Congratulations, you have an electric pressure cooker and love cooking delicious meals quickly and easily with it. However, if you’re like us, you want to cook every meal in it! And thanks to the accessories that you can get for it, using the Instant Pot for more ways for more foods is easier. In fact, we use ours several times a week thanks to the various accessories that we have!
While most electric pressure cooker pots come with a few useful tools such as rice spoon, soup spoon, a rice cup, wire rack, and possibly a silicone grip there are so many other accessories available that can make using your pot even better. Here are our must-have accessories for everyone’s favorite pressure cooker!
- Stainless Steel and Ceramic Non-Stick Cooking Pot – Since you should always have more than one inner pot handy, so that you can cook another dish without having to clean up the first one first, we recommend you purchase one with your pot. Our machine came with a metal alloy non-stick cooking pot so we invested in a quality stainless steel inner pot when we placed our order. If you’re doing a lot of cooking in your Instant Pot, you’re going to want another non-stick inner pot. We suggest getting a quality ceramic one for durability and longevity.
- Steamers – From baskets to stackables, there are several steaming accessory options available. A large basket with handle for easy removal is great for cooking multiple portions of a single food. We got ours in an Instant Pot accessory set on Amazon. If you need to multitask, a stackable steamer insert works great. Having one of these allows you to cook two separate things at the same time without mixing them together! They need to have about the same cooking time though.
- Springform Pan – This pan is great for both sweet and savory recipes. You can use a springform pan to make a single serving size cheesecake, torte, lasagna, soufflé, or meatloaf in your Instapot.
- Tempered Glass Lid – You will need this lid when you want to make yogurt, braise, slow cook, or steam food without pressurizing. Great for the sauté, slow cooker, or keep warm functions. A glass lid is also great for serving. Just remove the pressure cooking lid and place the glass lid on top.
- Egg Bites Mold – Why go to Starbucks for egg bites when you can make your own in the Instant Pot? This mold is also great as a reusable storage container and freezer tray. We are loving all the uses we’ve found for the one that came in our set.
- Egg Rack/Egg Trivet – Make perfectly hard-boiled or soft-boiled eggs in just minutes. To prevent the eggs from being damaged during cooking, keep them steady and upright with an egg rack. Cooking eggs in the pressure cooker not only takes a fraction of the time that it takes on the stovetop, but pressure-cooker eggs are so easy to peel. The shells practically fall off. This rack can also do double duty to lift other pans off the bottom of the pot.
- Yogurt Cups and Pressure Sterilization Rack – This is ideal for making individual yogurts instead of one large batch. Most yogurt maker cup racks can also hold baby bottles, rings, lids, and nipples for sterilization. By pressure steaming them, you can kill bacteria, fungi, and viruses.
- Mini Mitts or Gripper Clips – Whether you’re cooking directly in the inner pot or cooking with one of the racks, pans, baskets, or molds; things are hot! Both of these tools are great for moving hot items from your stove top, oven, air fryer, microwave, or pressure cooker.
- Silicone Cupcake Liners – They are great for making egg bites, poached eggs, mini cheesecakes, and more! To make “poached” eggs, crack an egg into each cup and place them on a metal trivet/rack inside the pot. Add 1 cup of water to the bottom of the pot, cook on low pressure for 3 minutes, then do a natural pressure release. Perfect for eggs benedict!
Save and Add Versatility With A Great Set
If you want to save on the cost of purchasing these items, consider getting several of them in an accessory set. We did just that with the KITOOLBASE Mini Accessories for 3 QT or 4 Qt Instapot.
Here what we thought of the set…
Loving our electric pressure cooker, it is our goto for quick and easy cooking. So when our Instant Pot accessory set arrived we couldn’t wait to start using all the different items. In the box we found a 4″ springform buckle pan, a 7″ x 4″ loophole steamer basket, a silicone egg bites mold, stainless steel egg steam trivet rack, a bowl/dish clip, stainless steel kitchen tongs, two silicone cooking pot mitts, three magnets, and a cookbook.
The three magnets in the set have helpful information about cooking times and recipe guide includes several interesting items to cook. We found these items very helpful. And, after putting the magnets on the refrigerator, the steamer basket was the first item that we used and found that it was perfect for steaming baby carrots. With all the veggies that we will be picking from our garden, I see this item getting a lot of use! Second, we tried the egg rack and since we had such great results, I am happy that we can get rid one more item that clutters the kitchen, the hard boiled egg cooker.
The egg bites mold is not only great for making copycat Starbucks Sous Vide Egg Bites it also works great as a reusable storage container and freezer tray for things such as homemade baby food, stock, freezer jam, pre-portioning fruit for smoothies, single servings of sauces, summertime treats like ice cream or pudding pops, jello, and other molded desserts.
The small 4″ springform pan is perfect for making a single serving size cheesecake, lasagna, or meatloaf. And, we use the mini mitts to get items out the oven, air fryer, and off the stove every day. They really are the perfect size! The tongs and bowl/dish clip, while interesting items to have, they will not replace the heavy duty ones that we already owned. Not a deal breaker, since there were so many great items in this set.
Overall, we are very pleased with our purchase and would recommend this set to others.
If you are lucky enough to own a 6 – 8 Quart Instant Pot/Electric Pressure Cooker, Nice Kitchen offers a great starter set. It includes a 7 ½” x 2 ¼” steamer basket, 7″ springform pan, egg rack/egg trivet, two silicone mitts, small cookbook/recipe guide, and three magnets with cooking times.
This set includes the same recipe guide and magnets as the one for our 4 qt pot. The larger 7″ springform pan is perfect for making desserts or main dishes for two to four people. And, with a second set oven mitts, we will always have a pair handy. We only wish the steamer basket was as deep as the one for the smaller pressure cooker.