(no subject)

[threemeninaboat]

What are your thoughts on the Instant Pot?

I don't have a pressure cooker and there's a vastness of pressure cooker Indian foods....

Comments

[elusis]

We like ours, for the most part. IP recipe times are notoriously short because they fail to acknowledge the time needed to get the pot up to pressure and down after for release, but they do the trick very well. We made tamarind BBQ ribs the other night and they were great.

[threemeninaboat]

How long does the up and down time take?

How about non meat foods?

[elusis]

Up depends on the temperature of your items in the pot - if you start with chicken that's rested a bit out of the fridge, and slightly warm broth, you'll take much less time than if you're using frozen solid chicken and cold or barely-thawed broth. So I have started warming whatever liquid I add to the pot when possible.

Down depends on the recipe. If you browse Instant Pot recipes (NY Times has a bunch; the website "This Old Gal" is full of affiliate links which get annoying but she has a lot of good recipes) some say "natural release," meaning don't touch the pot and let it cool down on its own until the valve is not under pressure, while others say "quick release" which means you carefully flip the valve from closed to open with a potholder or long spoon, and let the steam out (watch your cabinets). Natural release can take about 15 minutes or so.

We have done dried beans, sometimes to satisfaction and sometimes a little under-done (not at all hard to run them a bit longer if needed as your liquid & beans will still be quite warm so getting them back up to pressure isn't a big deal), rice and farro to satisfaction. Haven't done oatmeal but we probably will this winter (though F likes Neil Gaiman's porridge method of browning some of the oats in butter first so it may be a hard sell.)

We don't eat hard-boiled eggs but people who do apparently love it for that.

Did a GREAT cheesecake in it last winter and I want to do another soon.

There is really no point in doing veggies if you're just steaming them, essentially - time spent is overall not that different between steaming on the stove and in the IP, and the microwave is even faster. I can see the advantage for parents of small children in that you can set the thing and leave it unsupervised without worrying about a hot stove and open boiling water, but for our purposes, we just do stovetop or microwave.

The sautee function runs very hot and it can go from "seems ready" to "omg scorching my aromatics" if not tended to carefully. Doing everything including your sauteeing and browning is easy for clean-up but honestly the pot on the counter is a bit tall for short-arse me to easily see and work in, so about half the time I just use a pan on the stove and then transfer stuff to the IP.

We have not made yogurt with the yogurt function but it makes fantastic cottage cheese via the white vinegar method.

[zyzyly]

I have one, and I like it a lot for the things it's good for. I am currently on an acorn squash kick, and it does them perfectly in about 12 minutes. I make an amazingly good lasagna in it as well. If you are brave, find the Instant Pot Facebook page, where some think it is the steaming second coming.

It is a handy kitchen tool to have.

[elusis]

The IP Facebook page is one of the worst places on the Internet.

"How would I cook bacon in my IP?"
"I JUST GOT THIS THING AND I HATE IT, STEAM IS SCARY" [insert 150 comments about "drama"]
"I have 7 children and a DH who won't cook; I got 5 IPs and look at them all with their decals on my kitchen counter!!! I can make 150 hard boiled eggs at once!!!!"

[rhiannonstone]

I love mine. More than anything, I use it for being able to prepare sweet potatoes and various squashes within a reasonable time on a weeknight, instead of having to plan far enough ahead to allow the hours they'd normally take to cook.

I don't recommend white potatoes, though, they get... weird.

It's also great for broths, rice, turning meat into shreddable meat.

The sautee function is surprisingly useful, but you gotta watch it, because it can get real hot real quick.