The Instant Pot can handle a lot — soups, stews, beans, and anything that needs time and patience you don’t have. But like most kitchen heroes, it has limits. Some foods just weren’t meant to be pressure-cooked, no matter how many Reddit threads swear otherwise. Here’s what to keep far, far away from your Instant Pot.
1. Popcorn
This is a controversial one. There are several recipes online that tout the success of popcorn in an Instant Pot. On the other hand, those who have tried these recipes were not exactly ecstatic about the results.
“Trial and error has led me to believe that popcorn in the IP is a LIE! I’ve tried every YouTube instructional and can only pop maybe a quarter of the kernels,” one Redditor said. “I’m pretty sure Instant Pot popcorn is another in the long list of things that, just because you can do them in an Instant Pot, doesn’t mean you should,” another wise Redditor said.
It’s possible, but so is sadness. Most kernels will stay unpopped; the popped ones will get soggy.
There are easier, less messy ways to make popcorn — say, with a microwave, table stove top, or air fryer. It makes you wonder why anyone would want to overcomplicate it. Would you eat spaghetti with a spoon?
2. Fried Foods
Unless you enjoy explosions, you should steer clear of deep-frying anything in an Instant Pot — pressure and oil don’t mix well. Instant Pots aren’t built for that level of heat and pressure, and doing so can melt the gasket or cause a blowout. If you read the IP manual, you’ll see it warns explicitly against pressure frying. For frying, you need bubbles and air circulation, not trapped humidity. To avoid a visit from the fire department, you’re better off using a skillet, air fryer, or deep fryer.
3. Steak
Technically, you can cook a steak in an Instant Pot. You can also microwave sushi. Doesn’t mean you should. Cooking any cut of beef in an Instant Pot is allowed — it’s not dangerous like frying stuff is — but you won’t get the same results as pan-searing a nice sirloin. Pressure cooking isn’t built for direct heat, which means it’ll mess with the texture of the meat and ruin it. There are recipes for Instant Pot steaks, but if you want your steak nice and juicy and not medium sad, you’re better off with a skillet and oven.
4. Dairy
I fully understand the temptation of dumping heavy cream and pasta into an Instant Pot and expecting restaurant-quality penne vodka. In reality, what you’ll get is probably cottage cheese. In the Instant Pot, the emulsion of butterfat, proteins, and water in dairy breaks apart, leading to curdling. Milk, cream, and cheese should go in after the cooking cycle — not before. Otherwise, you’ll spend your evening scraping milk solids off the inner pot.
5. Delicate Seafood
Like steak, shellfish is an expensive, indulgent protein that needs care; otherwise, it ends up tasting like fish-smelling rubber. The Instant Pot is meant for foods that need a whole lot of time cooking, and shellfish isn’t one of them. Most seafood — shrimp, squid, prawns — cooks fast and needs gentle, direct heat. And good luck getting rid of the fishy smell after you’ve cooked anything even slightly seafood-adjacent in a pressure cooker. The Instant Pot can work for cooking tougher seafood that needs a lot of time to cook, like octopus.
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6. Pasta
Every time you cook pasta in an Instant Pot, you break the heart of some nonna in Italy. Pasta needs only a short cooking time, especially when you drop it into already boiling water on the stovetop. But in a pressure cooker, the water has to heat up first — the noodles start softening early, and by the time the pressure builds, you’ve got a pot of mush. People have tried it, and most of the time the result is overcooked pasta with an underwhelming taste.
“I tried cooking some penne for a casserole dish and didn’t feel like monitoring the stove while I prepped my other ingredients,” one Redditor shared. “I couldn’t tell if it was undercooked or overcooked — it was kind of gummy and chalky, not the firm bounce-back texture of good pasta.”
7. Delicate Vegetables (Such as Broccoli and Zucchini)
Tender veggies like broccoli or zucchini are another food whose cooking times contradict the whole point of a pressure cooker. Broccoli, for example, needs only a couple of minutes of steam to be ready — which turns the Instant Pot into a steam chamber of doom for anything delicate. Even a one-minute cook time will leave broccoli khaki-green and limp. As for zucchini — it simply ceases to exist.
“We put zucchini in a curry, and when we were eating it, it hit me… where’s the zucchini?” someone who tried it shared on Reddit.
8. Pork Loin
Here’s another divisive no-no for an Instant Pot meal. Some people will fight you on this, saying pork comes out better than when it’s slow-cooked overnight, but others have tried it once and said never again. Cooking pork in an Instant Pot is tricky — overcook it and it gets tough; use a quick release and the meat seizes up and loses moisture. If you’re cooking pork loin, which is a lean cut, the pressure will suck out the moisture and you’ll end up with dry meat and meh flavor. If you go for pulled pork, the Instant Pot will tenderize the meat but won’t give it that little crust, so it turns stewy instead. It can be done, but you have to be careful and keep your expectations low.
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9. Red and Yellow Lentils
While green and brown lentils cook beautifully under pressure, the red and yellow kinds are more delicate and turn to mush. They cook faster than the others, so their texture breaks down after just a short time in the Instant Pot. It can work if you’re making soup or mashed lentils, but if you need them to hold their shape, better don’t.
10. Cookies
The perfect cookie has a crisp bite and a flaky crust — two things the Instant Pot could never deliver. Cookies need dry, circulating heat to brown and set, but the pressure cooker traps steam, turning the dough into something pancake-adjacent. Even if you use the sauté function or bake setting, you’ll end up with pale, soft discs that never quite recover. If you want cookies, use an oven or buy some — you know, like a normal person.
