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

Stuffed acorn squash is one of my favorite fall dinner meals. After a few failed attempts, I discovered the trick to having the stuffing and the squash cooked equally in the oven (I can’t be the only person who dried out/singed the stuffing because the dense winter squash took longer to cook than the stuffing inside it, am I? ) is to pre bake the squash by itself for an half an hour or more before stuffing and baking the squash per the directions in the recipe I’m following.

Since my dinner meal planning usually goes along the lines of, “it’s dinner time and I need to make food immediately” I rarely cooked acorn squash in any way, shape, or form because of that pesky hour long baking time.

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That is until one kitchen experiment later, I now know I can pressure cook a hard acorn squash in 5 to 10 minutes. Woo hoo! Acorn squash for everyone!

How to Make Instant Pot Acorn Squash the Easy Way

You basically cook all of the hard fall and winter squashes (Butternut, acorn, spaghetti, butternut, Hubbard, pumpkin, etc.) in an Instant Pot or any other brand of electric pressure cooker like these 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 to do it.)

In this tutorial recipe, I am cooking a plain acorn 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. Nom! Nom! Nom!

I am pressure cooking my acorn squash plain to prep it for preserving in my portable dehydrator like this one 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 (there are similar air tight dog treat jars here  because if I have to look at it, it might as well be cute as well as functional) for emergency fur kid bribes.

Could that dehydrated winter squash treat be for me?!

Let’s do this!

How to Cook Squash in an Electric Pressure Cooker

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

2. Put a trivet or a metal vegetable steamer basket like this one in the bottom of the Instant Pot and add 1 1/2 cups of water if you need a hard and fast measurement. If I’m just steaming a squash to use in another recipe like I am here, I fill the pot with enough water to reach the first water mark line inside of my Instant Pot.

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

You can cook more than one acorn squash at a time as long as they all fit into your electric pressure cooker.

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

I usually will cook an acorn squash for 6 minutes or so if need it 90 percent cooked through so I can stuff it and bake it again. I’ll add a few more minutes if I want the acorn squash all the way cooked through to blend into a soup or sauce. If you like your acorn 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 Six Minute Acorn Squash!

Looking for more quick and easy Instant Pot hacks? Check out the following ideas – and more – below!

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