The Instant Pot might be the hardest working appliance in our fifth wheel. It is a pressure cooker, slow cooker, rice cooker, and saute pan in one lid, and for a small RV kitchen where counter space and power are both tight, that kind of do-everything gear earns its keep fast. Best of all, it runs entirely on our solar and battery system, so we can make a real dinner with no hookups and no propane oven heating up the rig.
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Why it earns its space
Everything that comes aboard a fifth wheel has to pull its weight, and the Instant Pot does the work of three or four appliances we would otherwise have to store. One pot means one thing to clean. It browns, pressure cooks, and keeps warm without us babysitting it, which matters when we are both working from the rig and dinner needs to happen on its own for a while.
We christened our off-grid kitchen with a proper meal in the Instant Pot the very first night we owned the RV, cooking dinner off nothing but the battery bank at a boondocking spot with zero amenities. You can see that first night in our first boondocking video post.
Cooking off-grid on solar
We do not carry a generator, so every watt the Instant Pot uses comes from the battery bank. Pressure cooking is where it shines off-grid: it comes up to pressure, then drops to a low simmer to hold it, so the heavy power draw is short compared to running a stovetop or oven for an hour. A pot of beef stew cooks while our solar keeps the batteries topped up in the sun. The full electrical picture is in our solar and battery setup.
Instant Pot power draw on solar and an inverter
Ours is the Instant Pot Duo Plus 8 quart, the same one that's in our Amazon storefront and on our Amazon link. Instant Pot rates it at 1200 watts on 120 volts, the same figure that's on its rating label and the Amazon listing. That is the rated number, not something we measured. We haven't put a meter on ours.
Those 1200 watts are what the heating element pulls while it's on, and it's on hardest while the pot comes up to pressure. After that it cycles to hold pressure, which is why the heavy draw is short. For sizing, plan around the full 1200: the inverter has to carry that, plus anything else running at the same time.
On the battery side, 1200 watts works out to roughly 100 amps from a 12 volt bank, or about 50 amps from a 24 volt bank like ours, before inverter losses. That's arithmetic from the rated wattage, not a reading off our battery monitor. How our batteries and inverters fit together is in why our RV runs a 24V battery bank and two inverters.
Instant Pot camping without an RV
Tent camping with an Instant Pot comes down to finding a 120 volt outlet that can supply 1200 watts. That means a campsite with electric hookups, or a portable power station whose AC output is rated above 1200 watts. A small power station built for phones and lights won't run it. Everything else on this page comes from cooking in our fifth wheel, so treat this part as the math for anyone camping without one.
What we make in it
Fabiola uses ours all the time. Her go-to is shredded chicken: she buys a big family-size pack of chicken breasts, cooks it all at once in the Instant Pot, shreds it, and it turns into all kinds of different meals through the week. The other regular is a big beef stew with stew beef, carrots and potatoes. When the weather turns and cooking outside on the Blackstone is off the table, the Instant Pot is what still gets a hot meal on the table without steaming up the whole rig.
Instant Pot camping meals we actually make
Fabiola's go-to comes first. All four are on the site as full recipes. The chicken is from her own write-up, and the other three were written up from the videos where she cooked them in the rig.
- Fabiola's shredded chicken. A family-size pack of chicken breasts goes into the Instant Pot all at once, gets shredded, and becomes different meals all week. One cook, a week of starting points.
- The travel day beef stew. The fast one: stew meat that's already cut, a block of frozen garlic, and a seasoning packet. It's what Fabiola makes when we've just parked after a long drive, and the Instant Pot cooks it while we're outside dealing with hoses and leveling.
- Fabiola's from-scratch beef stew. Browned onions, her own seasoning blend and fresh bay leaves. It was the first meal she cooked in the rig after it went solar, with no propane and no generator.
- Canjica, the Brazilian hominy pudding Fabiola grew up with. Everything in it is shelf-stable until it's cooked, and it never goes under pressure. The Instant Pot is just the pot for a long, slow simmer with the lid off.
Running it at a campsite
At camp the Instant Pot plugs into an ordinary outlet in the rig. We don't carry a generator, so with no hookups it runs off our batteries and solar, as covered above. If you only try one of these on a camping trip, the travel day stew is the one built for it: you start it, then go set up camp.
The pot itself is linked below, and most of the smaller gear we use is in our Amazon storefront.
Where to get it
The Instant Pot is on Amazon. If you are outfitting an off-grid kitchen, pair it with a battery and inverter setup sized to handle it while it comes up to pressure, and you will use it far more than you expect. The rest of our cooking gear is in our Blackstone and camp kitchen guide, and the air fryer we run alongside it has its own page.