A big reason I decided to buy an Instant Pot is because one of its 7 functions is a rice maker. My old rice maker with the non-stick coating was wearing away and whenever I cooked rice it was sticking. I was sporadically shopping around for a rice cooker, and then I bought the Instant Pot from Amazon, for about the same price as what a rice maker would cost. I was faced with my first cooking dilemma: how to make brown rice in an Instant Pot.
(Disclosure: this post contains affiliate links. If you click on the Instant Pot links, you will be taken to Amazon, and if you make a purchase I’ll receive a small commission for the referral.)
I’m a brown rice person. I’d eat a whole lot more brown rice if I didn’t have to scrub my rice cooker all the time, often soaking it overnight. I knew when I bought the Instant Pot that my consumption of rice and beans recipes would increase.
To keep it simple, the brown rice to water ratio is for each cup of brown rice, use 1¼ cup of water. When I make brown rice I use 2 cups of brown rice, therefore adding 2½ cups of water.
I promise, this will be the easiest rice you’ll ever make! Let’s get started on how to make brown rice in the Instant Pot.
The first thing is to measure out the brown rice, put it in a strainer, and rinse it with water.
Add your brown rice and water to the Instant Pot bowl. Remember 1:1¼ ratio.
Put the lid on your Instant Pot and it will chime out a little tune when it’s fitting properly. Make sure the venting cap is in the sealing position.
The Instant Pot always shows “off” when it’s first plugged in. Choose the “Manual” button.
Use the – or + button to adjust the time to 22.
After a few seconds the display will show “On”. In a few minutes you’ll hear the Instant Pot making hissing noises while it pressurizes. It takes about 10 minutes or so for the valve to seal and once the Instant Pot is pressurized, 22 will again show on the display.
And the countdown begins!
At 22 minutes the Instant Pot will beep a few times to let you know it’s done, and then goes into the “keep warm” phase. The display will now start counting up, letting you know how many minutes it’s been since it went into “keep warm” mode.
It takes about 15 minutes for the Instant Pot to depressurize and for the valve to drop back down. That’s when the lid can be removed and the brown rice served.
Alternately, after the Instant Pot has gone into “keep warm” mode, you can put on oven mitts, and turn the valve from sealing to venting. There will be a lot of steam escaping which is why you need those mitts.
The Instant Pot comes with a rice scoop. The stainless steel pot makes scooping out the rice super easy, and clean up is a breeze.
And there you have it. The easiest way ever to cook brown rice. All it takes is pushing a couple of buttons and then walking away and doing something else for the next 45 minutes.
Do you have an Instant Pot?
