Can’t Remember All the Ratios and Cook Times for Your Instant Pot? Try This Smart Trick.

At least 75 percent of the time I use my Instant Pot, it’s as a rice cooker or to cook other grains — and yet, I struggle to remember any of the ratios I use. I always have to Google “how to cook Jasmine rice in Instant Pot” or dig for my own years-old Tweet with the magic formula for Isaan-style sticky rice without soaking it. But this smart Facebook tip just showed me a better way to live: by having the recipe right where I needed it most, on the side of my Instant Pot. 

“My daughter’s dentist gives magnets with our next appt on it,” explains the original post from Sarah Seamons. “Perfect little note white board,” she says, explaining that they just rub off the original information with some alcohol or a bit of eraser and then they can rewrite whatever they want. Which, as the picture demonstrates, are the ratios of water they use for each grain — white rice, brown rice, quinoa — and the cooking time, power, and release method. 

I have the ingredients for my mother-in-law’s Swedish pancakes written in crayon on a piece of paper and taped to the inside of my pantry, and it only took 15 years of searching my own email account for the forwarded recipe and my kids being home every day in a pandemic for me to put it up there. In the corner, there’s also the ratio for sourdough discard crumpets. Both recipes, like the Instant Pot grain ratios, are just complicated enough that it’s hard to remember it exactly, but simple enough that a few notes will save me minutes of fumbling with my phone and searching around.

I’m already planning to buy this pack of 40 tiny magnets to keep on my own Instant Pot. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with most of them yet, but I’ll just have to add a few more to my fridge with other quick-fix recipes.