Instant Pot Curry
Published 9/19/2022
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If you’re looking for a quick and healthy dinner to make, you will love this Instant Pot curry recipe made with sweet potatoes, lentils, and kale.
Instant Pot Curry with Sweet Potatoes, Lentils, and Kale
We are huge fans of healthy Instant Pot recipes because they’re fast to make, easy to prepare, and a great way to meal prep for the week.
Get your veg in with this delicious and flavorful Instant Pot Curry. It packs in all the veggies, protein, and fiber all thanks to sweet potatoes, lentils, and kale.
For this recipe you only need less than 30 minutes from start to finish and you’ll have a healthy dinner ready for you and your family.
Featured Ingredients
Spices
- Curry powder: you’ll need a full tablespoon of curry powder for this recipe.
- Ginger powder: we used dried ginger powder, but you can also use freshly grated ginger.
Veggies
- Sweet potato: sweet potato is a complex carb and adds so much flavor and texture. You can also use normal potatoes or butternut squash instead,
- Onion: onion is a great base flavor for curry.
- Kale: kale is a great green to add to Instant Pot curry.
Legumes
- Lentils: dried lentils add both protein and fiber. You can also use dried split peas as well.
Other
- Coconut milk: full-fat coconut milk compliments ginger and curry quite nicely and is the liquid base of this curry.
- Hot sauce: hot sauce is optional, but adds a great amount of heat to every bite.
- Maple syrup: a splash of maple syrup adds just the right amount of sugar to bring out all of the yummy curry flavors.
How to Make Instant Pot Curry
Saute
Add olive oil to your Instant Pot and turn on the saute feature. Next, add in diced onion and spices and saute until fragrant. Turn off saute feature.
Add and Cook
Add water, sweet potato, carrots, ,and lentils and mix.
Then seal your Instant Pot and turn to high pressure. Set timer for 1 minute. Let your Instant Pot build up (this might take a few minutes). Once it starts counting down, you’ll hear it beep after just one minute…it’s almost done! Let it naturally release for 3 minutes before manually turning the valve to quick release.
Add Final Ingredients & Serve
Open your Instant Pot and give it a quick stir. Add in your kale and full-fat coconut milk and stir one more time! Serve on your favorite grain or cauliflower rice!
Storage
Store leftover curry in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 3-5 days.
How to Freeze
Let the curry cool completely. Then, transfer it into an airtight container and seal it. Freeze for up to 3 months.
Instant Pot Curry
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
- 1 yellow onion, chopped
- 1 tablespoon curry powder
- 1 teaspoon ground ginger
- 3 cups water
- 2 sweet potatoes, cut into 1-inch chunks
- 2 carrots, peeled and chopped
- 1 cup red lentils or dried split peas
- 1.5 teaspoons fine sea salt
- Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
- ½ cup full-fat coconut milk
- 1 cup chopped kale, stems removed
- optional: 1/2 tablespoon Frank’s hot sauce
- optional: 1/2 tablespoon maple syrup
Instructions
- Press Sauté and add the olive oil to the Instant Pot. Once the oil is hot but not smoking, add the onion, curry powder, and ginger and stir just until fragrant, about 1 minute. Press Cancel to stop the cooking cycle.
- Add the water and use a wooden spoon or spatula to scrape the bottom of the pot, making sure nothing has stuck. Add the sweet potatoes, carrots, lentils, salt, and a few grinds of pepper. Stir well to ensure the lentils are covered in water, then secure the lid and move the steam release valve to Sealing. Select Manual/Pressure Cook to cook on high pressure for 1 minute.
- When the cooking cycle is complete, let the pressure naturally release for 3 minutes, then move the steam release valve to Venting. When the floating valve drops, remove the lid and add the coconut milk and kale. Stir until the kale has wilted, about 2 minutes. Taste and adjust the seasonings as needed, adding the hot sauce or maple syrup if you want it hotter or sweeter!
- Serve the curry warm over the grain of your choice and garnished with the cilantro. Store leftovers in an airtight container in the fridge for 1 week.
Tips & Notes
- Red lentils cook much faster than other varieties, so I don’t recommend swapping them for green or brown lentils here. You would have to increase the cooking time, which would overcook the other vegetables.
- Nutrition does not include grain of choice.
Watch It
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
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Fresh & Healthy Instant Pot Cookbook
This recipe was first seen in the Fresh and Healthy Instant Pot. Megan is the queen of vegan and paleo recipes and her cookbook for sure doesn’t disappoint! All 75 of these recipes are gluten-free and refined-sugar-free, making for 75 easy recipes for light meals to make in your Instant Pot!
We chose to make her sweet potato curry recipe because 1. we are sweet potato obsessed and 2. I never say no to curry! (I mean have you made our coconut curry chicken yet?). I also know that a lot of you have been looking for more vegan Instant Pot recipes to make and this one fits the bill perfectly!
Before we jump into the recipe, check out The Fresh and Healthy Instant Pot Cookbook on Amazon, Target, and Barnes and Noble!
Delightful, turned out amazing. I did use brown lentils they were fine. I used lite coconut milk and spinach instead of kale. Was yummy, I was sceptic about only 1 minute cooking time but it turned out perfect
Mush. Tasty mush, but mush nonetheless. I followed the directions for the IP, pressure cooked it for 1 minute, let it release steam naturally for 3 and then the rest of the steam. The only thing that stood up to the pressure cooking were the carrots. I know it’s Megan’s recipe and now I’m a bit worried because I ordered her cookbook yesterday. We’ll see.
This was a complete failure. Ruined my evening. You say we can use dried split peas, I can only assume you mean the green ones, 1 minute with 3 minute slow release and they were still hard and unfortunately I already put the Kale in. Then I tried 3 minutes and 3 minute slow release stressing now because I’m over cooking the Kale now and still no good hard split peas. So now I’m trying longer again but I already can see this is going in the garbage. I’ve used my IP for several years and never had a fail like this. Why do you suggest split peas and not offer extended cooking times for them????
My red lentils were a bit tough compared to my veggies.
My daughter is vegetarian, and this is BY FAR one of our favorite instant pot recipes. Thank goodness it makes a lot, because we tend to go back for seconds!
This was my first Instant Pot meal and it far exceeded my expectations. I added chopped cooked chicken at the end and spinach instead of kale and it was super delicious! It will definitely go in the rotation!
Delicious! I was worried that my sweet potato chunks were too large, but they truly did cook after just 1 minute on high pressure! Used frozen kale and it worked just fine. Served with coconut rice (had to do something with that leftover 1 c!). Would definitely make again.
So glad you loved this!
I added a tablespoon of garam masala, a teaspoon of garlic powder, two teaspoons of turmeric and doubled the kale. Loved it.
I absolutely love this! I subbed white potatoes and broccoli. Used the “Now Curry” from Penzeys and it was so amazing flavourful!
This was the first recipe that I’ve made in my new instant pot. It tastes delicious, but I was just wondering if I did something wrong. The sweet potatoes disintegrated the second I started stirring the coconut milk and kale in.
This was so delicious! I had to make a few subs like white for sweet potatoes and had no kale so added steamed broccoli. I also added 2 minutes cooking time and sauteed the onions longer, but it was magnificent! Thank you! This will be my go to curry.
This was SO delicious! Thank you for the recipe! It was the perfect amount of everything, and I did end up adding some hot sauce. 5/5!