Instant Pot Beef Rendang
Beef rendang is an Indonesian-Malay dry curry — beef simmered in coconut milk and a chili-lemongrass-galangal paste until the liquid evaporates and the spices coat each cube in a thick, mahogany lacquer. Done properly on the stove it’s a half-day affair. The Instant Pot doesn’t shortcut the depth of flavour, but it does compress the tenderising stage from hours to under an hour, leaving you with a focused reduce-and-finish on the back end.
Two toggles below let you adapt the recipe to what’s in the fridge and how far ahead you’ve planned. Cut swaps between chuck (the original — well-marbled, forgiving) and brisket flat (leaner, beefier, needs longer at pressure and a careful cube against the grain). Dry-Brine adds an optional 12–24 hour pre-salt step that pays off particularly well for the brisket — a leaner cut benefits more from extended seasoning and a dried surface for the sear.
Ingredients
To Gather
2 lb
- 2 lb chuck roast steak, cut into 1.5-inch slabs
- Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to season
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 2 tbsp coconut oil
- 2 stalks lemongrass — white part only, sliced
- 6–10 dried red chilies — ≈8 g, adjust to your chili’s heat
- 6 cloves garlic — ≈27 g
- 3 large shallots, roughly chopped — ≈120 g
- 2 tbsp ginger, chopped — ≈25 g
- 2 tbsp galangal, chopped — ≈25 g; if unavailable, omit and add an extra 1 tsp ginger to the line above (don’t double — ginger alone is too floral)
- 1 tsp ground turmeric
- 1 cinnamon stick
- 2 star anise
- 4 cloves
- 4 green cardamom pods
- ¾ cup unsalted chicken stock — ≈190 ml
- 1 cup thick coconut cream — ≈250 ml; aim for 90%+ coconut extract
- 1 tbsp soy sauce
- 1 tbsp fish sauce
- 2 tbsp tamarind paste
- 1 tbsp brown sugar — or palm sugar
- ⅓ cup fine coconut flakes or shredded coconut — ≈45 g, to be toasted
- 6 kaffir lime leaves, shredded
- Instant Pot or electric pressure cooker, 6 qt
- Food processor or blender for the paste
- Wooden spoon for deglazing
Method
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Toast the coconut
Place the fine coconut flakes in the dry inner pot. Set Instant Pot to Saute More. Stir occasionally for 7–8 minutes until deep golden brown — you want them right at the edge of going too far, with real toasted-coconut aroma. Tip out into a small bowl and reserve. Don’t skip this; the toasted coconut is half the texture of finished rendang.
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Brown the beef
Wait until the pot reads HOT again — fully preheated matters here, especially in an Instant Pot which doesn’t run as hot as a stovetop pan. Pat the beef dry. Season one side generously with salt and black pepper. Drizzle the olive oil to coat the bottom of the pot, then place the beef seasoned-side down. Season the now-upward face. Brown undisturbed for 7 minutes per side until deeply caramelised. Remove and set aside on a plate; capture any juices.
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Make the rendang paste
While the beef browns, blitz the lemongrass, dried chilies, garlic, shallots, ginger, and galangal in a food processor to a smooth paste — scrape down a few times. Stir in the ground turmeric.
If you can’t find galangal, the extra teaspoon of ginger from the ingredient note fills the gap — galangal is sharper and more piney; ginger alone leans floral, so a small bump rather than a full replacement keeps the paste honest. For less heat, deseed half the dried chilies before blitzing.
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Saute the paste with whole spices
Once the beef is out, add the coconut oil to the pot along with the rendang paste, cinnamon stick, star anise, cloves, and green cardamom. Saute for 3–4 minutes, stirring continuously, until very fragrant and the paste’s raw rasp is gone. The colour will deepen to a rust-orange.
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Deglaze and build the pot
Pour in the chicken stock and scrape every brown bit off the bottom with a wooden spoon — this is mandatory if you want to avoid a Burn warning during pressure cook. Turn the pot off. Cut the browned beef into 1.5-inch cubes, and add to the pot along with any juices on the board. Stir in the soy sauce, fish sauce, brown sugar, and tamarind paste.
Pour the thick coconut cream evenly across the top and do not stir it in. The unstirred fat layer is your insurance against scorching during pressure cook.
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Pressure cook
Close the lid and set the vent to Sealing. Pressure Cook on High Pressure for 32 minutes, then 10 minutes of natural release. Manually release any remaining pressure and open the lid.
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Reduce
The mixture will look loose and brothy at this stage — that’s expected. Switch to Saute More. Carefully ladle off about 2 cups (500 ml) of the thin liquid into a jug — keep it, don’t bin it; you may want a splash back at the end. What remains in the pot is the solids and the thicker reduced fat, which is what reduces into the lacquer.
Stir frequently for 7–8 minutes — beware of splatter — until the colour darkens to a deep mahogany and the sauce clings to the meat rather than pooling around it. Add the toasted coconut and the shredded kaffir lime leaves. Taste, then add salt in 2–3 large pinches, tasting between each. Continue stirring until the rendang stops looking wet and starts catching slightly on the bottom of the pot — that’s the cue to kill the heat.
If you’ve reduced past the point you wanted, splash a little of the reserved sauce back in to loosen. Better to land here than to chase it the other way: there’s no fixing a too-tight rendang short of starting over.
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Rest and serve
Let the pot sit off the heat for 5–10 minutes. The fat re-absorbs and the spices settle. Serve over jasmine rice with cucumber and a wedge of lime. The day-two version is reliably better — leftovers improve in the fridge as the spices migrate fully into the meat.
Adapted from Amy + Jacky’s Instant Pot Beef Rendang at Pressure Cook Recipes. The original is built around chuck roast and a same-day sear; the toggles above add an option for brisket flat (longer at pressure, cubed against the grain) and a 12–24 hour dry-brine that pays particular dividends on the leaner cut.