This Instant Pot Mexican Rice can be either a vegan side dish for a Mexican-style dinner or a simple lunch to be packed in your lunchbox when you’re in a hurry.
The Instant Pot pressure cooker will give you fluffy and flavorful rice in a very short time so that you can also prepare plenty of other recipes to satisfy your cravings for Mexican food.
If you like this colorful rice, check out the Instant Pot Dirty Rice recipe.
Contents
What is Mexican rice?
Mexican rice is a mix of rice and veggies, with tomato sauce. This Mexican rice comes together so easily and quickly in an Instant Pot, which makes for an easy clean-up. The real Mexican rice is called Spanish rice de Mexico.
What can be added?
As you can already tell, Mexican rice has veggies inside. You can toss in your favorite veggies, but do get wild. The base of Mexican rice and carrots, peas, and bell peppers. You can add corn or some spicy peppers, to keep authentic flavors or just one vegetable by your choice. This rice is so good that it does not really need any extra flavors or veggies.
What type o rice should I use?
For this Instant Pot Mexican rice recipe you can use any type of rice you like :] Grab any rice you have and use it. If you want something special you can choose basmati rice, but other plain rice will be okay. You can check my guidelines for the different types of rice here.
How to make Mexican rice
Gather your ingredients:
Heat oil in Instant Pot on Saute. Cook rice for 4 minutes, stirring.
Add peas, carrots, onion, and garlic powder.
Pour in water, tomato sauce, and season to taste. At this point, you can add cumin if using. Lock lid into place and cook rice for 4 minutes on High pressure. Once the cooking cycle is done, perform a natural pressure release.
fluff the rice with a fork and serve.
- 1½ cups rice long grain
- 1 3/4 cups water
- 1/2 cup peas
- 1/4 cup tomato sauce
- 3 tbsp canola oil
- 1/2 tsp garlic powder
- 1 carrot diced
- 1 tsp onion powder
- salt to taste
- 1 tsp cumin powder optional
- Rinse and drain the rice.
- Pour oil into your Instant Pot and press “Sauté”.
- Add rice and stir for about 4 minutes, until it becomes light golden.
- Add peas, carrots, tomato sauce, garlic and onion.
- Add water, broth and salt to taste and stir well.
- Close the lid and cook on high pressure for 4 minutes.
- When cooking time ends, wait for a natural release.
- Once done, remove the lid and fluff the rice using fork.
- Serve and enjoy 🙂
For the Mexican rice dish would the time for brown rice still be 4 minutes or do I need to increase the time?
Thank you
Good question! Brown rice takes longer to cook, I would increase the cooking time to 10 minutes. I might also add a little more liquid.
If it is Brown basmati rice is it still only 10 minutes?
Yes, it should be about 10 minutes. If it’s not fully cooked after that, continue to pressure cook for a couple more minutes.