Here’s the thing: Pressure cookers can make amazing rice and beans. But it’s difficult to find precise recipes if you have a stovetop pressure cooker because most recipes are for the instant pot, and the instant pot cooks at a different pressure than the stovetop cookers do. But everyone who knows me knows how “thrifty” I am. I quite simply am unwilling to spend $50 – $100 on an instant pot when I know that the good old fashioned stovetop pressure cookers can be obtained for $25 and they do a better job at what they do anyway. (Granted, they have fewer features, but who really needs a yoghurt maker anyway?)
This recipe was obtained, therefore, by trial and error. I don’t think you double the water, though, if you double the rice. If I wanted to add another cup of rice, I would add maybe slightly over one cup of water for each additional cup of rice. And I might cook it for another 30 seconds. But these are just my best guesstimates for how much to add if you want to double or treble the recipe. I rarely make over a cup of rice, because with the pressure cooker, cooking rice is just so easy that you don’t need to make large batches ahead of time.
Ingredients
- 1 cup Jasmine rice (I like Mahatma brand)
- 1 and two-thirds cups of water
- 1.5 teaspoons bullion
Process
- First, use a metal strainer to rinse your rice first. This step is very important. If you do not rinse your rice first, you will very likely see white, starchy gunk coming up out the top of your pressure cooker during cooking. Also, rinsing the rice adds a tiny bit of water, which may or may not affect the outcome. I haven’t experimented to see whether the amount of water added during rinsing is trivial or not. But if you do not do this step, you might get crunchy rice.
- I like to mix my bullion in the water and microwave it for about 45 seconds so the bullion gets suspended in the water instead of forming little bullion powder balls that float on the surface. This step is probably extra. With the pressure and high heat inside the pressure cooker, the bullion would probably get distributed evenly even without doing this step, but I like to be a little extra.
- Pour the rice and the bullion-water into the stovetop pressure cooker, and seal the lid.
- Bring to pressure at high heat.
- Once your pressure indicator signals you that you are at pressure (mine uses a tiny red pop up button, but different cookers vary in how they indicate) lower to medium heat and cook for exactly 3 minutes.
- Once three minutes have elapsed, turn the gas off (or if you are using electric, move the cooker to a different burner because the electric ranges maintain heat for awhile even after the stove has been turned off.) Allow the pressure to release naturally.
- Once ten minutes have elapsed, open the pressure cooker and fluff the rice. That’s it. Taste the rice. It will be perfection.
