Let’s talk about the elephant in the room… your smelly instant pot sealing ring. Don’t deny it, we all have one!
No one told you when you purchased your new pressure cooker that the sealing ring would absorb color and smell faster than an old 1990’s plastic Tupperware container. A lot of articles advise buying new sealing rings; I disagree strongly. What I DO agree with is having 2 seals: one for sweet recipes and one for your savory dishes. Other than that, there is no reason to throw out a seal for a simply resolved smell.
8 quart lid and 2 sealing rings – 1 for ex. Banana Bread and the other for ex.Tomato soup!
This is a super easy cleaning and freshening method. Vinegar has been my go-to cleaning method for years- no chemicals, scent beads, or any other toxic additives that you’ll find in today’s cleaners (yes, even some of the “natural” ones.
So grab your Instant Pot(s)…I won’t judge you for how many that is. Hahaha
Grab your extra sealing rings too!
And lets get to cleaning!
PLEASE NOTE it will not bleach the color of your sauce- stained ring, and that’s OK! This is to remove the smells, not magically pull a new ring out of the pot for you. The discoloration is completely normal and safe. I use my discolored one for the staining recipes like chili.
IF YOU HAVE A REAL STINKER! If your sealing ring has been collecting smells for a while now, lets say six months or even a year before you found this cleaning method, then consider soaking the rings in vinegar for hours prior to carrying out this steam cycle. You can soak them in the inner pot of your IP, but it’ll use less vinegar if you soak them in a sink or even on baking sheet that allows vinegar level to cover the sealing ring completely. Soak for hours, if you can stand the acidic smell in your house. Don’t want to soak the ring or don’t have time to? No problem, just adjust the steaming time to 5 minutes.
BONUS HINT! It is beneficial to hang dry your sealing rings outside in the sun; it works phenomenally! I recommend doing this after each regular wash, as well as after these deep refreshers- weather permitting of course.
If you own an Instant Pot or other Pressure cooker with sealing ring, I recommend you buy a big jug of distilled vinegar to keep on hand for maintenance cleaning. I get mine from Costco and Amazon.
If you need a new sealing ring, they are on Amazon as well. These are the genuine Instant Pot Brand Rings : https://amzn.to/2XBEyFi
SHORT VIDEO CLIP OF THE DEEP-CLEANING PROCESS
The Dirty on Your Instant Pot Ring…
Description
THE MOST EFFECTIVE WAY TO REMOVE ODORS FROM YOUR PRESSURE COOKER! Also freshens and Shines the Inner Pot!
Ingredients
1/2 Lemon – juice and rind needed for this!
1 Cup Distilled White Vinegar
1 Cup water (preferably bottled spring water)
Instructions
- Place the inner pot in your Instant Pot and secure the sealing ring around the lid. Place any extra rings you may have, if applicable, inside the pot.
- Pour in the water, vinegar, and juice of 1/2 lemon. Drop in the rind of that lemon when you’re done juicing it.
- Close lid and set pressure valve to “sealing” position.
- Select the “steam” mode and set for 3 minutes. (5 min. for extra deep cleaning)
- Allow a Natural Pressure Release when the 3-minute steam cycle has completed. (NPR takes about 15 minutes)
- Allow time for pot to cool so that you can continue, with precaution and hot gloves, to next step.
- Separate seal from lid and set the inner pot and sealing rings on a rack to air dry.
- Your instant pot sealing rings have new been natural disinfected and freshened up!
Notes
It is beneficial to hang dry your seals in the sunshine – see blog notes
You can rinse lid, inner pot and rings with hot water after steaming / prior to drying.
See Blog for pre-soak option
