One of the best sites for anything related to pressure cooking is Miss Vicki. I did a search on her site for "steam cooking" and it brought up a page which may answer some of your questions.

If you haven't explored her site before I recommend it. Her book is also one of the best pressure cooking resources.

Carol

Here is a link that might be useful: Miss Vickie Pressure Cooking

Thanks, I'll see if anyone is doing this in the forum there.

hello!

I have used the pot in the pot method for white rice. I too found it difficult to find a ss bowl to use. However, I did find one at Kroger. They had 2 or 3 different sizes available. They were deep sided, so not sure if that is what you are looking for. I have also seen ss pet food dishes in many sizes.

Some companies sell stainless steel inner pots for use in slow cookers, pressure cookers and crock pots. If your vessel is large enough, they can work well for pot-in-pot cooking.

Here's one example:

Here is a link that might be useful: Stainless Steel Inner Pot

The thing that really bothered me about that site, the fastcooking.ca site, was that its primary agenda seemed to be to sell Fagor Pressure cookers. Given that agenda it does make me wonder about the accuracy of the info they provide.

As you know we have discussed some of the problems with Fagor in the past. But as long as they stick to pressure "cooking" and quit claiming they are pressure "canners" too I have no problem with them. Still I don't find comments such as To Upgrade Your Ancient Presto to a Modern Fagor, to be beneficial.

JMO

Dave

Thanks for the great idea! My old 8 qt Presto cooker/canner is too pitted and stained inside for me to even think abt cooking food directly in it.

Yesterday I took the handles off my 3 qt stainless steel Farberware saucepot/steamer combo and used just the saucepot to hold some beef. Worked super! It just barely floated above the bottom of the old pressure cooker.

The two side handles were a breeze to take off and screw back on.

Here is a link that might be useful: Farberware Stack N Steam

John,
I'm glad you found my suggestion useful. FWIW, it still seems necessary to me to have something like a trivet to elevate the inner pot. I had leftover 1/2" piece of aluminum stock from Lowe's, for another project, and twisted it into a squarish shape.

Related to your handle removing, I now realize the Tatung rice cooker's inner pot's lid, which the manual states is not for use during cooking, has a removable plastic handle. Same deal as the Farberware, held on by a screw. Once you take that off, you have a 100% SS cover for the inner pot, with, of course, a pressure relief hole right in the middle! It extends to the edge so any drip down will go back into the pressure cooker. No need to wrap the top in foil anymore.
As I said, remember when doing this to cook something where there isn't intimate water/food contact, like rice, you have to have enough moisture in the inner pot so that some is leftover after the cooking is done. I probably used 1/2 cup under the steamer tray for meatballs and that was fine. The heat transfers from the pressure cooker, into the inner pot, where the water boils, and pressure builds to the same pressure as outside the inner pot. If you just threw a beef roast in there, dry, it might eventually cook from radiant heat but if an airlock formed, but it wouldn't be steam pressure cooked.
Readinglady - THANK YOU for the link. I was having trouble finding anything like that, even on amazon. Now I just need to find the right match of pressure canner size/inner pot size that will allow me to cook a lot of food in there.

Asians (particularly Indians) use pressure cookers a lot and a number of their companies offer a range of pot-in-pot inserts in both stainless and nonstick (not that I'm planning on using nonstick myself) and varied capacities.

A search on Amazon should bring up several and then you can expand your search to price-check.

Carol