Instant Pot 15 Bean Soup With Sausage

Instant Pot 15 Bean Soup With Sausage. It's time for a hearty soup with ALL THE BEANS, with sausage and Cajun flavors, ready in under an hour, thanks to pressure cooking.

All it took was the word Cajun.

A bowl of 15 bean soup with sausage — Instant Pot 15 Bean Soup With Sausage

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I've made a lot of recipes with 15-bean soup mix (like my recent Instant Pot 15-Bean Chili), and I love the combination of beans and sausage (like Pressure Cooker Lentil Sausage Soup and Pressure Cooker Senate Bean Soup). So, when I saw Hurst's HamBeens Cajun 15 Bean Soup mix at my local grocery and a sale on Andouille sausage, I knew what I was having for dinner.

Ingredients

15 bean soup mix
Fine sea salt
Olive oil
Andouille sausage (or smoked sausage or kielbasa)
Onion
Celery
Red bell pepper
Garlic
Cajun seasoning
Cayenne pepper
Chicken broth
Canned diced tomatoes with green chilies
Fresh ground black pepper

See the recipe card for quantities.

How to make Instant Pot 15 Bean Soup With Sausage

Sort, Rinse, and Soak the beans: Sort and rinse the beans. Sprinkle the beans with 2 teaspoons of fine sea salt, cover with 8 cups of water, and soak the beans overnight. Drain the beans.

Browned sausage in a slotted spoon over an instant pot — Brown the sausage

Brown the sausage: Heat the olive oil in an Instant Pot set to Sauté mode - high until the oil starts shimmering. Add the sliced sausage and cook until it starts to brown around the edges, then remove to a bowl with a slotted spoon.

Peppers, onions, garlic, and spices sautéing in an Instant Pot — Sauté the aromatics

Sauté the aromatics and spices: Add the onion, celery, bell pepper, and garlic, and sprinkle with ½ teaspoon salt. Sauté until the onions soften, about 5 minutes. Stir in the cajun seasoning and cayenne pepper, and toast for a minute.

An instant pot full of beans, sausage, and broth, ready to cook — Everything in the pot

Everything in the pot: Add the drained beans, chicken broth, water, and diced tomatoes with chilies.

An instant pot set to pressure cook for 15 minutes on high — Pressure cook for 15 minutes

Pressure Cook for 15 minutes with a Natural Release: Lock the lid and set the Instant Pot to pressure cook at high pressure for 15 minutes. Let the pressure come down naturally.

A ladle of 15 bean soup with sausage lifted from an Instant Pot — Ready to serve

Season and serve: Unlock the lid. Stir the salt and fresh ground pepper into the pot. Serve and enjoy!

Substitutions

Other bean mixes: I use Hambeens 15 bean soup mix because it is the most common bean mix in my grocery store. But...13 bean? 16 bean? Whatever it takes. If your store carries a bean mix, use it. I discard the seasoning packet, though (like the Cajun seasoning packet that came in my bag of beans), and do the seasoning myself.
Homemade bean mixes: I'll make my own bean mix by saving leftover beans when I don't use a whole bag in my recipe. It won't have quite as much variety, but it still works in this recipe.
Single bean varieties: You can substitute different types of beans for the 15-bean mix. Try navy beans, great northern beans, black beans, black-eyed peas, small red beans, or cranberry beans. Of course, you can use Red beans or Pinto beans, which I use so often that they deserve their own recipes: Pressure Cooker Red Beans and Rice and Instant Pot Cajun Pinto Beans.
Other sausages: Andouille is a garlicky, spicy smoked sausage from Louisiana. You can substitute a regular smoked sausage, with smoke and no spice, or kielbasa, with garlic but no smoke flavor.
Other pork: If you don't have sausage, a smoked ham hock, leftover ham bone, or some diced ham make a good substitute.
Cut the heat: If you want to cut back on the heat, skip the cayenne pepper, cut the cajun seasoning back to 1 tablespoon, and substitute smoked sausage for the andouille.

Equipment

A 6-quart pressure cooker and a fine mesh strainer.

Scaling

This recipe bumps up against the max fill line in a 6-quart pressure cooker. To double it, you must move up to an 8-quart pressure cooker. Or, if you want a smaller batch, cut all the ingredients in half, and this recipe will fit in a 3-quart pressure cooker. The cooking time does not change; it takes the same amount of time to cook the beans, no matter how many there are.

Storage

Soup makes excellent leftovers. This soup will last, refrigerated, for a couple of days. I portion leftovers into 2-cup containers and freeze them, where they will last for up to 6 months.

Tips and Tricks

The key to this recipe is the dry beans. Sorting, rinsing, and soaking the beans is extra work and can discourage a novice cook. Don't get intimidated - you can do it! Homemade beans are so much better than store-bought beans - the results are well worth the extra effort. (Especially with quick pressure cooking - dry beans are one of the reasons my pressure cooker never wound up on the "kitchen gadgets I never use" shelf in the back of my basement.)

What to Serve with 15 Bean Soup with Sausage

This soup is a hearty one-pot meal, especially if you serve it with a loaf of crusty bread and a green salad. Or, I make it into the classic combo of rice and beans by adding a pot of white rice or brown rice to mix in at the table. And, I always serve it with a bottle of hot sauce (Tabasco or Crystal are New Orleans style, and match the theme of the recipe.)

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I have to soak the beans?

Soaking the beans helps them cook more quickly. I do an overnight soak (or a quick soak) to speed up the cooking process. If I forget to soak the beans - hey, it happens - I increase the chicken broth to 6 cups and the pressure cooking time to 30 minutes with a natural pressure release.

Why sort beans?

Beans are an agricultural product, and stuff tends to creep in during picking and processing. Beans should always be sorted and rinsed before use to remove any twigs, stones, clumps of dirt, or broken beans.

How do I sort beans?

To sort beans, I pour them out on the far side of a rimmed baking sheet. Then I slowly pull the beans towards me, a little at a time, running my fingers through the beans and watching for anything that doesn't look right. If something catches my eye, I find it and discard it. I repeat this several times until I'm satisfied everything is out of the beans.
Then I rinse the beans in a fine mesh strainer under cold running water to wash off any dirt or dust still on the beans.
Now the beans are sorted, rinsed, and ready for soaking or cooking.

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