In Episode 026 we are making Instant Pot BBQ Beef for dinner. Susie shares this easy and quick way to get tender shredded beef without standing over a smoker for 6 hours! Chuck Roast is cooked in your electric pressure cooker in about 1 hour and is tender and triple seasoned!
Transcript
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Intro: Welcome to Let’s Make Dinner, your audio library of amazing dinner recipes you can get on the table any night of the week. I’m your host, Susie Weinrich.
Susie Weinrich: Who here loves a good barbecue? I know I do. I live in Kansas City and we take our barbecue very seriously here. I will say that I am not a barbecue professional, I’m not out there, you know, sitting over my smoker with a brisket all day. But I do love to eat some barbecue. Okay. And we have some great restaurants here in Kansas City. But today we’re going to be making and going over the full recipe for Instant Pot Barbecue Beef Sandwiches. I know you’re probably like, oh, instant pot. That’s not a real barbecue. No, it’s not real barbecue, but it sure is tasty. It’s a super great way to get that tender shredded beef when you don’t have a smoker or a barbecue that you can cook it on, or maybe you just don’t have eight hours to make smoked beef, but you’re craving it. This is the perfect recipe.
I will also tell you if you don’t have an Instant Pot, I have this recipe available for your oven or your crockpot, and I will put a link to that full recipe in the show notes for you.
Tips and Tricks: Let’s get into some tips for making amazing barbecue shredded beef. First of all, we’re talking chuck roast here. That’s the cut of beef we’re going to use. It is a wonderful cut that has a super delicious beef flavor and so it’s a great option for your barbecue beef. A few things to think about when you’re looking for a chuck roast in the grocery store. You want to find one that is well-marbled. Marbled just means that it looks like it has kind of veins of fat throughout the whole entire piece of beef.
Next, you want to find one that’s decently large, about three to four pounds. The last tip with your chuck roast is, You do not need to get a prime chuck roast. You can just get a choice or even select if that’s what you have available or you’re trying to save some money. That will work perfectly fine for your barbecue beef.
With this barbecue beef, I include a complete recipe for a barbecue seasoning or a dry rub. If you have one that is store bought that you love, or you have one that you make that you love, that you know goes really well on beef, you can absolutely use that. You’ll need about a quarter to a third cup of your barbecue seasoning for this recipe.
One last thing I want to go over before we get into making the full recipe. I get this question a lot. If I double the recipe, do I double the time? The answer is, it depends. With this recipe, we’re cutting the beef into large three or four-inch pieces, so if you double the recipe, there’s no need to double the time. Because all of the pieces of meat are going to be equal in size. Now, if you were going to make this recipe and instead of a three or four-pound chuck roast, you were going to get a six or eight-pound chuck roast and not cut it into pieces, then you would need to increase the time because the size of the one piece of meat would be increasing. So I hope that answers and clears up the question about doubling the time and the recipe.
Instant Pot BBQ Beef Recipe: Let’s get into making our Instant Pot Shredded Barbecue Beef. You’re going to start with about a three or four-pound chuck roast. You’re going to pat it dry with some paper towels, and then cut it into three or four-inch pieces and trim away any large chunks of fat, and go ahead and discard those. Then set all of that chuck roast aside, we’re going to make the barbecue seasoning. Like I said in the tip section, If you have a barbecue seasoning that you like, go ahead and use that. If you don’t, here’s how you make this recipe. In a small bowl, you’ll combine one and a half tablespoons of brown sugar and one tablespoon of chili powder. Two teaspoons of kosher salt, and then one teaspoon each of black pepper, garlic powder, and onion powder. Then a half teaspoon each of smoked paprika. Make sure you use the smoked, it’s different than sweet or a regular paprika, make sure you get the smoked. So half a teaspoon of smoked paprika and half a teaspoon of dry ground mustard. Go ahead and mix all that up. I like to use a fork. The tip here is to make sure that you get all of the brown sugar worked down into the seasoning. You don’t want any large chunks of brown sugar left in the mixture. Now, you’ll want to remove two tablespoons of the seasoning and set that aside because we will use that after the barbecue beef has cooked to season it again at the end. With the remaining seasoning that you have, you’re going to sprinkle that over all of the cuts of the chuck roast. What I like to do is kind of press it onto the beef so that it adheres to each piece.
Now we’re going to turn over to the actual Instant Pot. In the liner of the Instant Pot. You want to pour one cup of water, one teaspoon of apple cider vinegar, and one tablespoon of Worcestercershire. Then I like to take one full yellow or white onion, cut it up into eight pieces, and lay that down in the bottom of the Instant Pot. What that base in your Instant Pot is doing, it’s allowing you to add liquid so that your instant pot can come to pressure and cook your beef. It’s also laying down a flavor profile that’s going to cook the beef and infuse more flavor.
All right, then you’re going to take that seasoned beef and place it on top of the onions in the Instant Pot. When I pick the beef chunks up, if any of that seasoning falls off, I like to take those beef pieces and mop up all of that seasoning and get it all stuck so that it goes right into the pot. Then go ahead and put the lid of the instant pot on. Turn it to lock it in place. Turn the pressure valve to seal on top. Then you’re going to set it to cook for 45 minutes on high pressure. At the end of that cook time, you’re going to do something called a natural release for 10 minutes. You don’t have to do anything for your pot to move into natural release. As soon as that 45-minute cook time is up, it will move into natural release where some of the pressure is dissipating. It’s not heating any longer. So let your pot count back up to 10, and then you’ll finish with a quick release by turning that pressure valve on the top. Once that pin drops in the top, you can go ahead and open up your pot. Then remove all of the beef chunks from the Instant Pot. What I like to do is put them on a rimmed baking sheet so that no liquid spills out or anything. It keeps everything contained together. Now, whether or not you add the onions to the beef, that’s totally up to you. This will be super tender, so you should just be able to take two forks and shred everything up.
Some people will ask me what to do with the liquid that’s in the bottom of the pot. You could add some of it to the beef, but I wouldn’t add all of it because sometimes that liquid that’s left over down there can be a little bit greasy. Now that you have your beef all shredded, we have that two tablespoons of reserved seasoning that we saved in the beginning. Give your beef a taste. See how much seasoning you want to add to the beef. Toss it all together, and give it another taste. If you want more seasoning, add more. If it’s good to go, then you can add some barbecue sauce. I don’t have a recipe for barbecue sauce. As I said before, we live in Kansas City, so we have excellent barbecue sauce here. So use whatever your family likes to eat, whatever you like the flavor of, whether it’s sweet, vinegar, smokey, or whatever you guys like. Toss your beef with about a half a cup of barbecue sauce, and then it’s time to serve.
So let’s get to talking about how to serve your shredded barbecue beef and what side dishes you’re going to have. I recommend serving these as sandwiches and getting some heartier buns, something that’s going to hold all of that juicy barbecue beef. Now, as far as toppings go, some of the things that we like are of course, extra barbecue sauce. Creamy coleslaw is excellent on top of barbecue beef. Onion rings are another kind of fun topping that you might not think of. We also love pickles or pepperoncini slices.
For side dishes, we like to keep it barbecue classic. So we’re talking potato salad, creamy coleslaw, and baked beans. Then maybe add some chips in there. One other combo that we really like is to serve a cheesy potato casserole and then broccoli bacon salad.
As always, I will link all of the recipes that I talked about in this episode, right in the show notes so you can find them when you are ready to make Instant Pot Barbecue Beef for dinner.
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Outro: Until next time, I hope this episode of Let’s Make Dinner Makes your Dinner Time a little easier.
Tips Shared
- Buy a 3-4 lb chuck roast that is well marbled. A choice or select cut will be just fine, no need to pay for prime beef here.
- The recipe includes a BBQ dry rub, but if you have one you love definitely use that- you will need about ¼-1/3 cup.
Recipes Mentioned
- Instant Pot Shredded BBQ Beef
- Oven or Crock Pot Shredded Beef
- Potato Salad (or Instant Pot Potato Salad)
- Cheesy Potato Casserole
- Broccoli Bacon Salad
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Pete
Susie: I wonder if this could be adapted for a “old fashioned” pressure cooker? We have no room both on the counter or in our budget for more kitchen appliances! 🙁
Thanks for freely sharing all your recipes and food knowledge.
Good health and blessings to you and your family!