I rarely used my instant pot but I heard that you could use it for braising beef and it could cut down on a ton of cooking time. I’m talking 30 minutes vs hours.
An instant pot has many different cooking methods that you can use to cook beef country-style ribs. You can seat them in the instant pot and braise them super fast with the pressure cooker on high.
I did this the other day but didn’t think about searing them in the instant pot until afterward and so they got seared in a cast iron pan instead.
Should you sear beef before braising?
You should sear beef before braising it. Searing it gives it extra flavor from the browning of the meat. This is called a Maillard reaction. When food browns from cooking the results are more flavorful food.
I encourage you to learn more about the Maillard reaction in my post about what makes steak taste better.
Searing is not a full cooking process it is done at the beginning or the end of cooking. It shouldn’t take too long, just a few minutes per side. It’s done on extremely high heat so that it only cooks and browns the surface.
Can you sear beef in an instant pot before braising?
You can sear beef in an instant pot before cooking. The instant pot has many settings and the setting you should use for searing is sauté. The sauté setting has a high and low heat function.
The lid is not necessary when using the sauté function so you are going to want to leave it off. When you press the sauté button it will automatically go on high for 30 minutes but you can adjust this.
How do you braise beef country-style ribs in an instant pot?
This is simple and easy, just the way I like it. It does not take a long time at all and the ribs come out amazing. I did this the other day and I will walk you through how I did it.
First I covered the ribs in salt a let them sit for a little bit so they could get a dry brine going. This helps the salty flavor gets absorbed into the interior of the meat. I encourage you to read my article about the importance of salt on beef.
You will learn it is really important to have enough salt and you can take it off but you can keep putting more on. So, don’t put too much on it!
The best salt to use is kosher salt which is a little big and will absorb better into the meat. Although, I haven’t graduated to that level of mastery yet, and still use fine salt which still works well.
The next thing I did was sear the ribs in a cast iron pan. I know, I didn’t use the instant pot but should have. I didn’t think about it until afterward.
I seared them up for a few minutes on each side on high heat after waiting for the pan to get heated. I also used some beef tallow for oil so they wouldn’t stick to the pan which is really important when you are using a cast iron pan.
It didn’t take long for them to get brown. I then proceeded to prepare my instant pot to pressure cook them the rest of the way.
You want to use some kind of liquid in the instant pot so that the ribs braise. I used beef stock but you can use water as well. I put in enough beef stock so that it covered the ribs about halfway.
I put the lid on and set the instant pot to high for 30 minutes. It prepped itself and before you know it the counter started to count down. I wasn’t really sure if it would only take 30 minutes or if I would have to cook them for longer because it was my first time making them this way.
After the timer beeped, it was done. I let out the pressure from the instant pot and waited to see how well they were cooked. As it turns out after opening the instant pot and taking them out and cutting into the ribs, they were cooked really well.
They were cooked plenty enough but not overcooked. They almost fell apart as I cut them and the knife cut through really well which told me they were really tender.
You could see the connective tissue or collagen in the meat and how it turned to almost a gel-like substance. That is exactly what you want when you braise beef. It made that chewy piece of meat into something really tender.
I encourage you to learn more about collagen and its health benefits by reading my post about bone broth.
I could also tell the flavor of the ribs from searing them beforehand. It was a good added step that made them a lot more flavorful. Searing isn’t necessary, so you could skip it to safe time but I don’t recommend it.
If you do skip the searing step I also can’t say if cooking them in the instant pot for only 30 minutes will be enough. Although it is worth a try and you probably would only have to cook them for an extra 10 minutes if you had to.
Update: I did this again, I braised country-style beef ribs in an instant pot but this time I seared them in an instant pot first. They seared up really nicely and it was good because I didn’t have any extra dishes to clean.
Conclusion
I think the instant pot is a great way to braise beef really fast. I was surprised at how good the ribs came out. It is definitely a quicker way to braise beef when you don’t want to spend hours doing it in the oven.
There are other cuts that you can braise besides the country-style beef ribs like roasts and brisket. They are perfect for it because they are tougher with a lot of connective tissue too.
I recommend checking out my other posts to learn more such as beef brisket and braising.