This Instant Pot Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal is kissed with cinnamon apples and ready to rock your busy weekday breakfast routine.
Where are all my steel cut oats lovers at?!
We’ve been making this apple pie inspired oatmeal for a few years now, and I finally adapted it for the Instant Pot! Whoo! This thing has freed up so much time in the kitchen by giving me the option of setting, forgetting, and going about my life while it makes my food. It’s basically a speedy slow cooker.
With this handy dandy pressure cooker oatmeal recipe, you won’t need to worry about baby-sitting oats on the stove.
After a speedy sauté of the apples you’ll simply toss in a few ingredients and walk away!
Use the time to take a nice hot shower, get ready for work/school, or curl back into bed with a steamy cup of coffee and let your breakfast cook itself.
The IP even has a handy dandy warming feature so you can add all your mix-ins and toppings and leave your oats in the pot while you finish getting ready. This comes in hand y for me since my mornings consist of getting both myself and my preschooler ready in the mornings. Much like her momma, girlfriend is NOT a morning person and oh-so-suseptible to outbursts of hangry proportions. Instant pot oatmeal to the rescue!
Instant Pot Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal
Naturally sweet and totally tasty, this instant pot apple cinnamon oatmeal is crazy comforting and great for all your breakfast, brunch, and brinner needs!
The sweetness comes from the apples, juice, and kiss of maple syrup but feel free to adjust the sweetness to taste. Tart Granny Smith apples may be used in place of the Honey Crisp and you can replace the juice with water or almond milk if preferred. For the recipe to work great, skip using any dairy milk in the IP itself but if you’re a fan of drizzling milk over your oatmeal, you can totally pour a little over your bowl after cooking.
Instant Pot Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal
Ingredients
- 1-2 TBSP unsalted butter
- 2 cups peeled + diced Honey Crisp apple
- ¼ tsp ground cinnamon
- pinch of salt
- 1 cup steel cut oats
- 1.5 cups water or almond milk (no dairy in the IP as it burns easy)
- 1 cup 100% apple juice
- ½ cup chopped pecans
- extra 1/4-1/2 tsp cinnamon to taste
- ⅛ tsp pumpkin pie spice blend (optional but DELICIOUS!)
Instructions
- Set your Instant Pot to SAUTE function and add your butter.
- Once butter has melted add your apples. Top with 1/4 tsp cinnamon and a pinch of salt and sauté until tender, approx. 4-5 minutes. Remove apples and set aside.
- To help prevent sticking spritz the IP’s stainless steel liner with spray oil (we love coconut or avocado oil) or rub with butter if preferred.
- Add steel cut oats, water, apple juice, and most of your cinnamon apples. Save about 1/2 cup or so of apples for topping your oats – YUM
- Lock lid and cook on manual high heat for 10 minutes. When the timer beeps, quick-release the pressure (using the release valve) until float valve drops.
- Unlock lid and stir oatmeal, which will appear super watery at first but thickens as it cools. Stir in pecans, an additional 1/4 tsp, and maple syrup. Spoon the cooked oats into two bowls and top with cinnamon apples. You can drizzle a little milk over the oats if you’d like or top with extra crushed pecans and cinnamon. I’ve recently been topping my oatmeal with homemade granola too and adore the oat-on-oat combo.
Notes
Nutrition
No Instant Pot? No problem!
You can easily adapt this tasty recipe to make it the old fashioned way on the stove. Adjust the liquid amount per package instructions and get your simmer on!
special diets and swaps
- Steel cut oats work best in the IP but if you’d like to use rolled oats, try it stove-top!
- Make it vegan by swapping out the butter for Earth Balance or coconut oil.
- Prefer pears? You could totally try them in place of the apples!
- I’m NUTS for pecans in this recipe (har har) but you could use walnuts too.
- Gluten-Free? Grab GF certified oats and you’re good to go!
More Baller Breakfast Recipes
behind the blog
- Currently listening to: “Wake Up” by Arcade Fire
- Currently crushing on this dressing… I put it on everything!
If you get a chance to try this instant pot apple cinnamon oatmeal recipe, let me know! Leave me a comment or review using the form below. I’m always so excited to hear from you, and can’t wait to hear all about your tasty creation!
Questions & Reviews
Instant pot stopped due to food burn. Did everything according to recipe. Now I have to try to salvage it and all of the ingredients and attempt to still have something to eat.
Oh no! What size Instant Pot did you use? Happy to help troubleshoot. That is so odd that it gave a burn notice as I haven’t been able to get my IP to do a burn/shutoff in any of my oatmeal experiments but I know it can be a very sensitive appliance sometimes.
Wondering if you could cheat use apple pie filling instead of sauteing apples?
Hi Jenna! The sugar content of the pie filling is a bit high so you’d end up with more of a dessert oatmeal. Structurally it will totally work and you can simply adjust the cinnamon/pie spice as needed based on how seasoned the filling is. xoxo
Hi! Can a crock pot be used for this as well? If so, how long do you suggest? I’ve never cooked oatmeal this way but cant wait to try!
Hi Jordan! I haven’t tried to make them in my slow cooker yet (but now that’s totally on my to do list!) however, you can use this method with my apple cinnamon recipe and it should work perfecto: Crockpot Steel Cut Oatmeal
Hello, Can you double this recipe? Thank you.
Hi Kristen! If you’re using a 6 quart or larger you should absolutely be able to double it! When the IP is filled higher it can take longer to pressurize, so sometimes you’ll want to compensate by reducing cook time a little while other times it can stay the same. I haven’t had a chance to test it yet so I can’t provide exact timing for the doubled version. I’ll for sure be testing a double batch this fall with all our ripe apples – YUM!
So good! I didn’t have apple juice on hand, so I just used 3 cups of water. I also just left all the apples in the pot when I cooked the oats. Even with Granny Smith apples, it was perfect! I did add the maple syrup so I’m sure that helped sweeten it up a bit.
I’m making this for my kids kindergarten class and would love to double or even triple the recipe. Any tips on liquid amount and cook time if I expand recipe?
Hi Julie! I believe it should double/triple quite well as long as you’re using a 6 or 8 quart IP! I haven’t made a large batch of this yet (I’m often eating breakfast solo) so I can’t offer any large-batch tips from experience unfortunately. You’ll double/triple every ingredient (all the liquid is needed here to cook and be absorbed by the oats) and the cook time should be the same as well since we’re cooking with pressure! If you want to do a test run first to make sure totally keep me posted! xoxo
Delicious! Instead of taking all of the sauteed apples out and then adding most back in, it’s much easier to just take out the 1/2 cup or so of apples for the topping. That way the butter mostly stays in the pot so you don’t have to coat it. I used the 2 Tbsp maple syrup and a bit of Penzey’s apple pie spice at the end.
That’s a great point Amy – love it! xoxo
Am nervous about the ‘burn’ so I used your recipe as a starting point 🙂 Cooked 1c steel cut oats in one cup water and one cup apple cider; pinch of salt and 1/8 tspn pumpkin pie spice. Put in corning dish on the rack with one cup of water – cooked high pressure for 12 min. Took out and stirred. Letting it sit a bit to absorb more liquid but it looks and tastes great! I have apple sauce I made in the IP last weekend to top my oatmeal and can add the butter when served as desired
Great recipe – thank you. I left out the maple syrup and swapped walnuts for the pecans – delicious! I look forward to trying more of your recipes.
So thrilled you enjoyed it Steve, thank you!
Can I double recipe but use half steel cut oats and half old fashion oats?
Hi Teresa! I haven’t tried it with old fashioned oats but if you experiment for sure let me know! I think they need different cook times but I’m not certain.
I made this for my kids this morning and it was so easy and delicious! I love things that are quick and easy to make and my kids will eat. Thanks for the great recipe!
Yayyyy! Thank you Miriam – so happy to hear that y’all loved the oatmeal too! 🙂
This sounds and looks amazing, think I need to try this one.
Stevie
Hope you get a chance to try it! Love these oats like woah!