Instant Pot Sweet Potatoes – Reliable Every Time!

At a glance

What stands out: Instant Pot sweet potatoes come out silky smooth every time. Pressure cooking sweet potatoes may be a standby (and easiest) way yet!

How long it takes: 40 minutes total
Equipment you’ll need: Instant Pot/pressure cooker, wire trivet
Servings: make as many as you like (within reason!)

We eat a lot of sweet potatoes. We mean, A LOT. Roasted, in a hash, sweet potato toast, mashed, pureed, baked, turned into chips, basically any way we can. On special occasions, we love to make scalloped sweet potatoes with bacon and Gruyère. If you don’t believe us, take a look at our list of 25 straightforward sweet potato recipes!

We admit, we sometimes resort to the microwave to cook sweet potatoes. Stab them with a fork, wrap them in paper towel, and they’re ready in about 5 minutes. However, that method does tend to dry them out. Enter the Instant Pot! We've found that a pressure cooker makes the most reliable sweet potatoes. This is definitely our new go-to method, and we think it’s going to be yours, too.

About Instant Pot Sweet Potatoes

Soft and creamy. Instant Pot sweet potatoes are steamed which causes the flesh to become velvety smooth and creamy. The skin becomes soft. Instant Pot sweet potatoes differ from baked sweet potatoes which tend to be a bit drier with a tougher skin.

A straightforward cooking method. This post is more of a how-to than an actual recipe. Once you’ve learned how to use your Instant Pot to cook sweet potatoes, it will be a cooking method you turn to over and over again.

Reliable for food prepping. Instant Pots can be a food prepper’s dream. Just get that Instant Pot working on food for the whole week. You can stock your fridge with boiled eggs, cooked shredded chicken, and now creamy cooked sweet potatoes. Dinner will be a snap! Prep Instant Pot white rice and freeze it in serving size bags. It’s so handy. Works for brown rice, too, or quinoa!

What goes in

• Sweet Potatoes: Look for medium-sized sweet potatoes that are about two inches in diameter. After testing this recipe several times, we came to the conclusion that larger potatoes just don’t cook as evenly. They tend to stay hard in the middle even if you increase the cooking time. The recipe is written for four sweet potatoes; you can cook fewer or more potatoes as you wish.
• Instant Pot/Pressure Cooker/Multicooker: We use a 6-quart Instant Pot.

A Sweet Little Scrub Brush

Buy a good brush to scrub the outside of your potatoes. We love this one – it has soft and firm bristles and it’s dishwasher safe. We also love the way it fits in your hand.

Buy it on Amazon

How it comes together

Prep the potatoes. Scrub the sweet potatoes well and trim if necessary. We usually trim the wrinkly ends off.

Add water. Pour one cup of water into the bottom of the pot. Don’t skip the water! Water is necessary to create steam; the steam builds up, and pressurizes the cooker.

Add the sweet potatoes. Place the wire trivet into the pot and arrange the sweet potatoes on the trivet.

Cook. Lock the lid in place and set the Instant Pot to Pressure Cook (or Manual – High Pressure, depending on your model). Set the cook time for 15 minutes. It will take approximately 10 minutes to pressurize.

Natural release. After the 15 minute timer goes off, allow the pressure to release naturally. That means you don’t do anything for fifteen minutes. When fifteen minutes have passed, release any remaining pressure; carefully remove the lid.

The sweet potatoes should be evenly well-done, silky smooth and rich! The skin will be soft and is totally edible. Now you know how to make reliable sweet potatoes!

Serve. Enjoy the sweet potatoes just the way they are or top them with a nice-sized chunk of from-scratch garlic butter. You can eat the soft peeling or remove it. We like to enhance the sweet potatoes with a sprinkle of cinnamon sugar. Keep reading for more suggestions.

How To Use Cooked Sweet Potatoes

Stuffed sweet potatoes

Cut a slit in the middle of the potato and open it up. Add any sort of filling you like: chili with all the toppings, scrambled eggs with avocado, black beans and tomato salsa, bacon, salmon, shredded chicken, whatever! Recently we’ve been loving these speedy-cooking fried chicken bites.

Mashed sweet potatoes

Scoop the sweet potatoes out of the skins and mash it. Add seasonings like chili powder, curry powder, or taco seasoning. A drizzle of hot honey is so good! Top them with a sprinkle of savory granola, toasted pine nuts, or roasted pumpkin seeds (pepitas). Try vanilla bean mashed sweet potatoes.

Use these cooked sweet potatoes to make a creamy sweet potato casserole with marshmallows, sweet potato bread pudding, or twice baked sweet potatoes.

Keeping leftovers

Cooked sweet potatoes can be stored in the refrigerator for up to 5 days. They will keep in the freezer for up to 12 months in a freezer safe container. Thaw overnight in the refrigerator before reheating.

To reheat, microwave until heated through.

• Yield: 8
• Prep: 5 minutes
• Cook: 30 minutes
• Total: 45 minutes

Ingredients

• 4 medium-sized sweet potatoes (10 to 12 oz. each), approximately 2 inches in diameter (see note)
• 1 cup water

Method

1. Scrub sweet potatoes and trim if necessary. Pour water into Instant Pot. Place wire trivet in the bottom of the Instant Pot and place sweet potatoes on top of the trivet.
2. Secure the lid and turn valve to seal, if necessary on your model.
3. Select Pressure Cook (or Manual on High) for 15 minutes. It will take about 10 minutes to come to pressure.
4. Allow pressure to release naturally (do nothing after the timer goes off) for 15 minutes.
5. Release remaining pressure, remove lid, and serve.

Notes

Selecting sweet potatoes: After numerous tests, we found that sweet potatoes with a diameter much larger than 2 inches cook less evenly, even if you add extra time. Try to find sweet potatoes that are fairly similar in size, about 2 inches in diameter.

Adjusting yield: You can cook fewer sweet potatoes or add more. Cooking time is the same but it will take less/more time for the Instant Pot to come to pressure.

Storage: Cooked sweet potatoes can be stored in the fridge for up to 5 days in an airtight container or frozen for up to a year.