What makes Persian rice so delicious? Saffron. Saffron is a powerful spice high in antioxidants. Saffron is a spice derived from the flower of Crocus sativus, and the style is hand-picked from the flower. The number of flowers needed to produce a single pound included with the need to hand-pick the style from the flower is the reason it’s so expensive. However, a little bit goes a loooong way in flavoring your food. I mostly use it for rice. There are a number of Persian dishes that call for saffron, but because high quality saffron is so difficult to locate on this side of the world I keep my stash for rice.

When you purchase saffron you want a deep red color. The orange saffron is best left on the grocery store shelf. There was a time I had to drive 45 minutes to the big farmers market to buy dark red saffron, but as it’s becoming more widely used I have found it in stores like Costco and online. When you get it home you’ll want to use a mortar and pestle, add a touch of salt to grind it into a powder. The salt helps grind the saffron down into the powder, so don’t skip that step. If you leave the threads too long you won’t get the best bang for your buck. I normally do this to all my saffron in one shot and store it in an air-tight container so I don’t have to grind it every time I want to use it in my rice.

Now that we’ve covered the key to successful Persian rice, let’s dive into how to make it in the instant pot. My mother doesn’t like that I make it in the instant pot, because it destroys the “presentation” factor, but the flavor is the same.

Rice to water ratio is 1:1.25 If you make your rice and it feels undercooked add more water, not time. So if I’m feeding four people I would make two cups of dry rice and 1.5 cups of water. You’ll also want to rinse your rice to remove the extra starch. More details are included in the directions below.

Recipe:

Prep Time

5 MINS

Total Time

35 MINS

Yields

4 SERVINGS

Ingredients

2 cups Basmati rice

1.5 cups water

1/4 tsp saffron, ground

1/2 tsp salt

1 tbsp olive oil or butter

Directions

Pour two cups of rice into instant pot.

Rinse with fresh water, swirling or stirring, until water loses cloudiness or you can see the rice through the water.

Drain all water from rinsing rice. If you feel like you can’t get the water out, without pouring your rice down the drain, use a strainer as you pour and then whatever rice you catch can be put back into the pot. It’s okay if there’s still water in the pot after draining, you won’t get all of it out.

Add saffron and salt to the water. Be sure not to add the oil in this step or it will catch all your saffron.

Stir the mixture to spread out saffron making your water orange. This will ensure the saffron cooks into the rice.

Once the saffron has dissolved into the water, add your oil. If you want a more Persian flavor use butter.

Set your instant pot to the Rice setting, turning off the “keep warm” setting, this will dry out your rice after it has finished cooking.

When the timer beeps and cooking is finished you’ll want to quick release the steam straight away.

Once all the steam has been released, use a fork to fluff. Be sure to get the corners of the pot so you don’t end up with large clumps of rice.

At this point if you feel like the rice isn’t fully cooked, don’t despair, just close the lid and let it sit for about 10 minutes or even 20. It’ll continue to steam with what little moisture is in the pot. (Don’t turn it back on, just let it sit after fluffing it).

Plate and serve with your favorite topping.

NOTE: If you leave the left overs in the instant pot you’ll get chunks of rice. My son and I actually like it, they’re like rice nuggets, but if you want to avoid this then let it cool in a container out of the instant pot.

That’s it! It seems like a lot of steps, but I promise once you make it a few times and get it down, it goes pretty fast.

Traditionally, you would boil the rice and then, as my mom would say, “Wait for it to dance.” While you wait for the rice to “dance” you would boil about a cup of water with butter in a small pan. After it reaches a boil, you turn off the heat and add the saffron to the water and butter mixture. Once the rice starts dancing in the water you would drain it in a colander, add oil to the bottom of the pot and place the rice back. Then you take the saffron mixture and pour it on top using a large spoon with holes to spread it over the rice. The next step is to let it steam. When the rice on top is pointing up, the steaming process is finished and the rice is cooked. If you want “tadeeg” which is the crispy rice on the bottom, you’d remove the lid to stop the steaming process, turn the heat low, and let the oil on the bottom crisp the rice.

First, I must admit, this is the best method to make rice, but it’s also time consuming and if you boil the rice too long you can pretty much throw it away because it’ll turn to mush. The key is in the steaming process. I have tried this method so many times with little success, because I cannot watch a pot to boil to save my life. I always think I can get something accomplished in that time and before I know it my rice is overcooked. I’m not kidding when I say you have to take it off exactly when it starts to dance. So just forget it. Now that I have a family I just don’t have the time and rice is such a great staple food.

When you make rice and lentils it makes a complete protein chain which is a great vegan option, or when you’re just not feeling meat that day. Rice and lentils are great for children since it’s tasty and easy to eat as well as nutritious. Rice and lentils is a popular way to serve rice with grilled/sautéed chicken.

I love my Persian side for many reasons including the culture is family-oriented. Most of the dishes take all day to make because it comes from a culture where mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts and cousins cook together all day to make it happen. So the whole thing from cooking to eating ends up being a very social and bonding experience. American culture doesn’t lend itself to this type of process. I moved miles away from my family for college and ended up staying here, and I don’t have any other family in the states from my Persian side. Eventually I’ll figure out how to transform other Persian dishes to either the instant pot methods, but for now what is in my blog is what I’ve been able to figure out.

Enjoy!