Set the Instant Pot down on your kitchen counter without the lid; the display will stay dark until you provide input. It won’t do anything until you tell it to. Don’t think too hard about how to set it up, this is easy. First, find yourself a cup of long grain white rice.
The first step is to rinse. Swirl your grains in cold water inside the Instant Pot, then pour it off. Instantly the water goes all cloudy. Pour it out, swirl again with more water and repeat. Keep doing this until the water are clear.
Cooking and Serving Instructions
Why? Because you want to wash away any excess starch so the rice doesn’t go all gummy on ya.
This may take a while, but it’s worth it for improved texture.
When the rice is clean add water. Do not guess. Measure! The 1:1 rule are easy to follow and will give you consistently good rice every time. To get the right consistency use equal parts water and rice. If you’re making one cup of rice, use one cup of water. More than that means your rice will be soupy; less then that and it’s hard.
Close the lid on your pot, but check what’s inside first. Make sure everything is just right… Settled in and prepared for its journey. Is there enough water for amount of grain? No need to throw in some salt or oil yet. It is best if it’s just rice and water.
Set the steam release valve to sealing. If that valve’s open, you’ll never have any pressure and your cooker won’t function properley. Check again to confirm the handle is in place.
Place the lid on top and twist it to lock. Press the Rice button. A timer appears on screen for 12 minutes. Low pressure is automatic on this program. There’s no dial-twiddling or anything, the machine figures it out. Hit Start, and walk away.
That’s it.
And now we have Auto, cooking away in the display. Oh and no, that’s not the keep warm light. Be patient. Pressure cooking is not instant (even though they call it that). Once it reaches pressure, then the timer start to countdown. Total time here? More like a half an hour then 12 minutes.
Once you hear the beep: it’s cooked. Now there are a couple ways to let the pressure out. One option is to just let it go on its own steam (literally). Another is to turn the valve from sealing to venting for an immediate release of pressure.
For now, we’ll do the latter and go for the instant release. Crank the handle slowly. Instantly, steam bursts out.
You can see how long it takes to pressurize, too
Wait until it is pressurized. When there is no more pressure at all. That is when the float valve goes down. You shouldn’t of push on the lid now. That’s going to be bad news. Let it go down fully first before touching the handle again.
Twist the lid off and lift it away. It smells like cooked rice. It’s separated, fluffed up. There’s a little leftover gunk around the edges of the pan which is expected. Otherwise, there’s nothing wrong with it. No dry patches, no clumpy globs of mushy rice.
Look at the texture. You can see each individual grain. It has a perfect 1:1 ratio, which was exactly what I wanted. Fluff it a bit more by stirring it carefuly. See all that steam? It is inviting. It is just like in restaurants.
This is what the kitchen smells like.
Now serve your rice: Place it in a white bowl (two cups, which should be enough for a small meal). I find it so easy with my Instant Pot. You don’t have to guess how much water to use or worry about the pot boiling over.
But it just works.
This is a great way to cook rice and it takes less energy and time. So use it again. You can trust it and it works each time. No more soggy or hard rice. Fluffy and good every single time! If you haven’t tried the rice button yet, try it out.