Quick Easy Instant Pot Beef Stew Recipe

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Beef stew is hearty, savory, warming, and comforting, and a great meal for a family weeknight dinner, and easy to prepare and get on the table with your Electric Pressure Cooker or Instant Pot. Many families back in the 1940s & 1950s would make a hearty beef stew because it was a less expensive cut of meat.

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I like making a healthy beef stew for my family nowadays because it allows me to load up the meal with vegetables while not having too much meat in the dish. For every bowl full of stew you get proportionately more vegetables. I like to put my beef stew over an egg noodle. I used a hearty whole-wheat egg noodle which also beefs up the fiber (pun intended).

One of the hardest things for a mom with little ones is getting a nutritious meal on the table healthy and acceptable to small children’s tastes. It is also difficult to have the meal prepared all at the same time. As well as making a dish that is tasty enough for you and your husband.

One of the tips I learned, as a busy mom of little ones, when I was at home most of the day, was to prepare dinner at lunchtime. Usually, when the children were playing, or down for a nap, I would go into action and do the majority of prep work for dinner. This beef stew recipe works perfectly for easy preparation any time of the day.

First I can brown my meat, chop up all my vegetables put it in the refrigerator. Due to my preparation, an hour before I want dinner completed, I pop everything I have prepared in my pressure cooker or Insta pot.  Now my hands are free to do anything during this busiest time right before dinner.

I can brown my meat, chop up all my vegetables put it in the refrigerator.  An hour before I want dinner completed, I pop everything I have prepared in my pressure cooker or Insta pot.  Now my hands are free to do anything during this busiest time right before dinner.

An Instant Pot Gives You More Time with Your Family

If you are an over-stressed working (outside the home) mom, you know that you only have the time after work and before bedtime to spend with your babies. I always resented spending an hour or so slaving over the stove and then chained to the dishwasher.  It would be 7:00 before I was done making a healthy meal. This left me with only an hour of playing, hugging, and laughter. And in many cases, I just sat down with a movie with the kids as I was so overtired.  

If this sounds like you, you need an electric pressure cooker.  (I wish I had one when my girls were little. Lucky for me I did get one when the girls were in junior high and our baby Joey was born).

This month, when I had a taste for beef stew, we were at Costco where everything in all quantities are giant. Because it was so cold that day, I decided I didn’t want to go to any other store, so I just bought everything at Costco. I came home with giant sizes of potatoes, celery, mushrooms, beef stew, and onions.

I brought out my electric pressure cooker and started preparing the beef stew that night.  Nest I grab some freezer Ziplock bags and cut up all the vegetables from Costco. With just an hour of work, I had three extra bags for the freezer of chopped-up vegetables and three extra bags of ground beef stew meat. Therefore, we were able to have a beef stew that night, and for the next week when I have especially busy at work, I will pop everything back into the electric pressure cooker and we will have dinner without any work at all.

I cannot tell you how much my discovery of the electric pressure cooker has made dinner time a snap when I just do not feel like cooking and my family is depending on me to feed them after school and after work. If you purchase yours on Home Shopping they give you a 30 return period. It is worth taking the jump into pressure cooking if you are not happy you just put it back into the box and send it back.

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