10 Easy Indian Instant Pot Recipes for Dinner Tonight

Few cuisines are better suited to Instant Pot cooking than Indian. While pressure cookers were long a staple of Indian kitchens, the added settings on the Instant Pot expand that utility even further. There is a world of Indian foods that the multi-cooker can make — and we’re not the first to notice. This fall saw the arrival of both The Complete Indian Instant Pot Cookbook and The Essential Indian Instant Pot Cookbook.

But what should you have for dinner tonight, even before Amazon could bring you one of those cookbooks? We’ve rounded up a few of our favorite Indian Instant Pot recipes from around the blogosphere to help you out.

Creamy (coconut, not dairy), quick, and totally comforting while still inherently nutritious, this recipe takes just a few minutes to make and all cooks entirely in the Instant Pot, making it a great easy meal — plus the leftovers reheat easily.

The reliability of the Instant Pot helps make sure that this recipe for everyone’s favorite chicken dish comes out perfectly every time with flavors melded, chicken tender, and sauce creamy. Basically like delivery straight from a restaurant, but with the speed of the Instant Pot this is probably even faster.

The more spiced-up of the classic Indian chicken recipes, this version goes big on flavor by marinating the chicken in the spices, then adding more into the sauce. Garam masala, as the name implies, does the heavy lifting, along with ginger, cumin, coriander, and paprika.

The internet (um, that’s us) is obsessed with butter chicken, especially in the Instant Pot, but sometimes it’s seafood night. This recipe steps up with how to make sure you can still get your Indian Instant Pot meal to the table — even quicker than the chicken, too.

One of the best features of the Instant Pot is its ability to make perfect rice every time, just like a rice cooker — but without double the appliances. This recipe is simple, but you’ll need lots of rice to pair with all the curries and meat dishes on this list.

The Instant Pot says “the heartier the better” when it comes to what it does well, and this recipe — full of chicken, spices, chickpeas, and spinach — sounds like the perfect winter dish to make in practically no time.

Okay, the Instant Pot won’t ever be able to replace the clay tandoori oven and the beautiful char that it leaves on the meat, but this dish pulls together all the flavors of the Indian classic and puts them into a quick, easy meal.

An oldie-but-goodie, this is a classic chicken curry using chicken thighs for their tender meat, along with potatoes, tomatoes, and of course plenty of curry powder and garlic.

One of the best parts about Indian food is that it’s always very forgiving when it comes to making dishes vegan. This vegan curry gets a ton of heft from the sweet potatoes, carrots, lentils, and kale that stew together quickly in the Instant Pot, coming out the other side tender and delicious.

Throw a bunch of spices, chickpeas, and crushed tomatoes into your Instant Pot in the morning, and you’ll have a magical meal just in time for dinner.