Jump to Recipe Print Recipe

Cook 2 things at once in the Instant Pot electric pressure cooker using the pot in pot method! For this tutorial I will be cooking lentils and quinoa at the same time. When you cook 2 different foods at the same time, make sure that the 2 foods have the same or close to the same cooking times. For example- don’t try to cook brown rice and broccoli at the same time, the broccoli will be complete mush or the brown rice will still be hard!

There are 2 ways you can cook 2 foods at once in the Instant Pot:

METHOD 1-

Food 1 gets cooked directly in the bottom of the Instant Pot inner pot.

Food 2 gets cooked in a dish stacked on top with a stand.

METHOD 2-

Food 1 and 2 both get cooked in stackable pots inside the Instant Pot

My preferred method is method 1 and that is what I will be focusing on in this recipe/ post. I simply throw the ingredients for lentils to cook directly in the instant pot, place my tall stand in and then cook quinoa or another veggie stew recipe in a stainless steel dish stacked on top. So you have 2 layers of food cooking simultaneously. With this method you can cook a bigger quantity of food in the bottom layer.

TO COOK 2 THINGS AT ONCE YOU WILL NEED

• A tall trivet/ stand I use an egg steamer rack that came in an Instant Pot accessory set. I recommend something like this OR an egg rack like this
• A stainless steel dish or other heat safe dish, I use a metal one but I have seen other people use a glass pyrex dish.
• Your 2 recipes + ingredients

This is what my set up looks like. I have a tall stand that is actually an egg steamer rack. The lentils will cook on the bottom layer directly in the inner pot. Then I place the trivet stand directly into the lentils and the stainless steel bowl sits on top of the stand. The quinoa will get cooked in the top dish. (I am using a 6 qt Instant Pot Lux)

Note- I don’t put on the lid on the top dish when cooking.

This also works wonderfully if you want to cook white rice or quinoa on the bottom and a vegetable/ cauliflower/ mushroom stew or curry on the top dish. As the rice cooks on the bottom the vegetables will cook in the steam.

ALWAYS make sure to add water to BOTH the to the bottom inner pot and the top layer! The Instant Pot requires at least 1 cup of liquid to come under pressure. You will need to put liquid in both layers to cook the food.

For method 2 you will need special inserts you can purchase from Amazon that look like this-

Recipe 1 gets cooked in the bottom dish and recipe 2 gets cooked in the top dish. For these inserts you need to put water directly in the Instant Pot inner pot so the cooker will come under pressure AND put liquid in both compartments. I rarely use this method personally because I think method 1 is easier!

I recommend using a stand like this:

The stand I recommend. Then use a stainless steel dish on top from this set