too! It is delicious ladled on top of the meat, carrots, and potatoes.
PRO TIP! Save any leftover cooking liquid to use in your next soup or stew, or anywhere you’d use beef broth. It adds lots of deep, savory flavor. It’s something my grandma has always done, and now I do, too.
WHICH CUT OF MEAT TO BUY
When choosing a cut of meat for pot roast, you’ll usually have your pick of two common cuts: chuck or bottom round. Chuck roasts tend to have more marbling and connective tissue, so they turn out much more tender than bottom round. If you can get chuck, that’s my top recommendation.
IF FROZEN, THAW BEFORE COOKING
One of the most common pressure cooking questions I get (and I get a ton of questions on my Instant Pot Recipes Facebook page) is some version of “How long does it take/can I cook a frozen pot roast/whole chicken/other large, frozen solid hunk of meat?”
While you can cook thinner cuts of frozen meat in the pressure cooker (see How To Pressure Cook Frozen Chicken), I recommend thawing larger cuts like the chuck for this pot roast. Whole frozen cuts can end up stringy on the outside and undercooked on the inside. Thawed or fresh meat cooks much more evenly, and you’ll ensure that the middle is cooked through and tender in the recommended cooking time.
- New to the Instant Pot? Check out our post How To Use an Instant Pot: A First-Timer’s Guide.
HOW TO MAKE POT ROAST IN THE PRESSURE COOKER
This recipe is prepared in three stages:
- First, you’ll sear and pressure cook the meat. Once that cooking program begins, you can walk away from the pot if you like— it’ll default to the “Keep Warm” setting and stay hot and ready to carve for up to 10 hours.
- Second, you’ll transfer the cooked pot roast to a carving board, strain the fat off of the cooking liquid, then add the potatoes and carrots to the pot with the liquid and cook them under pressure on their own.
- Finally, when the cooking program ends, you’ll do a quick pressure release on the pot, carve the roast, spoon the vegetables out of the pot, and pour some of the cooking liquid over everything to serve.
WHAT EXTRA TOOLS DO I NEED?
In order to make this recipe, you won’t need any special extra tools, other than a nice sturdy pair of kitchen tongs and a fat separator. When you’re done, there’s only one pot to wash!
HOW LONG TO LEFTOVERS LAST?
This recipe feeds four to six people depending on the appetites in your household, and the leftovers will keep for up to four days in the fridge.
You can also freeze the leftover meat if you like. Store it, sliced, in freezer bags or wrapped in layers of plastic wrap and aluminum foil, for up to three months.
GREAT IDEA FOR USING UP LEFTOVERS!
If you’re lucky enough to have leftovers, my favorite thing to do with them is to make a breakfast hash—dice up the carrots, potatoes, and pot roast and brown them in a skillet with a little oil, adding extra diced onions and/or bell peppers if you like.
Crack some eggs on top of the hash, cover it with a lid for a few minutes, and you’ll have a seriously hearty breakfast!
LOOKING FOR MORE PRESSURE COOKER RECIPES?
Instant Pot Pot Roast with Balsamic and Rosemary Recipe
- Prep time: 10 minutes
- Cook time: 1 hour, 45 minutes
- Yield: 4 to 6 servings
Stovetop Pressure Cooker Instructions:
Follow the recipe as written, but lower the cooking time for the pot roast to 50 minutes at high pressure. Lower the cooking time for the potatoes and carrots to 4 minutes at high pressure.
Stovetop/Oven Instructions:
Preheat the oven to 300°F. Season the roast with the salt and pepper, then sear in a Dutch oven on the stovetop over medium-high heat. Remove it to a dish, then sauté the onions, garlic, and rosemary, then add the broth and vinegar as in the recipe below.
Add the pot roast back to the Dutch oven, then add enough water to come about a third of the way up the roast. Cover the Dutch oven with its lid and place in the oven.
Roast the pot roast for 3 hours, or until it is tender, adding the carrots and potatoes during the last 1 1/2 hours of cooking. Check the pot roast every 45 minutes or so—if too much liquid has evaporated, add an extra splash of water.
Ingredients
- One (2 1/2 to 3-pound) boneless beef chuck pot roast
- 2 teaspoons salt
- 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
- 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
- 1 jumbo (12-ounce) onion, sliced
- 4 cloves garlic, chopped
- 2 (4-inch) sprigs fresh rosemary
- 3/4 cup beef broth or vegetable broth
- 1/4 cup aged balsamic vinegar
- 1 1/2 pounds new potatoes (halved if over 1 1/2 inches in diameter, quartered if even larger)
- 1 pound baby carrots (or regular carrots, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch rounds)
- 1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley, for serving (optional)
Special equipment:
- 6-quart electric pressure cooker, such as the Instant Pot
- Fat separator
Method
1 Dry and season the roast: Place the roast on a dish and pat it dry with a paper towel. Season it all over with the 1 1/2 teaspoons of salt and pepper.
2 Sear the pot roast on the top and bottom: Select the Sauté setting on your electric pressure cooker and heat the oil for 3 minutes, until the oil is shimmering. Using a pair of tongs, lower the pot roast into the pot and sear it for 4 minutes on top and bottom (8 minutes total), until browned. Transfer the pot roast back to the dish.
3 Cook the onions and seasonings: Add onions and 1/2 teaspoon of salt to pot and sauté them for about 3 minutes, until they are a bit softened. Add the garlic and rosemary and sauté 1 minute more, until the garlic is no longer raw. Add the beef broth and balsamic vinegar, then use a wooden spoon to nudge any browned bits from the bottom of the pot.
4 Pressure cook the roast: Use the tongs to lower the pot roast back into the pot, and spoon some of the cooking liquid over the top of the roast.
Secure the lid on your pressure cooker in its Sealing position. Cancel the Sauté program, then select the Manual or Pressure Cook program for 55 minutes at high pressure. (It will take about 5 minutes for the pot to come up to pressure before the cooking program begins.)
5 Release the pressure: When the cooking program ends, let the pressure release naturally for at least 15 minutes, then move the pressure release valve from to Venting to release any remaining steam.
You can also leave the pot roast on the Keep Warm setting for up to 10 hours. You do not need to vent the steam.
6 Rest the pot roast: Open the pot and use the tongs to transfer the roast to a cutting board. Cover the roast with aluminum foil to keep it warm.
7 Strain the cooking liquid: Set a strainer over a fat separator in the sink. Wearing heat-resistant mitts, lift the inner pot out of the pressure cooker housing and pour the cooking liquid through the strainer and into the fat separator. (If you don’t have a fat separator, you can pour the liquid into a ziplock bag, tilt it, let the fat rise to the top. Then, cut a hole in the bottom corner of the bag to let the liquid strain out, stopping before you get to the fat.)
Discard the rosemary stems, then add the strained onions, garlic, and rosemary leaves back to pot. Pour the liquid from fat separator back into the pot as well. Discard the fat.
8 Pressure cook the vegetables: Add the potatoes and carrots to the pot and place it back in its housing. Secure the lid in its Sealing position.
Cancel the cooking program, then select the Manual or Pressure Cook program for 5 minutes at high pressure. (It will take about 15 minutes for the pot to come up to pressure before the cooking program begins.)
9 Release the pressure: When the cooking program ends, perform a quick pressure release by moving the pressure release valve to Venting to release the steam.
10 Serve: Open the pot, then use a slotted spoon to transfer vegetables to serving dish. Taste the cooking liquid for seasoning, adding salt and/or pepper if needed.
Remove any string from the pot roast, then carve it into 1/2-inch thick slices. Arrange the pot roast on the serving plate with the vegetables. Ladle some of the cooking liquid over the meat and vegetables, garnish with parsley (if using), and serve.
