Instant Pot Korean Beef Bowl Recipe
Published 2/1/2020 • Updated 1/2/2024
This post may contain affiliate links. Please read our disclosure policy.
Start your week off right with this Instant Pot Korean Beef Bowl recipe. Your family and friends will absolutely love this meal! It tastes fancy but only takes a couple hours to prepare this fall-off-the-bone shredded Korean beef with your Instant Pot.
Love delicious Instant Pot meat recipes? Our Instant Pot Pork Roast and Instant Pot Pot Roast two of our other favorite Instant Pot meals!
Beef in the Instant Pot
How amazing do these Instant Pot Korean Beef Bowls look?! Let me just tell you, think of the most delicious beef roast you have ever had. The kind of beef roasts your mom or grandma make for the holidays. The kind of beef roast that cooks all day long.
These Korean Beef Bowls are THAT good, except (thanks to the Instant Pot) they are done in just 2 hours! The Instant Pot can produce one heck of a meal in just hours compared to a slow cooker.
Cooking big chunks of beef in the Instant Pot is one of our favorite ways to cook beef! It just makes so much sense!
What cut of meat do I use?
We use a chuck roast in this recipe. A chuck roast is a cut of meat from the shoulder of the animal. It can be labeled as chuck roast, pot roast, or shoulder steak in a grocery store. For this recipe, we used a boneless beef chuck roast.
Pro Tip: this recipe will work with a bone-in chuck roast, but it will definitely increase your cook time in the Instant Pot as it will take longer for the meat to break down and tenderize. If you try this method, let us know how it turned out in the comment
Staple Ingredients
We love these Instant Pot Korean Beef Bowls because they incorporate quality meat with tasty crunchy bell peppers that we just love! And? It’s a super easy recipe. This isn’t must ANY beef recipe. This is a Korean beef recipe and there are two important ways we are going to add flavor to this meal.
First, with the dry rub of the meat and then second, with the Korean Beef sauce!
Dry Rub Ingredients
The dry rub we use to rub the chuck roast uses brown sugar, ginger, salt and red pepper flakes (which is very common ins Korean beef recipes,). A little sweet a savory with a good amount of salt with perfectly season your meat while the salt tenderizes the meat!
- Brown sugar
- Ground ginger
- Pepper
- Red pepper flakes
- Salt
Korean Beef Sauce Ingredients
You are going to want to drink this Korean beef sauce out of a cup it’s so good! The sauce is added to the Instant Pot before you cook the beef and thickens and becomes flavorful while everything is cooking in the Instant Pot.
- Soy sauce
- Maple syrup
- Fresh ginger
- Sriracha
- Cornstarch
How to Make Instant Pot Korean Beef Bowls
Rub
The first step to this whole recipe is to rub the chuck roast down with the delicious dry rub. The key to making sure you get the most bang from your buck is to rub down the the chuck roast and make sure every inch is covered.
Finally, let the beef and dry rub sit for at least 10 minutes before searing the beef (the longer you let the beef in the dry rub, the better!).
Sear
Searing the chuck roast before pressure cooking the meat in the Instant Pot creates a delicious crust on the outside of the chuck roast and gets the juices flowing in the beef roast.
After you have searing the roast, remove the roast from the pot and use a spatula to scrape off all of the brown bits from the bottom of the pot (these are flavorful brown bits!).
Cook
Finally, toss the onion, garlic, and all of the sauce ingredients together in the bottom of the Instant Pot and place the beef roast on top of all of the Ingredients and set the Instant Pot to cook on low pressure for two hours.
While beef is cooking, prepare your rice and peppers for the bowls!
Shred
Once the beef is done cooking, remove the beef from the Instant Pot and shred the beef with two forks. The beef should easily pull a part! Before adding the beef back into the pot, turn the sauté function on and sprinkle the corn starch into the sauce at the bottom of the pot and whisk until the sauce begins to thickens.
Add the beef back into the pot and toss the beef with the delicious sauce!
Here’s a tip–> Slowly add the cornstarch to the pot, if you add too much at a time it will clump!
Assemble Bowls
It’s time to EAT! Evenly distribute rice, peppers, and beef into bowls and enjoy!
Instant Pot Recipes
Instant Pot Korean Beef Bowls Recipe
Ingredients
Dry Rub
- 1 tablespoon brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon ground ginger
- 1/2 teaspoon pepper
- 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flacks
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
Korean Beef
- 2 lb. chuck/arm beef roast
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 medium yellow onion, sliced
- 5 cloves garlic, smashed
Sauce
- 1/3 cup soy sauce
- 1/4 cup maple syrup
- 1 teaspoon fresh ginger
- 1 tablespoon sriracha
- 2 tablespoons cornstarch
Brown Rice
- 2.5 cups short grain brown rice
- 5 cups water
Peppers
- 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
- 2 bell peppers, any color, sliced
- salt to taste
- Optional Toppings*
- Kim chi
- sesame seeds
- sriracha
Instructions
- Mix dry rub spices in a small bowl. Rub roast with dry rub spices, making sure all of the meat is covered and let the beef sit for at least 10 minutes.*
- Set your Instant Pot to saute and add olive oil. When olive oil is fragrant, add the roast to the Instant Pot and cook for 3-4 minutes on each side.
- Remove roast from Instant Pot, add onions, garlic, and all ingredients for the sauce (minus the cornstarch) into the Instant Pot. Mix well and place chuck roast on top of onion mixture.
- Close Instant Pot, turn pressure gauge to seal, set Instant Pot to manual, low pressure, and cook for 2 hours.
- While the beef is cooking, prepare short grain brown rice. Place rice and water in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low, cover, and let simmer for around 30-40 minutes or until all water has absorbed. Set aside.
- When the meat is done, quick release pressure and remove roast. Add 2 tablespoons of cornstarch to the sauce in the Instant Pot. Stir well. Place roast back into the instant pot and shred with two forks. Close instant pot and turn to warm.
- Next, heat olive oil in a large skillet. Saute bell peppers in pan for 3-4 minutes. Season with salt, to taste.
- Serve beef with peppers, short grain brown rice, sesame seeds, and kim chi!
Tips & Notes
- Nutrition information was calculated based on 8 servings and does not include rice and optional toppings.
- The Korean beef sauce was slightly updated on Feb 14, 2021.
Watch It
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Don’t forget to tag your posts on social media with the hashtag #fitfoodiefinds, we’d love to see what you’re up to!
I’ve made this twice now and will make it many more times. Super easy and delicious and pairs well with other sides like veggies, eggs, etc. I almost always have to adjust recipes to my liking and this one is perfect as is. One commenter said this also works by setting the instant pot to high and cooking for 45 minutes, but I really caution against it. The meat was far too tough to shred easily. Low and slow guarantees tenderness. Also, mix the cornstarch in with a little bit of water before adding it to the sauce at the end, or it will clump.
wow this dish recipe is so easy to make.
Excellent post. What a great recipe this is. What a great look this plasto has in the photos. I’m going to save this recipe, to make it for my guests so I can try dishes from other countries. Thanks for sharing.
This recipe is definitely going into the dinner rotation! I used an arm roast and ended up doing high pressure for 45 minutes because I didn’t read the instructions ahead of time.. it was a little hard to shred but it was still tender to eat. The only thing I’d change about the recipe is that the cornstarch should be made Into a slurry before adding- I added it straight to the sauce and ended up with chunks.
I made the Korean beef exactly as the recipe says and it was so good!! I put it over rice with broccoli and spicy mayo! So good!!!!!!