Instant Pot sweet potatoes- how to cook them to get perfect, creamy sweet potatoes in a fraction of the time it takes to roast them. Plus lots of ideas of how to use your pressure cooker sweet potatoes for meal prep!
Boy oh boy has this Instant Pot sweet potatoes post been in the making for awhile.
When I first bought my Instant Pot, I tried out a few sweet potatoes recipes floating around the internet, but have been nothing but disappointed.
There seem to be a lot of ‘one size fits all’ recipes out there, but in my experience, the size of your sweet potatoes has a HUGE impact on cook time in the Instant Pot.
So guess what, friends? I decided to test out a whole lotta different sized sweet potatoes for us and document how long each one took to cook in the IP…just so we’re not disappointed when we find our ginormous sweet potatoes did not, in fact, cook in 10 minutes.
How to cook sweet potatoes in the Instant Pot
So the ‘recipe’, if you can even call it that, is just a cup of water in the bottom of your Instant Pot, plus your sweet potatoes. That’s it!
Use the trivet that comes with your Instant Pot to keep the sweet potatoes out of the water.
Close the lid, seal the vent and select high pressure with the appropriate cook time based on the width of your sweet potatoes:
- 2 inches or less in width: 15 minutes
- 2-3 inches in width: 25-35 minutes
- 3-4 inches in width: 60 minutes *
* honestly, depending on what you’re going to use those gargantuan sweet potatoes for, you’re probably better off cutting them into cubes to cook faster
After cooking for the appropriate time, allow the pressure to release naturally for 10 minutes. You can either leave it on ‘warm’ for 10 minutes or just unplug the pot and set a timer.
Release remaining pressure and have a look at your sweet potatoes. They should be perfectly tender and cooked all the way through! If not, put them back in the IP with some fresh water and set it for 5-10 more minutes.
No, Instant Pot sweet potatoes do not cook ‘instantly’, however this is such a great hands-off method to cooking them and it frees up your oven for other things. And it does cook the sweet potatoes in about half the time that it takes in the oven (in my experience!).
Looking for an even more hands off approach to cooking sweet potatoes? Check out these Ultra Creamy Crock Pot Sweet Potatoes!
Instant Pot sweet potatoes for meal prep
Now I love using sweet potatoes as a base in so many different recipes…so I decided to pull a bunch of easy and healthy sweet potato meal prep recipes together for some ideas of how to use these Instant Pot sweet potatoes.
Whether you use them as twice baked sweet potatoes, in hummus, breakfast burritos, or any of the recipes, using the Instant Pot to cook them ahead definitely makes your meal prep go a little faster.
Let’s check them all out!
- Enchilada Stuffed Sweet Potatoes
- Smoky Sweet Potato Hummus
- Southwestern Sweet Potato Breakfast Burritos
- Freezer Sweet Potato Taquitos
- Freezer Sweet Potato Waffles
- Sweet Potato Falafels
- Twice Baked Sweet Potatoes with Sausage & Pepper Jack
- Chipotle Sweet Potato Black Bean Quesadillas
- Turkey & Smoked Gouda Sweet Potato Boats
NEW: 7 Instant Pot Chicken Breast Recipes
Instant Pot sweet potatoes
Ingredients
- 2-4 sweet potatoes
Instructions
- Add 1 cup of water to the base of a 6 quart Instant Pot.
- Add the trivet to the Instant Pot and arrange sweet potatoes.
- Set valve to 'sealing'. Select manual and set the timer depending on the thickness of your sweet potatoes: under 2 inches: 15 minutes, 2-3 inches: 25-35 minutes, 4 inches +: 60 minutes.
- When timer beeps, allow pressure to naturally release for 10 minutes before releasing the rest of the pressure.
