Instant Pot Apple Cherry Breakfast Risotto
Instant Pot Apple Risotto is a comforting, quick breakfast recipe made with creamy Arborio rice, dried cherries, diced apples, apple juice, and warm cinnamon spices.
❤️ Why You’ll Love This Recipe: This breakfast risotto lets you start the day on a sweet note, you can control the sweetness levels, and it’s ready in under 20 minutes!
Making a sweet, fruity, and warming bowl of breakfast porridge in the Instant Pot is a delicious hands-off way to start your day on the right note. This apple breakfast risotto is a go-to recipe worth returning to every apple season.
My entire family loves this hearty Instant Pot Apple Cherry Risotto, and we make it year-round. It’s been on the site for a loooong time now, so I took some new photos and added tips.
How to Make Instant Pot Apple Risotto
This Instant Pot Apple Risotto recipe will work in any brand of electric pressure cooker, including the Instant Pot, Ninja Foodi, or Power Pressure Cooker XL.
The kind of rice you use is very important for the right texture when making risotto, even in a pressure cooker.
Arborio rice is the variety you want, and it’s usually easy to find at regular grocery stores. Arborio cooks up creamy, so there’s no need to use actual cream in this dish!
If you prefer a breakfast risotto that’s less or more sweet, feel free to adjust the sugar amount to your tastes. You can also add a splash (or more) of cream to the mixture for a richer flavor and texture.
How to Prepare the Apples and Cherries for the Breakfast Risotto
Cherries: I usually buy a big pack of dried cherries from Costco or this smaller pack from the grocery store, both of which are a tart cherry variety. I love the burst of flavor they add the dish.
I love to cut the cherries so there’s some in every bite. You can cut them in half, leave them whole, or finely dice them.
Apples: As for the apples, you can control the texture in the finished dish by how large or small you cut them. Very small diced apples will be fully cooked and start to break down by the end of the cook time. Very large pieces will retain a bit of bite to them.
Slow Cooker vs. Instant Pot Risotto
We first adapted this recipe from Crockpot Breakfast Risotto from the cookbook A Year of Slow Cooking. It was so creamy, flavorful, and kid-friendly that we fell in love and have been making it for years!
Slow cooker recipes are generally easy to convert to pressure cooker recipes. Making risotto in the pressure cooker is so much easier than on the stovetop, and it’s still creamy and delicious. Plus, it only takes 15 minutes, compared to the hours it takes in a crockpot!
Tip: If you have other slow cooker recipes you’d like to make quicker, we can teach you how to convert slow cooker recipes to the Instant Pot.
Halving and Doubling the Recipe
This makes enough breakfast apple risotto for 6 people. You can certainly divide everything in half to make a half batch.
Likewise, you can scale the recipe up to feed more or to have leftovers. As always, be careful not to go past the “Max Fill” line on your Instant Pot.
🛑 Note: If you are making extra for leftovers, be sure to have extra apple juice, milk, or cream on-hand since the rice will continue absorbing liquid as it cools.
More Instant Pot Breakfast Recipes
You might be surprised by how many ways there are to use your pressure cooker for breakfast, including these popular Instant Pot Breakfast recipes:
- Lemon Cranberry Breakfast Farro is another creamy porridge in the Instant Pot with nutty, fiber-rich farro.
- Pressure Cooker Breakfast Quinoa is a fast and flavorful recipe for hot cereal with quinoa and your favorite toppings.
- Instant Pot Berries and Cream Breakfast Cake is a moist and fluffy bundt cake steamed in your pressure cooker, no need to turn on the oven!
- Instant Pot Breakfast Casserole from Sweet Peas and Saffron is a savory dish with cheesy eggs and veggies
Do you LOVE this recipe?
Leave us a review below to tell us why!
Apple Cherry Breakfast Risotto
Instant Pot Apple Breakfast Risotto is a comforting and quick recipe made with creamy arborio rice, dried cherries and apples for bite, and finished with cinnamon and brown sugar.
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons butter
- 1 1/2 cups Arborio rice
- 2 large apples, cored and diced
- 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/3 cup brown sugar
- 1 cup apple juice
- 3 cups milk (I used 1%)
- 1/2 cup dried cherries
- Sliced almonds, optional, for serving
Instructions
- Select Sauté. Melt the butter in the pressure cooking pot, then add the rice and cook, stirring frequently, until rice becomes opaque, about 3 to 4 minutes.
- Add the apples, cinnamon, salt, and brown sugar. Stir in the apple juice and milk.
- Lock the lid in place. Select High Pressure and 6 minutes cook time.
- When the cook time ends, use a quick pressure release. When the valve drops, carefully remove the lid, and stir in the dried cherries.
- Serve topped with additional brown sugar, a dash of cinnamon, sliced almonds, and a splash of milk.
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Nutrition Information:
Yield: 6 Serving Size: 1Amount Per Serving: Calories: 299Total Fat: 7gSaturated Fat: 4gTrans Fat: 0gUnsaturated Fat: 2gCholesterol: 20mgSodium: 189mgCarbohydrates: 55gFiber: 3gSugar: 30gProtein: 6g
Nutrition information is calculated by Nutritionix and may not always be accurate.
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This turned out really well, even when I substituted almond milk for the regular. So decadent it ought to be dessert!
YUMMY!!! I’m not an oatmeal fan but my family loves it, so I decided to give this a try. I liked it more than anyone else, and they loved it, so that’s saying a lot. Thanks 🙂
So great to hear – thanks Megan! Not a lot of people try this one, but I love it too.
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This looks delicious Barbara. I haven’t mustered the nerve to try cooking rice in my stove top pressure cooker yet. This just may be the recipe that pushes me to do it. That’s my kind of breakfast!
I knew you would be able to make this in the pressure cooker and it looks fantastic! And thanks for the shout-out for Slow Cooker from Scratch; always appreciated!