Recipe This | Instant Pot Cabbage (2024)

Instant Pot Cabbage. How to cook delicious flavoursome cabbage in the instant pot pressure cooker. An easy to follow easy steamed cabbage recipe, with a secret ingredient to make your cabbage taste better.

This instant pot cabbage was originally published in early 2018. We are updating it for you with more pictures, more recipe ideas and even more instant pot steamed cabbage tips.

Before we dive into this instant pot cabbage recipe, I recommend you check out our free instant pot mini course. It is ideal for instant pot beginners or those that want to get more confident with their instant pot. The free course runs for 5 days with a new lesson delivered each day to your inbox.

Or browse our site as we have 250+ instant pot recipes that are easy to recreate at home and we have been showing people how to use the instant pot since 2016.

Cabbage In Instant Pot

I find it rather interesting that today on my dad’s birthday, is the day I choose to update how to cook cabbage in the instant pot.

You see, I have an incredibly fussy dad, that hates most vegetables. I know he eats a few of them, but I can never remember which ones apart from cabbage.

At family Sunday dinners, everyone would tuck into a vegetable bake. Which is a British dish of vegetables cooked in a cheese sauce. Think mac and cheese but root vegetables instead of macaroni.

Whilst we were all enjoying our veggie bake, my mum would have made him a dish of cabbage. Usually, steamed cabbage with some butter or curry powder.

I was just thinking how any vegetable works well in the instant pot and if I were feeding my dad today, I would make him some instant pot cabbage.

Cooking Cabbage In Instant Pot

As I have mentioned, you can cook any vegetable in the instant pot. Whether you want to do instant pot carrots, instant pot broccoli, or even instant pot cauliflower, the instant pot will do an amazing job.

There are two ways for cooking cabbage in Instant Pot, which also applies to any instant pot vegetable:

Instant Pot Boiled Cabbage – You cook the cabbage directly in the water in the instant pot inner pot. Imagine that you add water to your inner pot, load it up with cabbage and then pressure cook. But this method is simply a faster version of boiling cabbage on the stovetop.

When you boil cabbage, you lose a lot of its nutrients and it often strips it of flavour and makes it bland. Like when you had cabbage fed to you as a kid and thought not that cabbage mush again!

Though, if you have a lot of cabbage to cook at once, then this can be a great way to feed several people via the instant pot.

Instant Pot Steamed Cabbage – In my opinion this is the best option. What you do is use a container to keep the cabbage out of the water. That might be a steamer basket, a trivet or even a spring form pan that is sat on the trivet. You can be imaginative here if you don’t have a steamer basket. Or check out our list of the best instant pot steamer baskets.

This method of instant pot steamed cabbage is what we are going to show you in this recipe today.

How Do You Steam Cabbage?

Let me talk you through how you steam cabbage in the instant pot so that you can get your head around this easy pressure cooker method:

Shred your cabbage ready for steaming. I often give it a quick wash too depending where I purchased my cabbage from.

Then load your steamer basket with your cabbage.

You place a cup of water (or two depending on your pressure cooker size) into your pressure cooker pot.

Add your trivet and steamer basket that is loaded with cabbage

Then the lid goes down on your instant pot and a quick cook time of 1 minute will result in perfectly cooked steamed cabbage.

It really is that SIMPLE to steam cabbage in the instant pot. And just think that same technique can be done with any of your vegetables, though the cook time can vary. We have a great post about instant pot steam for you to check out.

How To Make Instant Pot Cabbage Taste Better?

Even though we have steamed our instant pot cabbage instead of boiling it, you are probably still wondering how to make instant pot cabbage taste better.

Well, the answer is what Julia Child’s adds to all her recipes BUTTER.

There is nothing better than instant pot buttered cabbage and its ridiculously easy to make.

Simply, when the cabbage is sat in the instant pot, ready to be steamed add the butter. Then steam your cabbage as usual.

You can also use this time to season your cabbage however you want. Or just keep it simple with salt and pepper.

How To Cook Cabbage In Instant Pot?

Cooking cabbage in instant pot is so EASY:

1. Add water to your pressure cooker.
2. Add steamer basket.
3. Load it up with cabbage.
4. Season.
5. Pressure cook.
6. Serve.

Cabbage In Ninja Foodi

If you have a Ninja Foodi rather than an instant pot, do the exact same thing, but add an extra cup of water to your pressure cooker pot. This is because the Ninja Foodi cooking pot is wider and needs a little extra water to go to pressure.

How Long To Cook Cabbage In Instant Pot?

The instant pot cabbage time is JUST 1 minute. Of course, this doesn’t take into account the time it takes for the cabbage to go to pressure. But actual cooking time is 1 minute.

You can do 0 minutes but I find on 0 minutes that my cabbage is too crunchy and not quite cooked.

More Instant Pot Vegetables

We have featured many vegetables to cook in the instant pot on Recipe This. Here are a few other simple vegetables to try next:

• Instant Pot Mushrooms
• Instant Pot Rutabaga
• Instant Pot Turnips
• Instant Pot Tomatoes
• Instant Pot Beets
• Instant Pot Butternut Squash

Can’t make it now? Then pin it for later!