Instant Pot Coconut Rice

Instant Pot Coconut Rice recipe - a quick and easy rice side dish from the pressure cooker.

One of my pressure cooker’s killer apps is weeknight Thai curries. I love the hands-off meal - stir everything into the instant pot, lock the lid, and I can unlock the lid to dinner. Well, almost - I can’t enjoy a curry without rice to soak up the delicious, spicy sauce.

Jump to:

• What is Coconut Rice?
• Ingredients
• How to Make Instant Pot Coconut Rice
• Which Type of Coconut Milk Should I Use?
• Serving Suggestions
• FAQ
• Instant Pot Coconut Rice Recipe
• 💬 Comments

My favorite side dish for Thai curries is coconut rice. Now, if I only owned one pressure cooker, I’d make it on the stovetop. But I own many pressure cookers…probably too many…and I can always pull out one of my backup cookers to make a batch pressure cooker coconut rice.

This is a simple recipe. It has four ingredients, and two of them are water and salt. The tricky ingredients are jasmine rice and coconut milk. They’re easy to find in your local grocery store nowadays; look in the asian food section of your international aisle. But, if you use them as much as I do, find your local Asian market. They will almost always have the coconut milk cheaper, and I buy jasmine rice in big, 25 pound bags. (We go through a lot of rice in my house.)

What is Coconut Rice?

Coconut rice is rice cooked in coconut milk. This easy instant pot coconut rice recipe is a great way to make coconut rice. You only need a handful of ingredients…

Ingredients

Jasmine or long grain rice
Fine sea salt
Coconut Milk
Water

How to Make Instant Pot Coconut Rice

Everything in the pot: Add the rice to an Instant Pot, sprinkle with the salt, then stir in the coconut milk and the water.
Pressure cook for 4 minutes, with a 10 minute natural release: Lock the lid and pressure cook on high pressure for 4 minutes. (Use Manual, Pressure Cook, or Pressure Cook - Custom mode in an Instant Pot). Let pressure come down for 10 minutes, then quick release any remaining pressure in the pot. Fluff the rice with a fork, serve, and enjoy.

Which Type of Coconut Milk Should I Use?

You want to use full fat coconut milk or light coconut milk. The regular, full-fat version has a lot of coconut cream mixed in the coconut water. Light coconut milk has less of the coconut cream and more of the coconut water. Both of these are unsweetened coconut milk; avoid sweetened Cream of Coconut - aka "Coco Lopez". That is for mixing in cocktails, and way too sweet for this recipe.

Serving Suggestions

This easy instant pot coconut rice recipe is my favorite side dish with Thai curries, like my Instant Pot Massaman Chicken Curry, Instant Pot Thai Shrimp Curry, or Instant Pot Thai Panang Curry. It also makes a great side dish with grilled meat with a Thai flavor profile. Or, really, any Asian flavor profile that leans on soy sauce goes well with this rice.

FAQ

Why don’t you use the rice function on your Instant Pot?

Two reasons. One, I want to write a generic “pressure cooker” recipe, not an Instant Pot specific one. I don’t know what kind of cooker you have, so I don’t know if I can trust the rice cooker function. Two, I’ve been making pressure cooker rice since before there were Instant Pots - I’m used to this method, and it works great. I’ve never felt the need to try out the rice function.

This doesn’t seem faster than stovetop rice - why bother?

It’s true, with “up to pressure” time and natural release time, it’s not a whole lot faster than stovetop rice. (It is faster - but only by a few minutes. It’s not a the time savings you get from pressure cooking a long-simmering stew.) My answer is convenience - I can stir everything into my pot, lock the lid, push the buttons, and I don’t have to worry about the rice until the natural pressure release is done. Easy peasy.

How do I store and reheat rice?

Rice can be stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator for a few days, or frozen for a few months, but make sure to reheat leftover rice completely. For safety, rice should be reheated to 165°F in the center of the rice. (Source: Safe Handling of Cooked Rice, University of Wisconsin Extension)

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What do you think?

Questions? Other ideas? Leave them in the comments section below.

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