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.
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!!!!!!
Excellent recipe. I only had 1.25 lb cubed chuck, soI halved the sauce, used gochujang instead of Sriracha, used reduced salt soy sauce and skipped the salt in the rub. Cut cook time to 15 min. Served with peppers, and bok choy&carrots sauted with sesame oil.
Anyone with a LUX, I put the beef in for 90 minutes and it turned out great. It’s a good recipe but it’s a little salty. Also, mix the corn starch with equal parts water before putting it in or it’ll clump as I learned. Otherwise great!
Just made this recipe for the first time and it was a winner, so good!!! We always follow your other recipes for IP and hadn’t gotten around to this one yet! Will for sure be making this more in the future! * I don’t love spicy things so we did half the Sriracha and it was perfect!
Thanks for always having the best recipes that are so easy to follow for us basic girls! 🤷🏼♀️
So glad you loved this Korean Beef! This was one of our very first IP recipes on FFF 😀
Hi! Wondering if you can use stewing beef for this? I have some on hand and don’t want to make stew. Thanks! 🙂
Hi! I have not tried this. Isn’t stewing beef usually chunked? If it is, I would suggest not using that. You’ll want a large 2ish lb. cut of meat!
My family (2 boys, age 12 and 14) loves this recipe! My kids are fairly picky eaters. There are only a handful of meals that I prepare regularly, and this is one of them! They ask for it if I don’t make it at least once a month. I only use 1 tsp of the sriracha as one of my boys isn’t a fan of spicy foods. The sauce definitely makes this and it’s a great replacement for plain old roast with potatoes and carrots.
So glad your fam loves this recipe!
Can I use arrowroot powder instead of cornstarch? Would I use the same amount?
I haven’t tried it specifically, but yes I’d use the same amount!
This is a favorite in our house! The meat is so tender and flavorful, making the bowls so tasty!
We made this today as my first meal in the new Instant Pot I got for Christmas. All of my previous Korean Beef recipes were made with ground beef. This was ten times simpler and a thousand times tastier. Your recipes never let me down!!
YAY!! So glad you guys loved this!
Should use gochujang instead of sriacha. It has way more flavor and it’s actually Korean, the other is not. A little sesame oil would help also.
Very nice information and recipe.Keep it up.
Just got an insta (have several traditional pressure cookers) and this was my frist meal to prepare with it. OMG it was amazing a do over for sure. As always love your website.
Welcome to the club!
I too only have the IP-LUX model so only now realized I don’t have a low pressure setting either. I am still proceeding with the 2 hour time at high pressure and hoping for the best. For any of you who did this recipe at high pressure, how did it turn out?
This recipe is SO good (SO GOOD!) I am a poultry kind of girl and rarely eat any red meat but made this for my hubby’s birthday and it was such a hit! My husband used to live in Korea and is always craving Korean food. I made this beef into a bibimbap bowl with some kimchi, pickled ginger, a fried egg, and rice. This no-red-meat girl will definitely be making this recipe again!
YAS YAS YASSSSS. Now I’m craving bibimbap.
I make this ALL THE DAMN TIME and it never disappoints! Also works great with pork shoulder, just trim the fat real well since pork shoulder is a much fattier cut of meat. Veggie-wise, it’s also great with broccoli, cauliflower, green beans, peas… pretty much whatever you’ve got in the fridge!
Right?! It is so good! SO SO glad you like it!
My instant pot doesn’t have manual so I set it at pressure cook and selected low. Hope it turns out!
Hi! Help! I have the IP-LUX and am JUST realizing I don’t have a “low pressure” option, just manual and cannot adjust to high or low pressure. Darn. What adjustments would you make to this? Manual for less time? Or use the “slow cook” option?
Hi! Unfortunately we did not test this on high and don’t have an IP LUX.