The Easiest Way to Keep Track of Your Favorite Instant Pot Cook Times

If you have an Instant Pot—or a “One Pot,” as my stepmom likes to call it—you have probably noticed that the internet is plastered with Instant Pot graphics and cheatsheets. These tabulations of times and water ratios come in laminated sheets, magnets, and simple printouts, but they often conflict with each other, and most cooks have their favorites.

I don’t own a single one of these cheat sheets, but I do have a few favorite Instant Pot recipes, which I am always forgetting and having to re-Google. Writing them down would be an easy fix, but I’m very skilled at losing pieces of paper (laminated or not!), so I decided to write these ratios and times directly on the One Pot with dry erase marker. (I know it’s not technically correct, but I think my stepmom’s name for the appliance actually makes more sense.)

I only just started doing this—I thought of it while I was sitting very still in the forest, waiting for elk that never came—and so far I have scribbled my preferred times and ratios for eggs and rice—the two things I cook in the Instant Pot the most—directly onto the appliance. If I ever manage to remember them, I’ll just erase the marker and write new times and ratios for other dishes I have yet to commit to memory. (Though it’s far more likely I’ll just keep adding to the list of times and ratios, until the shiny metal looks like a sailor at a tattoo convention. I’ve never been good at memorizing numbers.)

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If you wish to use my shorthand, feel free. “HP” and “LP” stand for “high pressure” and “low pressure,” while “NR,” and “MR” stand for “natural release” and “manual release.” I also write “H₂O” for “water.” Gotta get some use out of that chem degree.