For two people, our Aroma rice cooker does a great job with any kind of rice or grain. But when our family gets together, we need quantities of rice and the Instant Pot can deliver them.
Uncle Ben’s® Original Converted® Brand Rice has been a presence in kitchens throughout my life. The word “Converted” means that the rice is parboiled, a process that partially boils the rice in the husk. Parboiling drives thiamine and other B-vitamins from the bran to the endosperm where they stay even after the bran is removed later in the manufacturing process. So parboiled rice is more nutritionally similar to brown rice.
When we had 5 children living at home, we used to buy the 10-pound bag of Uncle Ben’s Rice. The bag stated that size was for “large homes and small institutions.” On some days, it did seem that our home resembled an institution, specifically the one that used to be in my home town.
Make sure you have Original Uncle Ben’s Rice. This recipe will not work for Uncle Ben’s Instant White Rice. And Uncle Ben’s website says that washing this rice is not necessary.
For 2 cups of rice, this sequence takes about 35 minutes.
For cooking rice, polenta, or anything sticky in an Instant Pot, the person in our family who washes pots and pans is a big fan of the nonstick inner pot manufactured by Instant Pot. It can be used for pressure cooking or any other Instant Pot cooking just like the original metal pot.
According to the package directions on Uncle Ben’s® Original Converted® Brand Rice, 1 cup of rice makes enough rice to serve 4. Our family eats larger servings, so for 12 people I would use 4 cups rice and 4 cups water. In a 6-quart Instant Pot, you can use up to 5 cups rice and 5 cups water.
For unaccountable reasons, the Instant Pot’s Rice setting can’t be adjusted, so we recommend using the Pressure Cook setting instead.
1 cup uncooked white rice
1 cup water
Put rice and water in Instant Pot.
- Lock the Instant Pot cover.
- Make sure the vent lever is set to Sealing.
- Set the Instant Pot on Pressure Cook.
- Set to High Pressure.
- Turn off Keep Warm (to avoid baking the bottom of the rice) if your Instant Pot has a separate Keep Warm button.
- Set the Instant Pot cook time for 9 minutes.
- When the Instant Pot beeps many times (mine beeps 8 times) to signal that the rice has cooked, set your timer for 10 minutes.
- When the 10 minutes is up, manually release pressure.
Remove the lid and fluff the rice with a spoon or fork.