This Instant Pot Kenyan Kunde is a nutritious recipe with black-eyed peas and peanuts that makes a yummy, filling vegan recipe in your pressure cooker. Start with dry beans and have dinner ready in under 30 minutes!
Kunde is the Swahili word for Black-eyed peas, but if you look for Kunde recipes, you will find ones with just greens and no beans at all. I do find these to be a better bet since it’s almost a full meal in one. The combination of beans and peanut butter is absolutely delicious and very nutritious and filling.
This Kenyan Kunde recipe is made from dry, unsoaked beans. One of the great selling points about an Instant Pot or pressure cooker, is the ability to make beans without pre-soaking.
My own experience suggests that larger beans like garbanzos, red kidney beans etc. do benefit from a one-hour soak in hot water. But for smaller beans like Black-eyed peas, I always cook them without pre-soaking.
I’ve provided suggestions for other substitutions for this dish in the recipe card as well.
OTHER RECIPES THAT YOU MAY ENJOY:
This is a very popular black-eyed peas with spinach recipe. I want you to look this because it actually has a lot in common with this Kenyan Kunde Recipe–but it tastes completely different. That different taste is entirely due to the different spices used in the two recipes. I love how you can use essentially the same vegetables and make the dishes taste entirely different.
Here’s a West African Peanut stew that you may also enjoy. Although I used chicken in that recipe, there’s no reason you couldn’t make it vegetarian if you preferred.
EQUIPMENT YOU MAY NEED TO MAKE THIS INSTANT POT PRESSURE COOKER KENYAN KUNDE BLACK-EYED PEAS WITH PEANUTS:
- Instant Pot Mini Duo, or Instant pot 6 quarts, or Instant Pot 8 Quarts
- Measuring Cups
- My favorite Cutting Board
- Good set of Kitchen Knives
★ Did you make this recipe? Don’t forget to give it a star rating below! Just click on the stars in the recipe card to rate.
- 1 cup chopped Onions
- 1 cup canned tomatoes
- 1 cup dry Black-eyed peas
- 2.5 cups water
- 2 cups frozen Swiss chard
- 1 teaspoon Salt
- 1 teaspoon Pepper
- 1/4-1/2 cup Peanut butter (depending on how much you love PB)
Pour all ingredients EXCEPT peanut butter into the inner liner of your Instant Pot and stir well.
- Add peanut butter on the top and ensure that everything in the pot including the peanut butter is submerged in the liquid, but do not stir the peanut butter in. You're doing this to keep it from sticking to the pot and burning.
- Cook on high pressure for 15 minutes. Let the pot sit undisturbed for 10 minutes and then release all remaining pressure.
Open the pot, stir to mix and serve.
Variations:
- Omit Swiss Chard and cook just the black-eyed peas Substitute
- Spinach for the Swiss chard
- Add 2-inch cubes of pumpkin or butternut squash instead of the swiss chard
- Add chopped cilantro and chopped green onions after cooking, and stir in well.
- Add 1 teaspoon curry powder.
I am not a registered dietician or nutritionist. Nutritional information is provided a courtesy, and can vary depending on the exact ingredients you use.
Don’t forget to check out my Instant Pot Fast & Easy Cookbook!
This book is full of all kinds of boldly flavored and internationally-themed recipes—Mexican, Thai, Moroccan, and more—with Instant Pot Fast & Easy, fully authorized by Instant Pot. Just like you have come to expect, my recipes will work perfectly every time, and of course taste great too. And because these are Instant Pot recipes, dishes like Japanese Chicken Curry, Chinese Steamed Ribs, and Mexican Pulled Pork are ready in a fraction of the time they would take using traditional cooking methods. As with all of my recipes, the focus is on whole foods instead of artificial convenience ingredients, so the recipes are delicious, easy, and healthful too.
I made a lot of substitutions to work with what I had, and it still turned out well. Husband was ambivalent, but it hit the spot for me! In case it’s helpful to anyone, here’s what I did:
— doubled recipe (6 quart IP works fine)
— fresh tomatoes instead of canned
— fresh kale instead of frozen chard
— half black eyed peas, half small red beans
— teaspoon of garam masala instead of optional curry powder
— made sure to use just enough water to cover after packing everything really tight in the pot
— let pressure release for 25 min. to make sure small red beans were cooked (a few were still crunchy, but the majority were fine).
Just made this, and it knocked my socks off!!!! So super tasty!!!!!
Just made this tonight. LOVED it so much. Used the 1/2 cup of peanut butter (quality peanut butter) and fresh chard.
SO good.
Tasty! I did sub fresh swiss chard for frozen – and wonder if that is why it was more soup-like. Didn’t resemble the photo at all. Nevertheless, it’s yummy!
Alright, but not amazeballs. I blame this on:
– replacing the chard with savoy cabbage (less strong flavor, but it’s what we had)
– the peas still being still crunchy when they came out (but they were quite old, so extra soaking time might have helped)
Still, it’s very filling and will make a perfectly tolerable lunch for next week.
Do you think you could substitute pbfit powder instead of the Peanut Butter? I might give it a go and let you all know.
I subbed frozen spinach for the chard and added the teaspoon of curry powder. It turned out perfectly! The recipe is delicious.
I wonder if it would be ok to use fresh rather than frozen greens…..
Yes it would
Delicious! So simple yet full of flavoe
Glad to hear it!