Instant Pot Beef Lentil Stew

Looking for some great comfort food but don’t have a lot (or any) time to spend cooking dinner?

This Instant Pot recipe for Beef Lentil Stew is perfect for a busy weeknight when you need to get dinner on the table fast. It’s the perfect comfort food. Make a big pot and you have dinner done for a few days!

I love a good stew during the colder months. There are few things more comforting and a huge pot lasts us for several days — which not only means no extra cooking, it also means no extra dishes.

Have you discovered the Instant Pot yet?

I stalled jumping on the Instant Pot bandwagon but now that I have, I wish I could go back and tell myself how much I was missing out on.

I knew as soon as I cooked that first meal in my Instant Pot that it was a huge time-saver. It has drastically simplified dinnertime around my house and cut down on what we were spending eating out on those days when we just couldn’t get our act together.

I was so hooked I went out and bought a second Instant Pot! I use this 7-in-1 as my main pot and have this 6-1 as a spare (perfect when I want to make a main course and beans or another side dish).

Dinnertime is crazy around my house. Most nights, by the time it hits 5:00, I either realize I should have planned dinner earlier or remember that I forgot to thaw the meat I was planning on cooking.

Cue the pizza delivery guy.

This is where the Instant Pot comes in. I can take frozen meat and turn it into dinner in 30 minutes or less and it tastes like it’s been cooking all day in my slow cooker. That is such a life saver for busy families!

Ingredients

1 pound beef, cut into small cubes
1 cup of dry lentils
1 onion, diced
2-4 potatoes, peeled and diced
1 cup carrots, diced
5 cloves of garlic, minced
4 cups beef stock
1 (28 oz.) can diced tomatoes, with juice
Salt and pepper, to taste
4 Tbsp. brown gravy mix

Preparation

Cut the beef into small cubes. These should be slightly smaller than your pieces of potato to make sure everything cooks for the correct amount of time.

In the bottom of your Instant Pot, put your chopped onions, beef, carrots, garlic, and potatoes. Add the dry lentils (make sure you rinse and sort these first). Add the canned tomatoes, beef stock, and brown gravy mix.

You can substitute the brown gravy mix for any seasonings you’d like to add in here. I like the flavor I get with the brown gravy mix and it is super easy but if you have a bit more time, by all means, experiment a bit.

Set your Instant Pot to 20 minutes (25 if you used larger pieces of meat) and walk away.

I used natural pressure release on this but if you are in a hurry you could do a quick release.

That’s it! You have an awesome dinner on the table with only 10 minutes of active cooking time.