Pressure Cooker Wild Rice and Farro Pilaf

Wild Rice and Farro Pilaf with dried cherries, fresh herbs, and toasted hazelnuts adds delicious flavor and texture to your holiday table. With this easy Instant Pot wild rice recipe, you can have this healthy side on your table in less than 45 minutes!

Feliz día de acción de gracias! Happy Thanksgiving from Texas’ Rio Grande Valley! I’m Tamara from Beyond Mere Sustenance here with a fairly simple, but elegant side dish for your holiday table. I love to encourage people to enjoy healthy food with global flair around the table… regularly.

Holiday menus tend to be heavy and rich. I do my fair share of “splurging” during the holidays, but I also try to keep as much to my typical fare as possible. Whole grains are always part of a healthy diet. 

Making Wild Rice and Farro Pilaf in an Instant Pot

An Instant Pot is one of the most popular brands of electric pressure cookers. They are easy to use and your Instant Pot can help you create this delicious Wild Rice and Farro Pilaf recipe!

We love farro. Farro is perhaps more common in Italian cuisine, but it is beginning to catch on in the United States. Wild rice is a natural pairing with farro as both are best with a little bit of a “bite” or tooth to them. Mushy grains are not very appealing.

Fresh herbs – parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, and chives – seem so appealing this time of year. My herb garden is thriving with our cooler days in south Texas, so they were a natural addition to this dish.

I have always loved dried cherries with wild rice, and toasted hazelnuts, well, aren’t they good in almost anything?

The “trick” in putting together this wild rice and farro side dish recipe was in figuring out the proportion of grain to liquid. After much research, I discovered that farro is frequently soaked for hours or overnight, then cooked for about 30 minutes. Then, the cooking liquid is drained.

My experience in years of cooking wild rice and grains is that cooking liquid varies from one dry batch to the next. The key is to concentrate on getting that al dente texture, and not worry about having all of the liquid absorbed in the cooking process. Once you toss that preconceived notion, you may be very pleased with the results!

Whether you use a stove top model or an electric, you will want to sauté the onion or shallots, garlic, and grains in a bit of olive oil prior to pressure cooking.

I regularly make stock, and find the flavor to be superior. Use your favorite chicken or vegetable stock.

I pressure cook the wild rice and farro 25 minutes in my Power Pressure Cooker XL for 25 minutes on the rice/risotto setting. After a 5 minute quick pressure release, I drain the rice and grains, and finish the pilaf.

It really is that simple. Pressure Cooker Wild Rice and Farro Pilaf is elegant enough to serve alongside your roast turkey, duck, or prime rib, but also simple enough to serve with a chicken dinner any time.

Pressure Cooker Wild Rice and Farro Pilaf Recipe

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Pressure Cooker Wild Rice and Farro Pilaf

Yield: 10 servings

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Ingredients

• a drizzle of olive oil
• 1 shallot, or 1/2 a small red onion, finely chopped
• 1 teaspoon garlic, minced
• 3/4 cup wild rice
• 1 1/2 cups whole grain farro (such as Bob's Red Mill)
• 6 cups broth/stock
• 1 tablespoon fresh herbs, finely chopped (parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme)
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• a few grinds black pepper
• 3/4 cup dried cherries
• 1/2 cup hazelnuts, toasted and coarsely chopped
• fresh herbs to garnish (chives, thyme, parsley)

Instructions

Saute the onion and garlic in a drizzle of olive oil in the pressure cooker. Add the wild rice and farro. Continue cooking until they are fragrant.

Add the broth/stock, herbs, salt, and pepper.

Lock the lid in place. Cook 25 minutes (rice/risotto setting) or high pressure on stove top.

Meanwhile cover the dried cherries with boiling water for 10 minutes. Drain.

Toast the hazelnuts, and coarsely chop.

After 25 minutes, allow pressure cooker to de-pressureize 5 minutes, then release pressure fully.

Drain the liquid from the pot. Add the rehydrated cherries and toasted hazelnuts. Toss to combine.

Garnish with fresh herbs such as chopped chives and thyme leaves.

Enjoy!

Notes

I use about equal parts fresh parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme, very finely chopped. When using dried, cut the amount in half.

Visit Beyond Mere Sustenance for more great pressure cooking recipes. 

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