This Instant Pot Corned Beef recipe is an easy way to create a delicious St. Patrick’s Day feast. With the touch of a few buttons, your pressure cooker will create tender corned beef with perfectly cooked cabbage, potatoes, and carrots.

Check out my entire collection of St. Patrick’s Day recipes for more menu inspiration.

Sliced corned beef on a platter with cabbage, carrots, and potatoes, in front of an Instant Pot.

I’ve cooked corned beef on St. Patrick’s Day every year of my adult life using pretty much every conceivable method. That is a lot of corned beef! Each method has it’s own merits and they are all worth trying. Some work better than others depending on whether St. Patrick’s Day falls on a busy weekday or a lazy Sunday.

If you are out of the house for most of the day, my Slow Cooker Corned Beef and Cabbage is a great choice. Or, if you have time to babysit a pot on the stove, there’s my tried and true Guinness Corned Beef.

But, if you’ve got a couple of hours to devote to your St. Patrick’s Day meal, I don’t think you can beat the ease and the tender result of preparing your corned beef in the Instant Pot. The process of pressure cooking infuses the corned beef with flavor from the cooking liquid in a way that just doesn’t happen with other methods.

If you’ve got an Instant Pot, I hope you’ll give this recipe a try.

Ingredient Notes
Corned Beef Brisket vs. Corned Beef Round
How to Make Instant Pot Corned Beef
Serving Suggestions

Sliced corned beef on a platter with cabbage, carrots, and potatoes, on a dinner table.

Ingredient Notes

Corned beef, cabbage, carrots, potatoes, Guinness beer and other ingredients in bowls with text overlay.

Corned beef: A 3 ½ to 4 pound corned beef brisket or round with the pickling spice packet (see more details below).
Liquid: A combination of Guinness Stout beer and low-sodium beef broth. If you’d prefer not to add beer, you can substitute an equal amount of additional broth.
Vegetables: A yellow or white onion, minced garlic, carrots, red or gold baby potatoes or fingerling potatoes, and a head of green cabbage.
For serving: Butter, salt and freshly ground black pepper, fresh parsley, and whole grain mustard for dipping.

Why Add Beer?

A dark beer with a rich, complex flavor like Guinness Draught will greatly improve the flavor of your corned beef and the resulting cooking liquid. In turn, that tasty cooking liquid is also going to impart great flavor to your cabbage, carrots and potatoes. Another brand of stout beer will do the trick. But, for St. Patrick’s Day, I feel compelled to go with an Irish beer. It’s always Guinness Draught in this house.

Corned Beef Brisket vs. Corned Beef Round

You may see both of these cuts at your local grocery store and be unsure which to buy. There is no one answer to which cut is best. It all boils down (ha!) to personal preference. Try the different cuts to find what you like best.

Corned Beef Brisket: The brisket is a flatter cut than the round with a much thicker layer of fat running across the top. It’s a tough cut that comes from the breast portion of the cow. The additional fat in the brisket results in a very moist, tender corned beef. Briskets can be a “flat” or “point” cut. But, you’ll more commonly run across the flat cut at most grocery store chains.

You can easily tell if you’ve got a flat or a point cut brisket just by looking at it. The flat cut brisket is somewhat squared off and a more even thickness from end to end than the point. The point will be just that – it is a bit thicker and will come to a point. It also has more fat running through it than the flat.

Corned Beef Round: The corned beef round is a thicker, leaner cut that comes from the rear of the cow and typically has a very light layer of fat. The slices of the round will be larger while the flatter brisket will have narrower slices. It cooks up very moist and tender, but I believe the additional fat on the brisket gives it a bit of an edge. It’s a small difference in my opinion and I love both cuts.

Sliced corned beef on a white platter with cabbage, carrots, and potatoes.

How to Make Instant Pot Corned Beef

This is a quick overview of how to make this recipe. You’ll find detailed instructions in the recipe card at the end of this post.

Four images of corned beef in an Instant Pot with beer and pickling spices and resting on a cutting board.

Cut an onion into chunks and add it to the insert of a 6- to 8-quart Instant Pot. Add the broth and garlic. Place the brisket on top of the onions, fat side up.
Pour a bottle of Guinness over the top of the corned beef.
Sprinkle the packet of pickling spices that came in the package over the top. Close and lock the lid and set your pressure cooker to cook on high pressure for 1 hour and 25 minutes. When the cooking time is complete, allow the Instant Pot to do a natural release for 10 minutes and then manually release the remaining pressure.
Transfer the corned beef to a cutting board and tent it with a piece of foil to keep it warm. Use a slotted spoon to remove and discard the onions, leaving the cooking liquid behind in the Instant Pot.

Four images of cabbage wedges, carrots, and potatoes i an Instant Pot and corned beef being sliced on a cutting board.

Add the potatoes and carrots to the cooking liquid and place the wedges of cabbage on top. Close and lock the lid. Set the Instant Pot to pressure cook on high for 5 minutes.
Immediately release the pressure and transfer the cabbage, potatoes, and carrots to a serving platter or bowl.
Slice the fat layer off the top of the corned beef (flat briskets will have far more fat than a round).
Then, slice the corned beef against the grain and transfer it to a serving platter.

Sliced corned beef on a platter with cabbage, carrots, and potatoes.

Serving Suggestions

Vegetables: Toss the cooked carrots, potatoes, and cabbage wedges with some small pats of butter, then season to taste with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. A sprinkle of chopped fresh parsley will brighten up the veggies, but take care not to use too much salt so that they’ll nicely balance the very well seasoned corned beef.

On the side: A little grainy mustard is a delicious for dipping. If you’re up for a little additional baking, my Cheddar Dinner Rolls or Cheese Beer Bread would be perfect with this meal. But if not, a loaf of crusty bread and a few bottles of Guinness is all you need for a memorable St. Patrick’s Day meal.

A serving of corned beef with cabbage, carrots, and potatoes on a blue plate in front of an Instant Pot.

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This post was originally published on March 4, 2020 and has been updated with new text and images.

5 from 10 votes (4 ratings without comment)