How to Cook a Butternut Squash in an Instant Pot in Six Minutes or Less!

As much as I like to eat winter squashes I rarely cook them. Butternut, acorn, Hubbard, pumpkin, and spaghetti squash take almost an hour of baking  time in the oven before they are ready to put into a recipe. Frankly, I don’t think that far ahead when it come to making daily dinner meal plans. 

So no fall and winter squash for Lisa – until now.

Hello old friend. Nice to see you in my kitchen so often!

 One kitchen experiment later, I now know I can pressure cook a hard squash in 5 to 6 minutes. 

Woo hoo! Winter squash for everyone!

How to Make Instant Pot Fall and Winter Squash the Easy Way

Pin this recipe tutorial for reference and to share with your friends!

You basically cook all of the hard fall and winter squashes (Butternut, acorn, spaghetti, butternut, Hubbard, pumpkin, etc.) in an Instant Pot brand of electric pressure cooker (I rely on me so much I gave one to every family on my Christmas list!) using the same method. In this case I’m focusing on the Instant Pot because that is what I bought. The Instant Pot  has changed my life by making healthy recipes more quickly and now even more often than before that I have no problem recommending it to you (and using my affiliate links.)

In this turturoail recipe, I am cooking a plain butternut squash. You can add extra ingredients to cook your favorite fall squash recipe if you like or just scoop the cooked squash out of the shell, and mix it with a orange juice to make whipped squash to serve instead of whipped mashed potatoes.

I am pressure cooking my butternut squash plain to prep it for preserving in the dehydrator because you cannot safely can squash. This way I have it for the household humans and to toss a handful into Lacey’s dog treat jar (similar to this one because I am a dork) for emergency fur kid bribes.

Lacey's vet gave me a gold star for making her healthy dog treats for her. Lacey loves them and it helps me use leftover squash. A win-win!

Let’s do this!

How to Cook Squash in an Electric Pressure Cooker

1. Cut the butternut squash in half and remove the seeds and strings with a large spoon.

Tip: If you like to garden, compost bins loooooooooove squash guts!

2. Put a trivet or a vegetable steamer basket like this one in the bottom of the Instant Pot and add 1 1/2 cups of water.

The only reason why I’m using a steamer basket instead of the trivet so the squash doesn’t get too waterlogged. Also I can’t find the trivet that came with my Instant Pot in the No Man’s Land of the corner kitchen cabinet.

3. Add the butternut squash to the Instant Pot and secure the lid closed.

photo

You may need to cut the squash to size so it fits inside the pot.

4. Set the Instant Pot to cook on Manual for six minutes.

If you like your squash cooked a litter firmer, try setting the pressure cooker to five minutes instead of six.

5. Once the timer sounds, vent the steam from the Instant Pot, remove the lid, and behold Five Minute Butternut Squash!

Nom! Nom! Nom!

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