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Close up of the bowl of habichuelas guisadas with rice broccoli, avocado and cilantro.

Instant Pot Habichuelas Guisadas

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  • Author: Catherine Perez
  • Prep Time: 5 minutes
  • Soak Time: 8 hours
  • Cook Time: 50 minutes
  • Total Time: 8 hours 55 minutes
  • Yield: 12 servings 1x
  • Category: Main Dish
  • Method: Instant Pot
  • Cuisine: Dominican
  • Diet: Vegan

Description

The perfect habichuelas guisadas, flavored with garlic, onion, and adobo seasoning, and cooked in the Instant Pot. These stewed beans are easy to meal prep and can be enjoyed as a lunch or dinner meal.


Ingredients

Scale
  • 1 lb dry red beans, pinto beans or cranberry beans
  • Water
  • 2 small yukon gold potatoes, diced
  • 1 tsp dry thyme
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 1 tbsp olive oil
  • 1 small yellow onion, quartered
  • 5 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 tbsp tomato paste
  • 1 vegetable bouillon cube or 1 tsp better than bouillon paste
  • 1/4 cup cilantro with stems
  • 1/2 tsp adobo seasoning  
  • 2 tsp sazon seasoning
  • 1 tbsp hot sauce
  • Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

  1. Add the beans to your instant pot insert and pour in enough fresh water to cover the beans by 2 inches. Allow to soak for at least 8 hours or overnight.
  2. Rinse and drain beans and then add fresh water back into the chamber, enough to cover the beans by 1 inch. Place the insert back into the pressure cooker chamber along with potatoes, thyme, and bay leaf and set to manual pressure, cook for 25 minutes and release pressure naturally.
  3. While pressure releases, sauté onions in a separate pan with a little oil until onions are translucent.
  4. Add in garlic and sauté until fragrant, then stir in tomato paste and sauté for about 2 minutes. 
  5. Remove the instant pot lid and discard the bay leaf and 1 cup of the cooking liquid.
  6. Add in sautéed onion mixture along with cilantro, vegetable bouillon, adobo and sazon.
  7. Hit the sauté button on the instant pot and allow mixture to come to a simmer and cook for 10 minutes. Stir on occasion until the stew has thickened. If appearing watery, you can help the stew thicken more by lightly mashing the beans.
  8. Stir in hot sauce and adjust salt and pepper to taste and serve.

Notes

Soak your beans! This recipe was made for soaked beans. If you don’t soak your beans, please note that you will need to pressure cook your beans longer to help soften them appropriately. 

Feel free to adjust flavors and some accessory ingredients to your preference. You can add more garlic, add additional spice like hot sauce to the pot, or even leave out the potatoes all together.

For a bump in flavor, I love to add a little sofrito to my beans. Sofrito is a blend of herbs, garlic and spices. You can make your own or buy it (just make sure the ingredients are vegan). Usually, I will fry it up along with the onions before adding to the boiled beans.

Your beans should be saucy. They shouldn’t be super thick, but they also shouldn’t be watery either. To help get the right consistency you can always lightly mash some of the beans to help thicken the sauce slightly to your desired consistency.