Instant Pot Catfish and Sweet Potato Bibimbap

The bowl arrives in wedges of color before it arrives as a meal — pale rice at the center, deep orange sweet potato along one edge, a dark green fan of sautéed spinach beside it, and flaked catfish laid in loose, golden-brown pieces across the top, a fried egg’s yolk sitting like a held breath in the middle of it all. That’s Instant Pot Catfish and Sweet Potato Bibimbap: a Korean rice bowl built around ingredients most bibimbap recipes never touch, made considerably faster by letting a pressure cooker handle the sweet potato and rice at the same time.

Nobody’s going to mistake this for a traditional stone-bowl bibimbap, and it isn’t trying to be one. It borrows the format and the gochujang-forward finish, then builds the rest around what’s actually practical for a home cook on a Tuesday.

What Makes It Worth Your Time

Bibimbap usually means a lot of small components cooked separately, and that’s honestly the part that keeps people from making it at home regularly. The Instant Pot collapses two of those components — rice and sweet potato — into one hands-off step, freeing you up to focus on the catfish and the vegetables while everything else takes care of itself in the pot.

Catfish is also just a genuinely underused protein for this format. Its mild flavor and flaky texture pick up the gochujang sauce readily, and it fries fast enough that it doesn’t add much real time to a dish already built for speed. This is a legitimate weeknight version of a meal that usually asks for a lot more planning.

What You’ll Need

• 1.5 cups short-grain rice, rinsed
• 2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-inch cubes
• 1.5 lbs catfish fillets, cut into thick strips
• 2 tablespoons cornstarch
• 3 tablespoons neutral oil, divided
• 4 cups baby spinach
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil, plus more for finishing
• 4 large eggs
• 3 tablespoons gochujang
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 1 teaspoon rice vinegar
• Sliced green onions and toasted sesame seeds, for serving

Cod or tilapia both work in catfish’s place with the same frying method, though tilapia is more delicate and needs gentler handling when flipping. If you don’t have a pressure cooker, boil the rice and roast the sweet potato separately — the sweet potato will take about 25 minutes at 425°F, tossed in a little oil, until tender and lightly caramelized at the edges.

Making It

1. Cook the rice and sweet potato together. Add the rinsed rice and 1.75 cups water to the Instant Pot. Place a steamer basket or trivet on top and arrange the sweet potato cubes in it. Seal the lid, set the valve to sealing, and cook on high pressure for 6 minutes. Let the pressure release naturally for 10 minutes, then manually release the rest. The sweet potato should be fork-tender, and the rice underneath fully cooked and fluffy.
2. Make the gochujang sauce. While the pot comes up to pressure, whisk together the gochujang, soy sauce, honey, and rice vinegar in a small bowl until smooth.
3. Dust and fry the catfish. Toss the catfish strips with the cornstarch, shaking off any excess — a thin, even coating is what you want, not a thick, clumpy one. Heat 2 tablespoons of the neutral oil in a skillet over medium-high heat until shimmering. Fry the catfish for 3–4 minutes per side, until deep golden-brown and genuinely crisp at the edges, with a steady sizzle the whole time. Transfer to a paper-towel-lined plate.
4. Sauté the spinach. In the same skillet, heat the sesame oil over medium heat. Add the garlic and cook for 30 seconds until fragrant, then add the spinach in batches, letting each addition wilt before adding more — it takes only a minute or two total. Season lightly and set aside.
5. Fry the eggs. Heat the remaining tablespoon of neutral oil in a clean skillet over medium heat. Crack in the eggs and fry until the whites are fully set and the edges turn lacy and slightly crisp, about 3 minutes, leaving the yolks runny.
6. Assemble. Divide the rice among bowls. Arrange the sweet potato, spinach, and catfish in distinct sections around the rice, top each bowl with a fried egg, and finish with a drizzle of gochujang sauce, sliced green onions, and sesame seeds. Mix everything together at the table just before eating.

The Details That Separate Good from Great

Cooking the sweet potato and rice together in the same pot isn’t just a convenience — the sweet potato’s steam actually helps keep the rice from drying out at the top, since the trivet setup traps that moisture inside the sealed pot rather than letting it escape. Skip the shared cook and steam the sweet potato separately, and you lose that small but real benefit.

Coating the catfish in a thin, even layer of cornstarch rather than a thick breading is what gives it real crispness without turning heavy. Cornstarch fries up lighter and shatters more cleanly than a flour-based coating, and because the strips are thin, that lighter crust is enough to hold up against the sauce without going soggy the moment it’s plated.

Keeping the components in distinct sections rather than pre-mixing them is part of what makes bibimbap what it is — the moment of stirring everything together at the table, watching the yolk break and run through the rice, is genuinely part of the dish. Assembling it pre-mixed in the kitchen skips that entirely.

Where It Goes Wrong

Overcrowding the pan when frying the catfish is the mistake that shows up most often, and it happens because people want to get everything done at once. Crowded catfish steams instead of crisping, and you’ll end up with pale, soft strips instead of the golden crust you’re after. Fry in batches if your skillet runs small.

Skipping the natural pressure release on the Instant Pot is the second real risk. A full manual release right away can cause the rice at the bottom to seize slightly and the sweet potato to firm back up unevenly. Give it the 10 minutes of natural release before venting the rest.

Overcooking the fried eggs is a quieter problem, but it changes the whole dish. A fully set yolk means you lose the sauce-like richness that’s supposed to run through the rice once everything’s mixed together. Pull the eggs while the yolks are still visibly loose.

Ways to Make It Your Own

Quick-pickled cucumbers, made with just rice vinegar and salt while the rest of the dish comes together, add a cold, crisp contrast that a bowl this warm and rich genuinely benefits from. If you want more vegetables in the mix, julienned carrots sautéed briefly alongside the spinach pick up the same treatment without much extra effort. A soft-boiled egg instead of fried, sliced in half over the top, is a reasonable swap if you’d rather not fry a second thing in the same session.

Putting It on the Table

Serve this in wide, shallow bowls so all the components stay visible before mixing — part of the appeal is seeing the colors laid out before they’re stirred together. It’s a complete meal on its own, no sides genuinely necessary, though a small dish of kimchi on the side is a natural, low-effort addition if you have some on hand. This works well for a weeknight dinner that still feels like it required some thought, even though most of the actual work is happening in the pressure cooker while you handle everything else.

Keeping and Reheating

Store the rice, sweet potato, spinach, and catfish in separate airtight containers in the refrigerator for up to 3 days. Fry the eggs fresh each time you serve leftovers — they don’t hold or reheat well, and a freshly fried egg with a runny yolk is worth the extra five minutes regardless. Reheat the rice and sweet potato together in the microwave with a splash of water to keep them from drying out, and warm the catfish separately in a dry skillet over medium heat for a couple minutes per side, which brings back some of its crispness better than a microwave ever could. Assemble everything fresh in the bowl each time rather than storing it pre-mixed.

Approximate Nutrition Per Serving

Values are estimates for informational purposes only and will vary based on specific ingredients and portion sizes.

What Stays With You

Bibimbap has always been a format more than a fixed recipe, built to hold whatever a kitchen actually has on a given day, and catfish and sweet potato belong in it as much as anything more traditional does. The pressure cooker doesn’t cut corners here so much as it clears space for the parts that actually need your attention — the crisp fry, the runny yolk, the moment you stir it all together and watch the colors blur into one dish. That moment is worth building a weeknight around.