Make rice right in the InstantPot? Wrong! Here's why.

(UPDATED article: Even easier and with less electricity!)

Like me, you probably make rice easily in the InstantPot: Throw in the rice, throw in the water, hit the "Rice" menu and come back when it's done.

Easy, right?

WRONG.

Because afterwards you'll have to clean up that stainless steel base once you've scooped out all the rice. You can save yourself a bit of hassle by making soup and when it's done, scrape down the steamed-wet sides and deglaze the bottom of any rice stuck there.

But you'll still have to rinse out the pot, etcetera etcetera.

If you make a LOT of rice each time, that's great. But for my 8 quart InstantPot, even cooking four cups of raw rice seems like a waste -- and most especially as I'm a poor bachelor who eats one bowl at a time.

What you actually want to do is make your rice in a bowl. Inside the stainless steel base of the InstantPot.

(Slide 1) You can see I've put some water in the stainless steel base for steaming. But the half cup of rice I'm going to cook is in a separate bowl that I sat right in the pot.

The rice instructions call for a 1-to-2 ratio of rice-to-water, but since the steam in the InstantPot will contribute moisture that'll be absorbed, for a 1/2 cup of rice I used only 3/4 cups of water.

Before cooking, I also added a teaspoon of chicken broth powder and a quarter teaspoon of homemade chili, to flavour the rice. That is obviously optional but it works out fine even without bothering to stir in the ingredients.

(Slide 2) I turned on the Rice setting and just let it run and let the steam naturally release when it was done. The rice turned out rather nicely.

So now I can remove the bowl of rice, and the water in the InstantPot is still good to go for steaming other things. Or I can just pour it away without any fuss and use the InstantPot right away if I wanted to air fry something.