How to cook millet in Instant Pot

Do you want to include millet in your daily meals? Then make this Instant pot millet and use cooked millet for your breakfast, lunch, and dinner. This detailed post will teach you how to prep, cook, season, and use the millet for your everyday meals.

What is millet

Millet is a round-shaped cereal grain that belongs to the grass family Poaceae. It is gluten-free and rich in protein, fiber, antioxidants (1).

Millet is an ancient grain grown primarily in Asian and African countries. Many people think of it as bird food, but they are highly nutritious, and you should consider including them in your daily diet.

Ingredients

• Millet: You can get millet in any supermarket easily. And you can order them online too. Though there are many millet varieties, the most used is a small round grain that almost looks like quinoa. Soaking is optional, and pressure cooker cooking times change accordingly. 
• Water: I used water to cook millet in this recipe, but you can use vegetable broth or chicken broth to flavor the millet. And if you are using the broth, you cannot use the cooked millet for sweet recipes. If you intend to use millet for sweet recipes, you can cook the millet in coconut milk or almond milk.
• Salt: Though salt is optional, it will add flavor to the millet.
• Oil: A teaspoon of oil will yield the fluffy millet. You can use butter or oil like coconut oil, olive oil, vegetable oil. Millet flavor will vary accordingly.

Instructions

• Wash the millet a couple of times to ensure there is no dirt.
• Soaking the millet is optional and if you are soaking, soak it for 6 to 8 hours in clean water.
•  Drain the water completely from the millet and keep it aside.
• Now add this drained millet, water, and a teaspoon of oil to the Instant pot inner pot.
• Close the Instant pot with its lid and seal the vent.
• Select manual or pressure cook mode and cook it on HIGH PRESSURE for 4 minutes for pre-soaked millet. And cook it for 8 minutes for unsoaked millet.
• Once the Instant pot finishes cooking, wait for 10 minutes and manually release the pressure.
• Fluff it up with a fork, and the millet is ready to use.

Millet to water ratio & cooking times

Millet	Millet to water ratio	Cooking time
Soaked	1 cup millet: 1.25 cups of water	4 minutes high pressure
Unsoaked	1 cup millet: 1.75 cups of water	8 minutes high pressure

Recipe Notes

• Do not wait for a natural pressure release as it may overcook the millet, and they may not be fluffy. 
• You can wait for a natural pressure release to cook millet for porridge.
• Millet will be fluffy once it cools down. So if you are using it for meal prep or making a salad, let the millet become cool and come to room temperature.

Seasoning Millet

Using a little salt and butter while cooking millet will flavor it very well, but there are other ways you can season the millet. Some of them are

• Use vegetable broth or chicken broth for cooking the millet instead of plain water.
• Use one or two bay leaves or whole spices like cinnamon, cardamom, star anise. You can use these spices for both savory and sweet recipes.
• Instead of water, you can use coconut milk or almond milk for cooking the millet. Any plant-based milk works here, and it will make the millet creamy, making it a good choice for breakfast porridge.

Variations

• Millet Pilaf: To cook pilaf-style millet, we need to use just enough water to get fluffy millet. Start the Instant pot in saute mode and add oil to it. Add aromatics like onion, garlic, ginger, dried spices and fry them. To this mixture, add washed and drained millet and let it fry for a couple of minutes. Add water and cancel the saute mode. Now start the Instant pot in pressure cook mode and pressure cook for 5 minutes on high pressure for pre-soaked millet. And cook it for 10 minutes on high pressure for unsoaked millet. 
• Millet Porridge: Use 3 cups water for every 1 cup millet to cook the millet porridge recipe. And pressure cook for 10 minutes on high pressure. To get a creamy millet porridge, you can substitute some water with either plant-based milk or regular milk. And once it is cooked, top the millet porridge with fresh fruits and desired sweetener. You can add a splash of milk to adjust the consistency of the porridge. Use plant-based milk for vegan porridge.

Storage

You can store the cooked millet for 8 hours at room temperature. And it keeps well for two days in the refrigerator. However, millet will absorb water and becomes dry when stored in the fridge. So add a splash of water and reheat the millet.

Serving suggestions

You can use plain millet to substitute rice or quinoa and enjoy it with dal or curry. Here are some vegetarian curry recipes that go very well with millet

Vegetable curry with chickpeas

Kidney beans curry with seasonal veggies

Adzuki beans curry

I like to serve millet porridge in both sweet and savory versions. Add milk, sweetener of your choice, and fresh fruits for sweet porridge.

And for savory millet porridge, add yogurt and season it with spices like red chili powder, cumin powder, black pepper powder, and salt. Finally, add salad veggies like cucumber, tomatoes, and onions for crunchiness.

Recipes to use cooked millet

You can make any rice recipe with cooked millet. For example, millet makes a bowl of good fried rice. Please check out these recipes for some inspiration.

Yogurt rice with millet

Bok choy fried rice with millet

Indian style lemon rice with millet

Millet veggie salad

Millet bell pepper stir fry

Other Instant pot millet recipes

If you want to make millet part of your regular diet, you can try these recipes that use millet as the main ingredient.

Instant pot whole grain recipes

Other instant pot whole grain recipes that might interest you!

Instant pot quinoa

Instant pot basmati rice

Recipe