Instant Pot Stuffed Peppers

These delicious stuffed peppers are made easily in the Instant Pot and are packed full of flavor! With ground beef, rice, plenty of cheese, tomato sauce, and Italian herbs, this quick dinner recipe is so good!

What Makes This Recipe So Good

• It’s the best kind of one-pot meal – an Instant Pot meal! Cooking is fast and easy, and clean-up’s a breeze. You’ll need to cook the rice before you start this recipe, but otherwise all the cooking takes place in the Instant Pot! And honestly, you could cook the rice in the Instant Pot, too.
• Talk about flavor! Juicy bell peppers stuffed with lean ground beef, herbaceous Italian seasoning, tender rice, and shredded cheese. You don’t even really need a side dish for this recipe if you don’t feel like it – you’ve got your meat and veggies right here!
• Leftover Instant Pot stuffed peppers will keep up to 5 days if you refrigerate them in an airtight container, which means you could double the recipe and make enough for lunch all week. Meal preppers rejoice!
• You can mix up the ingredients and create endless stuffed pepper variations! Swap out the Italian seasoning for taco seasoning and now you’ve got taco stuffed peppers. OR, you could leave out the rice but add in diced onion, breadcrumbs, and a little egg for meatloaf stuffed peppers! Let me know what variations you try in the comments.

Key Ingredients

Ground Beef – Unlike the rice, the ground beef should be uncooked when you start the recipe! It’ll cook completely in the Instant Pot. The leaner your ground beef, the less grease you’ll have inside the peppers after the filling’s cooked. Any ground meat will work here, so feel free to sub in ground turkey or ground chicken if you’d prefer.

Bell Peppers – Use the largest bell peppers that will fit in your Instant Pot. If you’re using a small Instant Pot, you may need to cook these stuffed peppers in 2 batches. Just be sure all of your peppers are roughly the same size, so they cook evenly!

Shredded Cheese – Use any kind of shredded cheese you like! Since this recipe uses Italian seasoning and tomato products, shredded mozzarella or an Italian cheese blend would be perfect additions.

Chef’s Tips

• I used a 6-quart Instant Pot for this recipe, but you can absolutely use an 8-quart instead. All you need to do is increase the amount of water you use! The cook times will stay the same.
• Make sure to drain your diced tomatoes really well so you don’t end up with a lot of excess liquid inside the bell peppers. If you’re not sure how well you drained them and want to be on the safe side, you can poke small holes in the bottom of the bell peppers to let any extra liquid drain.
• Instant Pots are no different than any other appliance when it comes to cook times, which means times can vary from one Instant Pot to another. Altitude is a factor, too, just like with ovens. Make any adjustments needed for your specific Instant Pot!
• The stuffed peppers will be pretty soft when you take them out of the Instant Pot. If they’re impossible to pick up without them completely falling apart, though, then they’re a little overdone. First, be sure you’re doing a quick release and not a natural release. If that’s not the issue, you can try cutting back on the cook time by 1 minute the next time you make them. Just 1 minute, though, as any more than that and you run the risk of the meat not cooking completely.

Other Instant Pot Recipes You Need to Try

• Instant Pot Red Beans and Rice
• The Best Instant Pot Chicken Tikka Masala
• Instant Pot Jambalaya
• Instant Pot Refried Beans
• Japanese Curry in the Instant Pot
• Dreamy Instant Pot Chicken and Rice
• Instant Pot Applesauce
• Instant Pot Chicken Wings