Instant Pot Irish Stew

Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day 🍀 with this quick and easy Instant Pot Irish Stew! It’s hearty and filling for the perfect comfort food dinner.

Made with Guinness beer, plenty of carrots and potatoes and either beef or lamb stew meat, it’s a wonderful meal to make on a cold day.

I’ll be honest: I actually I don’t like beer. UNLESS it’s Guinness in a hearty Irish Stew, that is. This is a pretty straight-forward recipe for your instant pot, not much different from my Instant Pot Beef Stew, to be honest.

The biggest difference between Irish Stew and regular beef stew is that I use Guinness instead of red wine for the gravy. Also, I’ll often make my Irish Stew as a lamb stew, but you can absolutely use beef (I also use beef in my Slow Cooker Irish Beef Stew and in my Dutch Oven braised Guinness Beef Stew!).

I’m sure my way of making this Instant Pot Irish Stew is not 100% purist and traditional, but it’s perfectly easy and delicious.

Ingredients you’ll need

Here is a visual overview of the ingredients in the recipe. Scroll down to the recipe at the bottom for quantities.

Ingredient notes

• Meat: The instant pot is great at tenderizing meat, so you can absolutely go for cheap stew meat here. If you’d rather dice up some beef chuck yourself, that’s perfectly delicious, too. Beef or lamb stew meat work great here, although the lamb does tend to fall apart a little easier.
• Celery: Feel free to use finely sliced leeks in place of the celery, if you prefer! My parents always make this with leeks and love it, so it’s a great option if you’d like to switch things up.
• Potatoes: I prefer using waxy potatoes in this stew to help them keep their shape (I used Yukon gold). If you use starchy potatoes such as Russet, they will most likely turn into mush.
• Guinness beer: Feel free to use a different dark beer you enjoy cooking with.

How to make Irish Stew in the Instant Pot

Making stew in the instant pot makes the meat fork-tender! It’s also much quicker than making it in the crock or on the stove, and SO easy, too.

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1 – Brown the meat:

Set the Instant Pot to sauté. Heat the oil, then brown the meat (season as it cooks).

2 – Start the gravy:

Stir the onions and garlic into the meat and cook for 1 minute. Then add the tomato paste and cook for 1 more minute.

Pour the Guinness over the meat, scratching the browned bits off the bottom of the pot (make sure you catch them all or you’ll get the burn warning). Simmer for 5-10 minutes to cook off the alcohol.

3 – Cook the stew:

Switch off the instant pot. Add the beef stock to the stew. Stir in the vegetables. Close the instant pot and set the valve to “sealing”. Press the “stew” button.

4 – Finish:

Once the pot is indicating it’s done with cooking, do a natural pressure release for 15-20 minutes (just unplug your pot and leave it alone).

Then manually release any remaining pressure according to manufacturer’s instructions and open the lid.

5 – Thicken

Set the instant pot to sauté and stir in the cornstarch slurry. Simmer until thickened. Alternatively, you can blend 1 cup of the stew and stir it back in.

Recipe tips

How do you make stew meat tender?

Pressure cooking the stew helps a lot with tenderizing the meat without having to cook it for seventy hours.

The one thing you have to take care off when using a pressure cooker is to allow the stew a natural pressure release for 10 minutes after cooking. I know it’s annoying and we all want to rush this step – but it’s crucial to allow the meat fibers to relax.

That way, your meat will be tender and delicious.

What cut is best for stew?

For a beef stew, I love diced chuck roast. It gets tender and flavorful when cooked right. But cheap packets of diced stew meat are perfectly fine here, too.

For a lamb stew, I will usually go for diced shoulder.

How can I thicken my stew after cooking?

While the stew won’t thicken in the pressure cooker (the liquid cannot cook away because the lid is always closed), you can thicken the stew to your taste after cooking using one of the following methods:

• blend 1 cup of the stew and stir it back in
• make a slurry of 1-2 teaspoons cornstarch and 1 tablespoon cold water, set the instant pot to sauté and stir the slurry into the stew. Simmer until thickened.

The second method is my preferred one (because I don’t want to mess around with the blender etc while my family is hungry), but you can use either.

What to serve with Guinness Irish Stew

We love this over mashed potatoes (or Colcannon, for extra decadence!). Or with a simple, traditional soda bread on the side.

And if you don’t like soda bread, a No Knead Bread is tasty, too!

Watch the recipe video

PS If you try this recipe, please leave a review in the comment section – I appreciate your feedback! Follow along on Pinterest, Facebook or Instagram. Sign up for my email list, too!

Recipe first published on 02/28/2019. Updated and republished on 03/16/2021 with new photos, video, better text and minor improvements to the recipe.

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P.S: For more stew recipes, check out our collection of homemade beef stew recipes!