Instant Pot Melt in Your Mouth Short Ribs

Is there anything better than a nice piece of beef with delicious gravy?  The thing is that it’s not that easy to accomplish. Generally speaking, to get all of the flavor from a piece of beef, you need to have a pretty high fat content.  Let’s face it, fat is delicious…or at least the flavor is, the texture not so much.  

In order to get both the taste and the texture, you need to cook down a fattier piece of meat for a very long time.  Seriously- google it.  Short ribs take anywhere from 3, 4, 5+ hours to make.  Who has time for that??  Once upon a time, I did.  But, now with the invention of our favorite pressure cookers, we can save time and accomplish the same thing.  Thank goodness for Short ribs in the Instant Pot!

I’ll be the first to admit that short ribs scare me.  Typically speaking, it’s not a go-to option for me at the grocery store.  Which is why I didn’t buy them.  Instead, my husband went to the store and “surprised me” with ribs.  Ummmm….. okay.  Now what?  I left it up to him to work his magic!

He spent some time on the internet and found several recipes that sounded good but seemed a bit complex and had a lot of ingredients that we didn’t have on hand.  So, he took inspiration from a couple of different recipes (Amy + Jacky, AllRecipes.com) and made his own, basic variation, which I am sharing with you today.  Feel free to add additional herbs and spices to make it your own. 

Tips for making Melt in Your Mouth Short Ribs-Instant Pot recipe:

1. If you like your carrots more al dente, then use larger carrots and cut them into bigger pieces or use parsnips as they take longer to cook. 
2. If you don’t like the consistency of cornstarch, substitute for flour to use as the thickening agent. I usually use flour, but since Luis made this recipe for our dinner, he used cornstarch instead.
3. Do NOT buy thin or small short ribs for this recipe.  Be sure to buy bigger short ribs.  The long pressure cooking time will cook down the fat and turn these into delicious, juicy, meaty goodness.  If you buy the thinner, smaller pieces, they will get dried out. 
4. When you are thickening the sauce up with the cornstarch slurry you may need to turn on the sauté function for a couple of minutes if the sauce is not thickening up as you would like.  If you do turn on the sauté function, be sure to turn it off before you add the lid back on.  All power should be off when you put the lid back on at the end. 
5. Serve with whatever sides you would like.  I served with mashed potatoes, but you could serve with pasta or rice as well.  

How to make Melt in Your Mouth Short Ribs-Instant Pot recipe:

1. Turn Instant Pot on the high sauté setting.
2. Once the Instant Pot is hot, add in 1 tablespoon of olive oil.
3. Season short ribs with salt and pepper.  Be sure to season all sides of the short ribs.
4. Place short ribs into the Instant Pot and sear on all sides.  This should take about 5 minutes.  Once all sides are lightly browned, remove from Instant Pot and set aside for now.
5. Add onions and garlic to Instant Pot and sauté for about 2 minutes.  Do not burn the garlic. 
6. Add in carrots and stir.
7. Pour in red wine and stir for 2 minutes- be sure to scrape all of the stuck on burnt bits off the bottom of the pan. 
8. Pour in beef broth and stir.
9. Add the seared short ribs back into the Instant Pot.
10. Turn the sauté function off and close the lid.  Move valve to “seal” and adjust pressure cooking time to 55 minutes. 
11. Once timer goes off, do nothing.  Let the pressure naturally release for 10 minutes. 
12. After 10 minutes, move valve to “release” and release remaining pressure.  
13. Carefully take the short ribs out of the Instant Pot and set aside until you have thickened the sauce.
14. Make cornstarch slurry and pour into Instant Pot and stir until well combined.  
15. Add the short ribs back into the Instant Pot and close lid- just set the lid on top so that the heat doesn’t escape- do not turn the Instant Pot back on.  Just let the short ribs sit in the thickened gravy and carrots for a couple of minutes to allow everything to come together. 
16. Serve and enjoy!

Ingredients for making Melt in Your Mouth Short Ribs-Instant Pot recipe:

• Olive Oil- 1 tablespoon
• Bone in short ribs- For this recipe, we cooked 4 large short ribs which served 3 of us.  Be sure to buy the larger short ribs and not the thinly sliced ones.  These were roughly 2 inches thick and three inches long. 
• Garlic- 2 tablespoons minced
• Onion- ¾ cup chopped.  To save time, we used frozen chopped onions
• Carrots-3 small carrots- chopped into ½ inch circles
• Beef Broth- ½ cup
• Red wine- 1 cup- dry red wine works best for this recipe.  Merlot, Cabernet or pinot noir will work.  Use whatever you have on hand.
• Salt-½ teaspoon
• Pepper- ½ teaspoon
• Cornstarch slurry
  • Combine 2 tablespoons of corn starch with ½ cup of water.  I like to add the cornstarch and water to a mason jar and shake it like crazy until it is well combined.