Can You Pressure Can in an Instant Pot?

The honest answer, up front

Do not use an Instant Pot or any other electric multicooker to pressure can low-acid foods like vegetables, meat, beans or stock. The USDA and the National Center for Home Food Preservation (NCHFP) — the bodies that write the approved home-canning processes in the United States — have not approved any electric multicooker for pressure canning, and they say so specifically. This is not caution for its own sake; it is a botulism question, and botulism is a paralytic illness that can kill. When the safety authorities decline to endorse a method for a food that can grow Clostridium botulinum, that is the finding, and we are not going to talk you around it.

Why an electric multicooker cannot be approved

Safe pressure canning of low-acid food depends on hitting and holding a precise temperature — about 240°F (116°C), which requires roughly 10–11 psi at sea level — for a validated number of minutes, because that specific time-at-temperature is what destroys botulinum spores. A tested pressure canner is built and instrumented to prove it reaches and maintains that. An electric multicooker is not: its pressure is regulated for cooking, not canning, most models run at a lower working pressure than a canner, and — crucially — you cannot independently verify the internal temperature the way a canner's gauge or weight lets you. Even where an Instant Pot lists a “canning” or “sterilize” button, the USDA position is that the process has not been tested and validated for safety, so the button is not an endorsement. Instant Brands itself does not claim these models are approved pressure canners.

Sterilize is not the same as pressure can

It is easy to conflate two functions. The sterilize program on a Duo Plus or Pro is for sanitizing jars, bottles and utensils — heating clean equipment to kill surface organisms. That is a real, useful function. It is notpressure canning, which is about making a sealed jar of low-acid food shelf-stable by destroying spores inside it. Using sterilize and assuming you have “canned” the contents is exactly the dangerous mix-up the safety agencies warn about.

What you can safely do

Two things. First, water-bath canning of high-acid foods — jams, jellies, pickles, most fruits, tomatoes with added acid — is a different process that works at boiling temperature, and the acidity, not pressure, is what makes it safe. You can water-bath can in a big stockpot; an Instant Pot is not needed and not really suited to it, but the high-acid category is the one that does not require a pressure canner at all. Second, an Instant Pot is a superb everyday cooker for the same ingredients — cook the beans, the stock, the vegetables to eat now or refrigerate and freeze. The line is simple: cook and freeze in the multicooker; shelf-stable pressure canning belongs in a tested canner.

If you want to pressure can, buy a canner

The right tool is a tested stovetop pressure canner with a working gauge or weighted regulator, run to a current NCHFP or USDA process — the tested times and pressures for each food, adjusted for your altitude. That is the only way to make low-acid home canning safe, and it is genuinely worth doing properly if canning is your goal. It is also outside what this site sells or rates: we cover multicookers for cooking, and on this one question the honest recommendation is to step outside the category rather than press an appliance into a job it was not validated for.

The bottom line