Pot in pot method using the Instant Pot

If you are new to the Instant Pot, Pot in Pot means you use multiple containers inside of the original Instant Pot vessel to cook multiple things. This is what most of used to do when using a traditional pressure cooker too. Well, you can do the same in the Instant Pot! You will often see the acronym PiP in recipes or online forums which means pot in pot. Pot in pot is the best option when you want to cook multiple things in one shot. Just keep in mind, you want to make sure the items being cooked have similar cooking times so it you don’t have something overcooked or undercooked.

Base of the Pot – When I refer to the base, I am referring to the bottom of the main, steel vessel/pot that the Instant Pot comes with. You can cook items directly in this pot or you can put some water at the base of this pot (trivet at the bottom is optional), and put another pot inside of it which would be cooking a pot-in-a-pot aka Pot in Pot method. Just make sure whenever you cook PiP you always have a liquid’ish base at the bottom of the main pot or else it will burn. 

Some common PiP meal combinations in our house are: Rice & Tuvoor daal, daal & shaak/subji, rice & veggies, wheat pasta, tomato based sauce & veggies, lentils (moong, masoor, urad etc), rice & veggies, beans & quinoa (for the toddler bean patties), chole & rice, khichdi & veggies. 

The order of your pots will be based on their size and what you can stack on top of them. Here is an example of what my Pot in Pot looks like: 

There are a lot of great meals you can make using the pot in pot method!  Learn more about the sauté mode on your Instant Pot. Sauté mode + Pot in Pot can help save you some dishes and a lot of time! Get started with cooking with your Instant Pot! 

It’s this easy!