How To Cook Rice in the Instant Pot

We all know and love the Instant Pot for its electric pressure-cooking capabilities, but let us not forget its multitude of other functions. Just to name a few, your Instant Pot can make yogurt, sauté, slow cook, and, yes, cook rice!

If you’ve completely forgotten that your Instant Pot can function as a rice cooker or simply need an easy-to-follow guide, this step-by-step is for you. Here’s how to use your Instant Pot to cook any type of rice.

Note: This method will work with any type of electric pressure cooker, not just the Instant Pot. But if you want to buy an Instant Pot, we’ve linked a model below!

The Instant Pot’s rice button is best used for white rice, as it is specifically calibrated to weigh white rice and water and cook the rice accordingly. This is ideal for weeknights when you truly want to set and forget your rice, but not great for cooking different varieties of rice on the fly.

Luckily, you can use your Instant Pot’s manual pressure function to cook white, brown, or wild rice on high pressure in just a few minutes. Here’s how to do it.

• Rinse the rice before cooking. Rinsing rice before cooking removes any dirt from processing, gets rid of starch that can make the rice sticky, and, I’ve found, makes the rice taste better. According to Instant Pot’s manual, rinsing the rice also makes up for the small amount of moisture lost in evaporation during the cooking process.
• Use the right ratio of rice to water. Instant Pot suggests any rice can be cooked with a one-to-one rice-to-water ratio, but during testing, we found this wasn’t universally true — both among Instant Pot models and other multi-cookers. Use slightly more water when cooking brown rice and wild rice to prevent undercooking and scorching. Plus, it’s better to err on the side of more water, since most rice varieties can be drained if there’s excess moisture.
• Pressure cook the rice on high. Lock the lid in place and set to cook at HIGH pressure for the following times:
  • White rice (basmati, jasmine): 5 minutes 
  • Long-grain brown rice: 10 minutes 
  • Wild rice: 15 minutes
• Let the rice natural release for at least 10 minutes. Using natural release for rice yields fluffy results and less likelihood that the rice on the bottom of the pot will stick or burn.

After 10 minutes of natural release, most of the pressure should be gone from the pot, but at this point you can open the valve and release any remaining pressure. Use a fork to fluff the rice, and turn the Instant Pot to the warm setting to keep it hot for serving.