Instant pot tomato rice with mung beans & curry powder

Do you need quick dinner ideas? Then make this easy and flavorful Instant pot tomato rice and enjoy it for any meal. Though you can serve this dish as it is, you can also make tacos, burritos, salads using this.

Ingredients

Basmati rice: Basmati rice is a long, flavorful rice variety. This recipe uses white basmati rice. As water ratio and cooking times are different, we cannot use brown basmati rice or brown rice in this recipe.

Mung beans: Mung beans are optional, but I used them to make the tomato rice protein-rich. If using dried mung beans, we need to soak them for at least 4 hours. You can soak up to 8 hours or overnight. You can even use mung bean sprouts in this recipe.

Tomatoes: I used finely chopped fresh tomatoes. These give the best flavor to the rice. But you can even use canned tomatoes or tomato puree to make this rice. You can use a pinch of sugar to balance the tartness of tomatoes. We can use fresh tomato salsa also instead of tomatoes. Adjust the spices as salsa will already have some spices in it.

Spices: I used curry powder to flavor this tomato rice. To make it Mexican flavored rice, use 1 teaspoon oregano and red chili powder instead of curry powder, or even taco seasoning goes well here. And instead of curry powder, you can use Chana masala powder or Sambar powder for Indian flavors. 

Instructions

• If you use mung beans to make this tomato rice, soak them for at least 4 hours. You can soak them overnight as well. Skip soaking if you are using mung bean sprouts.
• Wast the basmati rice a couple of times and soak it in 1 cup of water for 20 minutes. Soaking is optional, but it will yield fluffy rice. Start the recipe by soaking the rice, and they will be soaked by the time we use it.
• Start the instant pot in saute mode.
• Add oil to the instant pot inner pot. Once it is hot, add cumin seeds, bay leaf, slit green chili, or jalapeno (if using)

• Once they start spluttering, add finely chopped tomatoes. You can use canned tomatoes or tomato puree as well.

• Let the tomatoes cook for 5 to 6 minutes.

• Now add curry powder, turmeric powder, ground coriander, salt, and a pinch of sugar to balance tartness in tomatoes. Mix everything well.

• Drain the water from soaked mung beans entirely and add it to the Instant Pot. 

• Mix the beans once and let them cook for 3 to 4 minutes.
• Next, drain the water from soaked basmati rice and add it to the pot.

• Add water and stir it once. Stop the instant pot saute mode and close it with its lid.

• Start the instant pot on manual or pressure cook mode and cook it for 5 minutes on high pressure.

• When instant pot completes cooking, switch it off. Wait for 5 minutes and manually release the pressure.

• Take the inner pot out of the instant pot and fluff the rice. Close it with a lid and let it rest for 10 minutes.
• Flavourful instant pot tomato rice is ready to serve.

Recipe Notes & Variations

• Do not wait for the natural pressure release of the Instant pot as it will overcook rice and becomes mushy.
• As we are using tomatoes, sometimes, Instant pot may show a food burn signal. If it's already cooked for 3+ minutes after pressure buildup, you can stop the Instant pot and manually release the pressure after 10 minutes. I haven't got the food burn signal anytime with this recipe.
• Instead of mung beans, you can use other beans like kidney beans, black-eyed peas, black beans, chickpeas to make this dish. But we need to use the cooked beans (canned beans too!) to match the cooking time of the rice.
• I haven't used any veggies while making this dish. But you can use veggies like carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, green beans, peas, corn, mushrooms to make the tomato rice a complete meal.
• Naturally, this recipe is vegan and gluten-free. You can make this rice with butter if you do not mind this recipe being vegan.
• To make the rice more flavorful, instead of water, use vegetable broth or chicken broth for cooking this rice.
• Garnish the rice with fresh cilantro leaves to make it more colorful and flavorful.
• I haven't used onions and garlic in this recipe, but they make the rice more delicious. Add finely chopped onions and garlic before tomatoes and saute them for 3 to 4 minutes.
• If using ground cumin instead of cumin seeds, add it along with other spices.

Serving suggestions

This recipe is very versatile, and you can serve in many ways.
Mung bean tomato rice will be a complete meal if we serve it with some veggies salad or baked veggies.

To serve this as Indian-style pilaf, serve with any vegetable curry and yogurt.

Serve this along with refried beans & guacamole for a Mexican meal.

You can even use this to make tacos, tortillas, salads.

Storage

Though this dish tastes best when hot, you can refrigerate it for a couple of days. You can freeze the rice for up to 3 months.

As you are here, you will like my other instant pot recipes.

Instant pot basmati rice

Instant pot Quinoa pilaf

Instant pot Chickpeas curry

Instant pot kidney beans

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Recipe