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Comment by zoklet-enjoyer | Hacker News Reader

Buying an Instant Pot was life changing. I filled it up with chopped sweet potatoes, set it for an hour, and they were perfectly cooked to make mashed potatoes. Dry beans cook so fast. It makes rice as well as a rice cooker does. I love it

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I'm going to have to dispute the rice - my instant pot has never produced rice at the same quality as my rice cooker.

That said, it makes a better pork shoulder than anything else I've ever done!

You need to use a pot-in-pot method for rice, not raw rice in the pot [0]. This ensures even cooking of the rice because the water around it gets hot first and then distributes that heat to all layers of the rice, not just near the bottom.

This is what I do and I get perfect rice every time.

[0] https://www.pressurecookingtoday.com/how-to-use-the-pot-in-p...

This sort of trick does make me wish I'd gone for a larger pot. I've got one of the smaller offerings because I have pretty limited space in the kitchen and usually am just cooking for two.

There's no way I'm fitting my rice cooker pot inside of my instant pot, that's for sure.

I have to dispute your dispute, I wonder if you might be doing it wrong? I thought the same thing until I tried precisely following the rice cooking instructions for instant pot. You have to use a lot less water in the instant pot that you would in a rice cooker because it's not loosing water to steam.

To me there is no contest, instant pot is a much better rice cooker - faster, more energy efficient and most importantly better texture. We got rid of our rice cooker once we figured that out.

I remember in Jiro Dreams of Sushi they use an ad-hoc pressure cooker to make the rice, so I think there really might be something to cooking rice under pressure that improves it.

Haven't tried the pot-in-pot method yet, but that's meant to be even better.

How much water do you use then if not the recommended amount?

Not OP but white rice in instant pot is 1:1 rice to water.

For brown rice i use a bit more water. Maybe 1:1.25 rice to water.

Are you measuring volume or weight?

That doesn't sound like anywhere near enough water to me. I do roughly 1 cup of jasmine rice to 1.5 cups of water in my instant pot, comes out perfect every time.

Volume and I often do jasmine rice as well.

1 cup of water, 1 cup of rice and cooked on the rice setting.

1:1 volumetrically is about the ratio I use as well with great success

1:1.5 sounds like a very mushy rice. Horses for courses I suppose.

Mushy rice is best rice.

Plus if you can hydrate while you eat, it's more efficient!

I think the rice cooker is about as good as a generic cheap rice cooker of the north american variety, but not as good as a good japanese/korean/etc. one.

Obviously YMMV

The trick in America at least is to go above the $20 price point. Most of the $40 aroma rice cookers will do just as good as the $200+ zojirushi for a simple long grain white / jasmine rice.

If you want sticky rice, congee or a korean style multigrain blend, then yeah, most cheaper American cookers will fall short.

Yes I've had a Zojirushi induction pressure rice cooker for 6 years and the sticky rice & porridge it makes is incredible. The instant pot is great but we use it for other things.

I'm with you on the beans, but mashed potatoes take about 20 minutes on a plain old electric stove.

The instant pot's value is the automation. Yes, you can achieve the same results with a stovetop pressure cooker or even a regular pan/pot. You will be spending more of your time on it because if you don't pay attention, adjust the heat, turn it off after 20 minutes, etc. you will end up with a mess or worse on your stove. Regular induction cooktops and ovens are starting to get similar features where they can be set on a timer, sense the temperature of the food, etc. It may not seem like much, but it's very important because it saves people time and makes more of the manual housework optional.

They'll have been done well before that. An hour is a long time in a pressure cooker.

With kids, I sometimes do things in the instant pot I could probably do quicker outside, I'm happier leaving it on the counter rather than leaving a burner on.

I often use my instant pot instead of a pot on the stove because I don't have much counter space next to my stove. It's much more convenient to chop stuff up on my big counter and toss it into the instant pot that's right there instead of going back and forth between the counter and the stove.

11 minutes in the microwave!

Use a bit of water in microwave safe dish with a lid almost closed. This is like steaming and microwave cooking all at once.

I put the potatoes in a paper bowl and then set another paper bowl inverted over the top of that. It traps just the right amount of escaping steam to effectively do the same thing.

And sweet potatoes are even faster to mash

Not sure I quite understand why chopped up sweet potatoes need an hour in an instant pot. It takes about 15-20 minutes in a pot on a gas burner.

I cook potatoes in the instant pot -- maybe halved or quartered if big -- for 6-8 minutes.

I don't like having to watch a pot to make sure it doesn't boil over. Also I was drunk so I just hit start and let it do it's thing

> I filled it up with chopped sweet potatoes, set it for an hour

FWIW I have trouble imagining needing more than 10 minutes at high pressure for anything like potatoes. Maybe even a few less.

Cooking them for an hour would be similar to boiling stovetop for 3+ hours!

I cooked whole red potatoes last night in the instant pot using my standard time: 14 minutes.

If I cube them, it's more like 9 minutes.

Perfectly mashable.

Oh I hadn't thought about whole - I always cut them into roughly even sized.

60 min definitely seems off.

Mushed potatoes

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