This easy Instant Pot Mexican brown rice is a wonderful side dish option. Quick prep time along with tons of flavors this brown rice dish is my go-to recipe whenever I cook Mexican meals at home.
If you are not a fan of brown rice, yet you want to eat it more often because of its health benefits then I would suggest cooking it in an Instant Pot if you have one. You will love it!
Ever since I started cooking brown rice in the pressure cooker, especially in IP, my dear husband stopped saying NO (or giving ugly looks ) to it.
And I got a chance to try my hands on different recipes using brown rice. Some of my favorites are vegetable fried brown rice, lentil salad, cilantro-lime rice, etc.
This time I am sharing with you the IP version of our all-time favorite and most popular Mexican Style Tomato Brown Rice (with slight variations). You can follow the original recipe (stovetop version) if you want to cook this dish without the Instant Pot.
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What You Will Need!!
You may find these ingredients already sitting in your pantry.
- Brown rice – use long grain rice
- Onion – dice it into small pieces
- Garlic – chop it finely
- Tomatoes – dice them into small pieces
- Blend of Mexican spices
- Cooking oil – I use avocado oil or olive oil
- Salt to taste
How to make Instant Pot Mexican Brown Rice
Cook some onion with garlic in little oil in Instant Pot on saute mode. Then add brown rice and saute for 4-5 min. Add Mexican spices, tomatoes and cook for another 2-3 min. Finally, add water, season with salt, and mix well.
Cook the mixture on manual high pressure for 22 min. Let the pressure release naturally for 10 min. Then manually vent out the steam. Gently mix the rice, garnish with fresh cilantro and serve warm.
Serving options
- Serve with cilantro lime chicken, roasted fajita veggies, and some homemade guacamole or sliced avocado for a complete meal.
- It is a perfect rice dish to serve alongside shredded chicken tacos or any other tacos.
- Add it to Mexican-flavored chicken avocado salad to make a wholesome dish.
Helpful Tips!
- Brown rice – You can use any long-grain brown rice variety for this recipe. I always use brown Basmati rice in my kitchen.
- You can also add cooked beans to the dish once the rice is done to make it a complete and filling meal.
More Mexican recipes You WIll Love!
More Instant Pot Recipes!
Love this recipe? Please leave a 5-star ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ rating in the recipe card below & a review in the comments if you REALLY like this recipe. Thank You!
📖 Recipe
Instant Pot Mexican Brown Rice
Equipment
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon cooking oil
- 2-3 garlic cloves finely chopped
- 1 small onion diced into small pieces
- 1 ½ cup brown rice
- ½ tablespoon chipotle chili powder
- 1 teaspoon cumin powder
- 2 large tomatoes diced into small pieces
- 2 ½ cup water
- 2-3 tablespoon finely chopped fresh cilantro
- salt to taste
Instructions
- Heat cooking oil on medium saute mode in Instant Pot.
- Add garlic, onion and cook until translucent or for 2-3 mins.
- Now add rice, chipotle chili powder, and cumin powder and stir fry for 2-3 mins.
- Add tomatoes and cook for another 1-2 min.
- Then add water, salt to taste and mix well.
- Cook the mixture on manual high pressure for 22 mins.
- Let the steam release naturally for 1 min and then quick release the remaining.
- Add freshly chopped cilantro and mix well. Serve warm.
Notes
- I prefer to clean the rice with water before using them in recipes. You can rinse and drain the excess water from rice using a large strainer.
- This rice dish has a slight heat coming from chipotle chili powder. You can consider it adding as per your taste. I love its flavors even though it is slightly hot.
- You can also serve lime wedges on the side of this brown rice dish.
I tried this today and something went bad wrong. I cook (plain) brown rice in my IP all the time at 23 minutes on high pressure, then a 20 minute natural release, then quick release, and it’s always perfect. I made this exactly as written and double checked my ingredients before closing the lid. When the time went off, instead of doing 1 minute and then quick release, I did 3 (just because I was busy), and then quick released. My result was watery and the rice was not remotely cooked enough; very hard. I was doubtful 22/1/Q was enough time, and for me, it wasn’t. The recipe seemed to work for other reviewers, though, so not sure why it didn’t work for me. I put it back on high pressure for 10 more minutes, and, as expected, I got a burn notice before the 10 minutes was up. After that it was edible, but super gummy. I love the seasoning and the house smells amazing. I think I’ll try it once more and do 20/20//Q and see if that works for me. Thank you for sharing a recipe. I’m always grateful for people who do this, even when it doesn’t work for me. I’ll keep trying.
For some reason I still had a lot of water at the end and rice was still hard. I follwed recipe to T. Not sure what happened. But flavor was yummmyyyy! Thank you for recipe.
I never comment on recipes but thank you so much. I’m so happy with this rice!!!!
I’ve never made rice in the insta pot before and I thought what better kind of rice to do it with than brown, since I can’t ever get the cooking time right on a stove top.
I followed the directions of rinsing rice before hand, and the rest of the instructions with these two changes.
Instead of water I used home made chicken broth (same amount).
Instead of chipotle powder (I didn’t have any and duh, quarantine, wasn’t going to the store to buy any) I used 1/2 of a chipotle in adobo sauce (from the can), minced.
I only used one half because I didn’t want this to be too spicy that my 8yr old and 1 yr old wouldn’t eat. It was the perfect amount of flavor and little hidden kick. I would say using a whole chipotle would give the equivalent of the dry chipotle in original recipe.
In regards to salt as I saw someone wished the measurements where given, I measured so I can post here. 2 teaspoons of salt.
First I started with one and felt it needed a little more.
Rice was perfect, the kids ate it will deff make this again.
This was good! I was making for a crowd, so I tripled the recipe – which JUST fit in my 6 qt instant pot. Used the same cooking time as the recipe & the rice was cooked nicely. I doubled the onions and spices (instead of tripling) as many of the guests were kids. Also I dialed the chipotle chili powder way back – 1/2 Tbsp for the single recipe seemed like a ton. .
I’d love a measurement on the salt (perhaps as a range) – I plopped some in before cooking but after cooking I needed to add a lot more.