Instant Pot Steel-Cut Oats with Brown Sugar and Cinnamon
Steel-cut oats under pressure for six minutes, so the chewy, unhulled oat comes out creamy instead of taking thirty minutes of stovetop stirring.
- Serves
- 4
- Prep
- 5 min
- Cook
- 6 min
- Written
Method
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Set the Instant Pot to sauté, melt the butter, and toast the steel-cut oats for 2 minutes, stirring, until they smell nutty.
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Add the water, milk, brown sugar, cinnamon, and salt, and scrape up anything stuck to the bottom of the pot.
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Seal the lid and cook on high pressure for 6 minutes.
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Let the pressure release naturally for 10 minutes, then quick-release whatever remains.
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Stir well — the oats will look thin at first and thicken into a creamy porridge within a minute or two.
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Spoon into bowls and top with a pat of butter, a splash of milk, and more brown sugar.
Notes
Steel-cut oats are the chopped, unhulled kernel, not the flattened rolled oat — they hold a distinct chew that turning them into the stovetop’s usual thirty-minute simmer would eventually erode anyway, so the six-minute pressure-cooked version isn’t a shortcut so much as the right amount of cooking. Scraping the pot bottom after adding the liquid matters more here than in most pressure-cooker recipes: any oats or sugar stuck underneath the toasting step can trigger a burn warning before the pot ever comes to pressure.
This keeps well — portion the extra into jars and reheat with a splash of milk through the week. Swap the brown sugar and cinnamon for a spoon of pesto and grated parmesan if you want it savory instead.