So, if you have read any of my blog posts on cooking you know that I own a Instant Pot. This is the one that I have.
It is capable of 7 different functions which includes, soup, Meat/Stew, Bean/Chili, Poultry, Sauté, Steam, Rice, Porridge, Multigrain, Slow Cook, Keep-Warm, Yogurt, Pasteurize and Fermented Rice (Jiu Niang).
I will be making dishes using all of the functions above so make sure you check back.
This post is about using an inner pot inside the Instant Pot stainless steel liner pot. This is useful for making things that you may not want to have a lot of water added to the dish.
The first time I did this I was making meat loaf. I wasn't sure how well it would work placing the meat in the Instant Pot inner liner without enough water to pressurize the unit. I didn't want to add water to the meat loaf so I needed to kind of create a double boiler type of setup. Bear in mind that the pressure cooker relies on building up enough steam to push the float in the lid into place causing the inside to pressurize.
After turning it over in my mind of a while and trying out a few different bowls to see the best fit I settled for a 2 1/2 quart stainless steel bowl that sits nicely inside the unit. Take a look at these pictures.
Notice how there is space between the Instant Pot liner and my 2 1/2 qt. bowl. This is important because the steam has to be able to circulate.
Once I found bowls that would fit nicely, I then proceeded to make my meatloaf. I added 2 cups of water to the Instant Pot liner and placed the trivet in the bottom.
Then I placed my 2 1/2 quart bowl on top of that and proceeded to cook my meatloaf.
It was then that I decided to check the internet for others doing the same thing. I found where others had done the same thing using a pyrex glass dish.
The important thing is to make sure that you have the room between the inner liner and whatever food bowl you use so the steam builds up and is not impeded.