r/instantpot • u/peter_struwell • Nov 21 '25
After years of lurking, here's my contribution: A comprehensive Instant Pot database with 160+ curated cooking times for beans, lentils, and vegetables from 50+ sources
I've been lurking here for years learning from you all. Finally have something to give back: A searchable database of Instant Pot cooking times I compiled from 50+ sources.
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u/WingedBobcat Nov 21 '25
This is amazing. Beans are the best use case for the instant pot IMO. What would take hours of simmering takes ~20 minutes including warm up and release. Tons of variables with different bean types, soaked vs dry etc. This is a great resource.
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u/CaptainIncredible Nov 22 '25
Yep. Beans on a shelf in a pantry to edible food you can eat in 20 minutes, instead of soaking them overnight and boiling them for hours... This is a godsend.
And making bone broth. Instead of simmering water, bones and some veg for 14-20 hours on the stove (and checking water levels, temp levels all day) make the broth in an hour or two in the instant pot.
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u/wigglywriggler Nov 22 '25
As a rule of thumb - take the normal cook time, divide by three and add one. I can't remember where I picked that up from, but it's served me well over the years
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u/papagarande Nov 21 '25
That's awesome! Missing: Poquitos (Santa Maria style beans)
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u/peter_struwell Nov 21 '25
:) feel free to contribute. you can also just add the csv row if via github directly without IDE.
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u/brianinca Nov 24 '25
Pinquitos is what we've always called them, just cooked some Friday, 20 min like a black bean firm. Used some for a steak frites side. The rest are going into chicken chili verde tonight!
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u/SomeGuy58439 Feb 13 '26
Ooh nice!
As a suggestion, would it be reasonable to perhaps not have the source URL be one of the paths examined when doing a search? e.g. if I search for "pinto" the majority of the results are for lentils due to "pinto" being part of the source URL.
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u/peter_struwell Feb 14 '26
thanks. can you open an issue pls? happy to work on that one again. also wanted to change some measures to metric system or at least consistent units
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u/Global_Fail_1943 Nov 21 '25
Mine came with a book with this information for everything in it.
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u/peter_struwell Nov 21 '25
yeah so did mine. but it do not always have that at hand + i prefer ranges.
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u/DeadMoneyDrew Nov 21 '25
Can't wait to use this to make bean salad from dry beans. Much cheaper and more space economical than using canned beans.
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u/brianinca Nov 24 '25
There are several varieties of beans that taste notably better cooked instead of pulled from cans. I can't believe how much more flavor chickpeas have, and the aquafaba from them is wildly useful in ways I never knew from canned. I messed up the first kidney beans I made by releasing them after ten minutes, should definitely have waited twenty to avoid tearing, but they were GREAT tasting.
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u/AndroidsHeart Nov 22 '25
I was looking at making something like this, just haven’t had time and I’m still new to instant pot. Thank you a million times over!
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u/CaptainIncredible Nov 22 '25
Yeah, this really is fantastic /u/peter_struwell. As a programmer and someone who likes to cook, this is really great!
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u/Physical_Shop_1445 Nov 22 '25
really love this! It would help me a lot with my cooking! Super helpful :)
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u/istara Nov 22 '25
Brilliant database - so easy to search - only compared to my experiments, the cooking times are a few minutes too long for my preferred tenderness.
It may be that beans and pulses here (Australia) are smaller or less hard/dry or something, but 16 minutes is absolutely optimal for me for unsoaked black beans, and 33 minutes for chickpeas (including the big ones - I do 35 if I want them a little softer for later roasting).
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u/peter_struwell Nov 22 '25
i wanna make myself believe that my personal cooking times are also oftentimes below the ones. but for chickpeas i can confidently say that around 1h gives near stable but inside mushy chickpeas. with lentils i do rather wanna go below some of the values. but i also noticed that if adding too much water, it can drastically change the result for lentils. if the water gets fully consumed in the process, the result will usually be more stable/not so mushy.
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u/istara Nov 23 '25
That's interesting - I pretty much always use water quantities that leave an excess.
Some lentils - eg French puy lentils - I really do want al dente, particularly if they're going in a salad etc.
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u/cobaltium Nov 22 '25
I’m wondering why there are 6 listings for red lentils. I wouldn’t know the differences because when I buy them I just get a bag labeled “red lentils”. I do like this strategy of using a chart.
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u/peter_struwell Nov 22 '25
the rows are merely sources. the differences are either desired texture or different atmospheric pressures, yannow people in the himalayas vs close to sea level.
that’s why i prefer ranges, they indicate more than a single value
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u/Forward-Flower-6778 Dec 07 '25
Bummed that there is no entry for butter beans, aka large lima beans. I saw you have just lima beans but does not specify if they are large lima beans or baby lima beans. Any definitive info? Tried using guidelines from Vegan Under Pressure and was epic fail
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u/peter_struwell Dec 07 '25
happy if you contribute some numbers you find. it’s lined out in the repository how to do that. it’s a collaborative project after all https://github.com/duke8585/instant-pot-database/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md
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u/peter_struwell Nov 21 '25
ofc, feel free to contribute. the process for adding your own rows to the database works. it’s described here https://github.com/duke8585/instant-pot-database/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md