Instant Pot Steel Cut Oats with Pumpkin and Walnuts – a delicious healthy vegan breakfast perfect for cozy fall mornings! Quick and easy, filling and hearty! 
As the leaves drop and the weather cools, I find myself craving more warm and cozy breakfasts and often turn to steel-cut oats. In this recipe, steel-cut oats are cooked in an Instant Pot.
Infused with pumpkin puree, maple syrup, vanilla, nutmeg and cinnamon, the steel-cut oats cook in about 4 minutes on high pressure before naturally releasing. When they are finished, divide the pumpkin steel-cut oats among bowls and top with toasted walnuts.
The combination of toasted walnuts, pumpkin, maple and the warm fall spices, are so comforting and warming! A beautiful and energizing start to the day. And the leftovers can be refrigerated and reheated during the busy workweek.
This week I’ve partnered with California Walnuts to create this cozy fall breakfast. The addition of toasted walnuts gives the pumpkin steel-cut oats a wonderful earthy crunch and delicious texture, not to mention added protein (4 grams/ounce), fiber (2 grams/ounce) and good, plant-based fats (13g/oz polyunsaturated and 2.5g/oz monounsaturated fat)and healthy plant-based fats.
They are also low in cholesterol and are the only nut with a significant amount of plant-based omega-3 ALA (2.5 grams/ounce).
Topping our morning grain bowls with toasted walnuts is a simple way to incorporate more omega-3’s into our everyday meals. 
To me the combination is so energizing. I feel full and satisfied, without feeling tired.
Feel free to heat up warm nut milk ( I like unsweetened vanilla almond milk) and pour over your steel-cut oats. Or add a dab of butter ( obviously not vegan) or a little coconut oil, for extra richness. I personally prefer just a little drizzle of maple syrup to top it off.
So warming and nutritious.
Hope you enjoy these Instant Pot Steel Cut Oats with Pumpkin and Walnuts – a delicious healthy energizing, vegan breakfast – perfect for chilly fall mornings!
Here are more Cozy Fall Recipes you may enjoy!
xoxo
Instant Pot Steel Cut Oats with Pumpkin and Walnuts
- Prep Time: 10
- Cook Time: 20
- Total Time: 30 minutes
- Yield: 4 1x
- Category: breakfast, vegan, fall
- Method: instant pot pressure cooker
- Cuisine: northwest
- Diet: Vegan
Description
Steel Cut Oats made in an Instant Pot with pumpkin and toasted walnuts! A delicious healthy vegan breakfast, perfect for fall!
Ingredients
- 2 cups water
- 1 cup milk ( almond milk, oat milk, hemp milk, soy milk, or milk of your choice)
- 1/4 teaspoon salt, more to taste
- 2–3 tablespoons real maple syrup
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
- 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1 cup steel-cut oats
- 1/2 cup pumpkin puree (please see note)
- optional spice alternatives or additions: cardamom, pumpkin pie spice
Top with:
- 1/2 cup toasted walnuts
- optional – 1-2 teaspoons coconut oil or butter
- optional – warm nut milk
Instructions
To the Instant Pot, add the water, nut milk, maple, vanilla, nutmeg, cinnamon and salt, stir to combine, and add the steel cut oats. Give another good stir.
Set to pressure cook on HIGH for 4 minutes.
Naturally, release for at least 15 minutes.
Stir in the pumpkin puree, taste, adjust salt and maple and add more milk if you like a looser porridge. Divide among bowls. Top with toasted walnuts and a little drizzle of maple syrup. Feel free to add warm milk or butter ( or coconut oil) for extra richness, or keep it vegan!
Notes
To make on the stove top:
- Place all ingredients ( except the pumpkin) in a medium pot and stir well. Bring the mixture to a boil over medium heat. Reduce the heat to a low simmer, cover, and simmer gently until the oats are cooked to your liking, and the oatmeal is thickened, 10-20 minutes. Stir in the pumpkin puree. Top with any of the toppings.
Pumpkin Puree: A reader suggested stirring in the pumpkin puree after the oats are cooked to prevent the burn error. I haven’t tried this but really like this suggestion! Makes a whole lot of sense!
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 cup
- Calories: 226
- Sugar: 7.3 g
- Sodium: 222.8 mg
- Fat: 5.7 g
- Saturated Fat: 0.8 g
- Carbohydrates: 36.6 g
- Fiber: 5.5 g
- Protein: 7.8 g
- Cholesterol: 0 mg
I haven’t used this exact recipe, but have done pumpkin oatmeal in the Instant Pot done very similarly and had the dreaded “burn”! I’ve solved that problem by cooking the oats and THEN adding the pumpkin. The canned pumpkin is already cooked and it warms up just fine in the steaming hot oats. Steel cut oats reheat SO much better than rolled oats and they freeze and reheat well too, so I make a big batch and freeze much of it in individual servings, adding in some ground flax and hemp seeds and dried cranberries or raisins. YUM!
Well, that is brilliant Crystal. I love it and will note the recipe. Thanks for your help here!
Accidentally used ground cloves instead of nutmeg along with cardamom and pumpkin pie spice. Came out excellent. Next time, I will use nutmeg though. Thank you for a great recipe!
Glad this worked for you!
I get a burn notice 100% of the time with this recipe. After several attempts, I quit.
Hi Courtney, oh no! Sorry about that. Can I ask what kind of milk you used?
This was delicious. Thank you for the inspiration. I used the last of some butternut squash, cubed small and cooked with the oats. For sweetness I threw in some chopped dates near the end. Looking forward to the leftovers tomorrow.
Love the addition of dates Janet!
I’ve been making this super delicious recipe on the stovetop for quite a while and then finally got an instant pot! Now I can make them without standing at the stove for 30 min, yay. I did notice that with the instant pot, after the cook time the oatmeal was still pretty liquidy. So I turned it on sautee and cooked it for a little longer to thicken it up.
Will be checking to see if you have other instant pot recipes!
Thanks Ginger, glad you liked this one!
This sounds so good! How do you recommend storing it for the week? What about re-heating? any tips?
Thanks for the tummy recipe. Sounds good enough for any season really 🙂
Just store in the fridge, or even freeze part if you wish. You could either microwave or gently heat on the stove top, stirring in a little oat or almond milk. 🙂
My boyfriend and I LOVE this recipe! I don’t have access to maple syrup or nutmeg in Brazil, so I substituted them for honey and whole cloves. It still tasted AMAZING. I can only imagine how nice it must taste with maple syrup.
Made this for breakfast today and my husband and I loved it! Made it exactly as written (instant pot) and topped with the toasted walnuts, a splash of warm vanilla almond milk and a sprinkling of cocoa nibs. Autumn Saturday perfection.
Delicious! Any tips for keeping it from burning in the IP? I’ve tried twice, making sure to stir well but ended up having to move it to stovetop after a burn message. Thanks!
Oh no! I haven’t had that happen. What if you sprayed or brushed the bottom with a little oil? Might help?
It’s worth a shot! I forgot to add my 5 stars before so here they are. 🙂 Thank you!!!
Mine has also burned twice
I woke up this morning something pumpkin-y and maple-y, specifically steel cut oats, so I threw it in google and the google gods gave me this. It was so perfect and delicious for the cold morning! Super full of a flavor and so easy to make.
Yummy! Made the house smell delicious. I make it the night before and set the preset on the IP so that we wake up to warm breakfast.
Glad you liked it!
Excellent recipe, really perfect for fall.
Best oatmeal ever. I did not have pumpkin puree, and it was still great without it! Looking forward to trying this again with the pumpkin puree.
I did not have steel cut oats, but used rolled oats instead. I have read that rolled oats need less water and time to cook than steel cut, and I noticed I did have a lot of extra liquid this round. Next time with rolled oats, I’m thinking about adjusting the water to 1 cup from 2, and keeping milk at 1 cup. What do you think?
I think that sounds good! Let me know how it works!
It worked out great. What I noticed is the flavour was MUCH stronger, and the consistency less pudding like. I like both versions (2 cups vs.1 cup water), and now know how to the vary the water based on my preference 🙂
Good to know~! Thanks so much!
Also used rolled oats with 1 cup of water and 1 cup of oat milk. Changed pressure time to 3 minutes and it was awesome!
Thank you for trying different volumes of water with the rolled oats.
I love your blog. Every single recipe I have tried so far turned out to be outstanding. Can I use rolled oats instead of steel cut. I have a huge bag of rolled oats in my pantry
Thank you
Thanks so much Sarah!. I’m not sure about the rolled oats. My guess is, it would turn out pretty mushy. If you do try it, will you let me know?
Actually , I did try it yesterday with rolled oats. It did turn out mushy but tasted excellent. The texture didn’t bother me. I would make it again with rolled oats ( I used Bob’s Red Mill brand)
Great to hear!
Can’t wait to try it!
thanks Lisa!
This was great! Thanks for such an easy and delicious breakfast idea! I was looking for an IP steel cut oats recipe and had no idea it was a thing to make them with pumpkin. I’ve been missing out! I know it can be annoying when you create the best recipe and everyone changes it up, but this looked so versatile from others’ comments – AND I had used up all my maple syrup at Thanksgiving – so I thought I’d share these minor changes. Since I typically make my steel cut oats with no sugars and add just a dash of salt and a touch of butter to serve (but wasn’t sure pumpkin and spice with NO sweetening would be good), I used just 2 tsp brown coconut sugar instead of the maple syrup and substituted 1/2 tsp maple flavoring for that amount of the vanilla (i.e. 1/2 tsp maple, 1/2 tsp vanilla). This wasn’t very sweet but just enough for my taste and for the maple and other spices to come through. I liked it even better with an extra dash of salt and butter to serve, but that’s not as healthy (UNLESS you know someone who needs to gain weight and muscle due to cachexia, which is where I came up with making steel cut oats this way in the first place!). I’ll try maple syrup next time, once I restock, but use half. I also used 3/4 C pumpkin since I saw others bumped that up, and I love pumpkin. For spices, I added 1/2 tsp cardamom, about a tsp fresh ginger – that I did have left after Thanksgiving – and generally used my usual pumpkin spices (plenty of fresh nutmeg, a dash of clove, 1/4 tsp allspice, 1 tsp cinnamon). This was just just right, and I can see how this recipe lends itself to lots of individual preferences. Finally, may I ask why the saute step? I did this step without the water as I was adding the spices because it smelled great and I wasn’t sure how critical it was. It allowed me to think about the flavorings I wanted as I was stirring them in the bubbling oat/pumpkin mix, but I see other recipes just throw everything in and set it for 4 minutes pressure plus natural release. I like the idea of warming the oats and flavorings up to start but wonder how much difference this makes.
Thanks so much for sharing. I went back over the recipe and you are right, I don’t think it needed the saute step, so I changed it! Thanks so much for all your notes and letting me know!
Ha! I went back to look for this recipe later and used “saute” and “walnuts”as search terms because those were what made it different from other IP pumpkin steel cut oats recipes. I almost overlooked it without the saute step removed! I have since made this every week for the past 5-6 weeks. I put the leftovers in 3 8-oz Mason jars so I can have it for breakfast every few days or share it with overnight guests. I now always use the 1 Tb maple syrup per 1 C oats to keep mine barely sweet, use generous amounts of spice including fresh ginger when I have it and ground cardamom, and often add a few drops of real maple syrup flavor. The ingredients are on my regular grocery list, and the recipe is so simple, I have it memorized. I looked it up today to add one more big thank you for a favorite recipe!
Thanks so much Anni- so glad you are enjoying the recipe and making it your own!
Yum!!!! The first time I made this I did it exactly as written and it was delicious. I continued to iterate it over the next three times (I’ve made it every weekend this fall and winter), and my final recipe includes a whole can of pumpkin (because I love it) and I also add ground ginger and cloves. Very flexible and delicious recipe. Thank you!
thanks for sharing Lina!!! Good to hear you can use a whole can and it tastes good!
This was easy to make on the stovetop. Delicious! I’m thinking I could stir in cooked apples in place of the pumpkin to change things up.
I bet you could! Apple sauce could be nice too!
This was absolutely delicious! Made it exactly as written and added toasted walnuts as a topping. This will keep us warm all winter. Thank you!
Great to hear! Thanks for the comment and happy you liked it!
Delicious! And I’m happy to report that if one accidentally uses almond extract instead of vanilla the results are unexpected, but still quite tasty. ?
Haha! Good to know! 😉
I make a double or triple batch for the weeks breakfasts pretty often. Quick and tasty af! Thanks:)
Oh cool! Great to hear!
Was delicious! I used toasted coconut almond milk and pumpkin pie spice, topped with craisins since I was out of walnuts. Will definitely make again!
Sounds perfect! thanks for sharing!
Thank you Sylvia for a filling and delicious warm breakfast! The recipe is extremely versatile and love that it makes multiple servings that I can reheat each morning after my workout and before funning out the door for work. I tend to use a Tbsp (or two!) of almond/peanut butter in place of the walnuts to satisfy my nut butter “fettish”. Look forward to trying more of your recipes! Happy New Year! 🙂
You are so welcome Jill! Glad you enjoyed it!
Hi Sylvia,
What a treat it was this morning, to realize that I had all of the ingredients for your amazing steel cut oats, even a left-over baked yam just waiting in the frig to be substituted as the 1/2 pumpkin purée. I love the nutritious and delicious combo of oats, maple and unsweetened almond milk, jazzed up with just the right amount of spice. I’m savoring every bite and thank you again, so much, for your inspiring and delicious recipes.
Patty, I am so glad you enjoyed it! Great idea about the yam, BTW ! Love it!
Could you please post a cooktop version of this recipe? I don’t want to add yet another kitchen appliance to my kitchen — even though it looks pretty cool.
Yes, give me a couple days and I will make one!
Also eagerly awaiting the stovetop version of this recipe. 🙂
Yes, I’m also eagerly awaiting the stovetop version!
Ok it is in the post now! thanks!
Ok stove top version is in the post notes!
you forgot the oats amount in the recipe 🙂
Ha! You are right…that’s what I get for trying to post from India! I fixed it now and thanks SO much for letting me know!!!