Rice in the Instant Pot

Name: Rice in the Instant Pot
Ingredients: 1 cup white long grained or parboiled rice; 1 cup water; salt

March 3, 2018

I’ve held off on making rice in the Instant Pot because making rice is so easy, and it looked like it wasn’t really any faster. But a recipe caught my eye that made me want to try it anyway – it called for 1 cup rice and 1 cup water. I don’t know why that intrigued me – I’ve always done 1:2 rice to water, and it’s always come out perfectly. My regular recipe is 1 measure of rice with 2x measures of water, in the pot, bring to a boil, put on the lid and (depending on the rice) cook with the lid on, no lifting or stirring. With regular white rice, the cooking time is 15 minutes; for parboiled rice (I use Zatarains) it’s 20 minutes. When I open the lid, I’m looking for cooked rice, no water, some holes in the rice. (need a photo of this to explain). So 1:1 – ok, it’s a pressure cooker, no water escapes.

Apparently the “trick” is to rinse or wet the rice, which is something I’ve never done before. I popped open my Instant Pot, put in 1 cup of water, rinsed 1 cup Zatarains parboiled rice and put it in, and also some salt. I used the Rice setting although you can use the manual setting, and the recommended time is 3-8 minutes per the Instant Pot site for long grained white or parboiled. As it turns out, the Rice setting defaults to low pressure/12 minutes, which in my mind loses any time saved. Update: I did manual/high pressure for 3, and it works perfectly. After it beeped it was done, I waited 10 minutes before releasing the pressure. The rice was – well, perfect! It does not look like my perfect on-the-stove rice with the holes, which are not in the grains, but in the mass of rice, probably where the water was boiling up before it evaporated.

It took maybe 5 minutes more to make it this way – the biggest advantages are not watching the pot for boiling and not forgetting to set the timer and having it burn. The electric device times and monitors itself.

Why Zatarains? Because parboiled rice is theoretically better for you – it’s supposed to have twice the fiber and is lower on the glycemic index compared to regular long-grained white rice. I heard this years ago from a fitness guru.

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