Instant Pot Korean Beef Bowl Recipe
Published 2/1/2020 • Updated 8/12/2024
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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. Looking for a stovetop version? Checkout our Korean Ground Beef recipe!
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.
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I’m so excited to try this! If I have a 3lb roast do you know how I would adjust the time? I’m pretty new to instant pot cooking!
I would say maybe 2.5 hours!
I would love to make this recipe, however, if I use half the meat would I need to adjust the cooking time?
I made this tonight and it was great! For those who have an instant pot without a low setting, or who just want to make it faster, I followed the recipe exactly but cooked it for 45 min on high pressure. It turned out awesome! Thanks!
Thank you! The 2 hour time was too long in my instant pot world and I was wondering!
Thank you! I was wondering! 🙂
I was a little skeptical about the recipe because I have never really mad anything in my instant pot but it actually came out really good. It was super soft and had a nice kick to it. One thing I would mention is I think my searing the meat skills are lacking because I burnt the bottom of the pot a little but I can work on that.=)
Thank you for the recipe!
Made*
Oh no!!! Practice makes perfect 🙂
Can you highlight the LOW pressure? I totally messed this up because I missed that detail and have to basically throw it all away.
This might be my fav FFF recipe to date! This beef just melted in my mouth it was so good! Was very easy to prepare and came out perfect! Will definitely be making this over, and over, and over again. I think next time I’ll add even more veggies. Side note – I used coconut aminos instead of soy sauce for a little bit healthier kick.
So easy to make and very yummy! I had to make it a second time because my daughter packed up all of the first batch to take home.
I tried this recipe tonight and it was excellent!! So easy and so delicious. I used 2.5 pounds of London broil (was on sale cheaper than chuck roast) and the meat was so tender and flavorful. I added more veggies and ending up using 1.5 red pepper, 1.5 orange pepper, sugar snap peas, carrots, and mushrooms. With the extra vegetables and meat, we had 8 servings: 4 dinners and 4 leftovers for lunches. Great recipe! I will make again. Thanks!
LOVE! Did you use the Instant Pot or slow cooker?
I used an Instant Pot. I was able to prep everything during nap time and then started the instant pot before going to a class at the gym. I came back and had the perfect amount of time to make the rice and veggies before the meat finished. I let the instapot natural release, instead of quick release (I had some time to kill before dinnertime). Also, I forgot to mention that corn starch is missing from your ingredients list, but I had some on-hand. I wanted to let you know in case others don’t have that in their pantry.
Same cuestion… can I make it in the crock pot?
Thank you
Yes! I would try cooking it on low for 6-8 hours!
Can you make this in the crock pot?