I live under a rock, apparently, and am only now growing a dawning realization that everyone is talking about this Instant Pot thingy. (Moms on my Facebook feed, the recipes in my emails, etc. That’s totally “everyone” right?) Cursory googling tells me it’s a programmable pressure cooker that says it can do the job of a rice maker and other gadgets, cook a bunch of different things at once, and I dunno, fold my laundry and do my taxes.
Anyone here used this thing or have one already? (Worth it?)
Worth it to me, not necessarily worth it to everyone.
I’ve had mine around 6 months or so. It’s awesome for hardboiling eggs, which I do weekly. I’ve also made soups, chili, and various chicken dishes, all very good to excellent.
My biggest issue is storage. It’s big, heavy, and clunky. I don’t have counter or cupboard space for it, so every time I use it I’m hauling it up and back down a flight of stairs.
I guess it says something that I’m willing to do this and still use it regularly.
mmm
My friend just got one. She wanted it because you program it to turn on at a certain time and temp, as opposed to a crock pot which you have to turn on and leave on. Being able to have it turn on at a certain time gives her more options for dishes because the cooking time can vary.
She’s in love with it. Loves being able to prepare dinner the night before and have a hot meal ready for her and her son when they both get home in the evening.
Maybe I’m overly cautious, but a pressure cooker on a timer sounds like a recipe for destroying your home when you’re not there. What kind of operational caveats and warnings does it have?
The Instant Pot has some very large number of safety features to prevent it from exploding, though I still wouldn’t use it in that manner. I don’t want to leave unprepared food in a room-temperature sealed container, but that’s me.
As for the Instant Pot, I love it. Space isn’t an issue for me because it simply replaced my slow cooker, which is about identical in size. There are lots and lots of recipes on the internet, but it more or less boils down to this: the Instant Pot is a slow cooker, except not slow. It can do anything a crockpot can do in a significant fraction of the time.
That’s an important point. It’s not going to save you much or any time when compared to a recipe that uses the stovetop or oven. This is because it takes a while to get up to temperature/pressure, many recipes include saute step, releasing pressure isn’t instantaneous, and all the cutting/food prep has to be done upfront instead of as you go.
But it’s great as an alternative to a slow cooker.
I was given one for Christmas. Used it once. Don’t have another pressure cooker right now so will probably use it again for that someday. I think the ability to brown something I will be slow cooking in the same pan is going to be useful. The pot itself is inside a pretty sturdy unit so even if all the safety features fail it’s just going to blow the lid off and make a mess, not destroy your home.
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I’ve had it for about a year and a half now or so. It replaced my stovetop pressure cooker, so I’ve had some experience with pressure cookers before, obviously. I think it’s fantastic. I use it 2-3 times a week, mostly for making broth/stock, and also for making stews. There’s a thousand things you can use it for, but those are the most useful for me. I’ll do rice in it occasionally, as well.
I got one for Christmas. I threw out the slow cooker decades ago, because I realized that everything tasted better if I cooked it some other way. But we have a stovetop pressure cooker that my husband uses, but that I don’t like to deal with.
(Mostly I don’t like cleaning the stove-top pressure cooker, because it’s large and heavy and the flanges that lock it closed are a little sharp, so it’s awkward in the sink. This has much friendlier pieces to clean. But also, the stove-top pressure cooker is a little fussy to get to and keep at the right pressure. This is simple.)
But I admit, so far we’ve just used it as a rice cooker. We eat a lot of rice, and it is, indeed, an awesome rice cooker. You don’t need to worry about the pot boiling over and making a mess, or about the water cooking away and the rice burning. You just touch the “rice” setting and it does it’s thing. And the rice comes out great.
Depends on the recipe. I had to laugh at the recipe for 2-minute quinoa, which did, indeed, require bringing it up to pressure and then cooling it off, so it took maybe 20 minutes + the advertised 2, in contrast to stovetop quinoa, which takes about 15 minutes. But if you want to cook beans, you will save a lot of time with pressure. And while I haven’t tried it for stock, yet, I hope to drop “a few hours” to “short enough to cook stock after supper”. I need to test it on a weekend, first, though.
Anyhow, having previously learned that I don’t care for slow-cooker food, I plan to use it as a pressure cooker, a rice cooker, and probably as a yogurt-grower. Back when we had a stove with a pilot light we made our own yogurt, and I’d like to try that again.
I just put seven pints of stock in the freezer before I sat down to read the Dope. It is definitely fast enough to cook stock after supper, although I made today’s during the day. (Unless you are serving a roast chicken without dismembering it first, you may want to put the carcass in the pot and start it before you sit down to dinner, and strain it in the evening. But it could not be easier to do.)
I also use mine for making yogurt, and it comes out great. Just don’t do it in the mid afternoon. You can start it in the morning and put it in the fridge that night, or you can make it overnight, but you don’t want to start it at 3PM and end up with yogurt that is perfectly done at 1AM.
