4 Easy Instant Pot Meals for the Whole Family

Finding time to whip up fresh dinners every day of the week can often times feel like mission impossible—especially if you’re trying to please a picky eater, an infant, and of course, yourself, all at the same time.

Enter these crowd-pleasing dinners from The Multi-Cooker Baby Food Cookbook that are quick and suited for grown-ups and kids alike. Just toss the ingredients into your Instant Pot, cook according to instructions, then serve up dinner two ways to please everyone's palate.

• RELATED: 3 Quick and Easy Instant Pot Recipes

Before you get started, here are a few tips to keep in mind:

• If you’re cooking for a baby under 12 months, omit salt and salty ingredients like soy sauce and fish sauce. Grown-ups and big kids can add them at the table. Once your little one is 1 year, you can begin adding some salt to the recipes.
• A couple of these recipes call for you to cook, release the pressure, add more ingredients, and reseal the pot. The contents of the pot will be too hot for the lid to immediately lock on securely with the pressure valve down. Wait about five minutes and you should be good to go. The pot will come up to pressure more quickly than when you began cooking since the contents are already heated.
• Remember, food that comes out of the multicooker is hot! Be sure to allow time for the meal to cool before serving, especially for your baby.

Now get cookin'!

• RELATED: How to Make Baby Food in Your Instant Pot

Why we love it: While you’re happily slurping this noddle soup (picture above), your baby can eat this warm and cozy meal as finger food—just serve it without broth. You can combine the components or keep them separate. Get the recipe

Why we love it:  Zucchini adds tenderness to the meatballs and stands in for cucumber in the tzatziki. Get the recipe

Why we love it: If you can’t track down broccoli rabe or your family finds it too bitter, it's easy to make swaps. You can skip broccoli and stir in a 5-ounce package of baby spinach after the beans and pasta have finished cooking. Get the recipe

Why we love it: Making this mac 'n' cheese in your multicooker is almost as quick as assembling a boxed version, and it has added veggies. Get the recipe

These recipes are excerpted from The Multi-Cooker Baby Food Cookbook: 100 Easy Recipes for Your Slow Cooker, Pressure Cooker, or Multi-Cooker © 2019 by Jenna Helwig. Photography © 2019 by Lauren Volo. Reproduced by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. All rights reserved.