I usually just sautee on the stovetop anyway, because of the amount of space I need to do a big batch of meat, but I find the pot’s sautee feature surprisingly effective, if you set it to the highest setting (there are three settings: low, normal, and high.) I’ll sometimes brown my onions in there. I mean, it will definitely color your veggies, not just soften them.
The saute feature is attractive, for a slow cooker. You can do that with an ordinary stove top pressure cooker, and there are slow cookers that have that feature, but this combines everything in one unit.
Also, the timing features may be useful, I’d have to try it out and see.
We’ve got a small crock pot. I think it’s a 3 or 4 quart? Anyway, we don’t eat a lot of stews, soups, and such to begin with, nor are we fans of more-than-2-day-old leftovers. If I do make stew I find it easier to saute everything in my soup/stew pot then leave it turned to low on a back burner, stirring it every so often. I’ve also done similar with brisket in the oven in a pan covered with foil, temp at 300 or 325F for X hours.
When I do use the crock pot, it’s almost always for something already frozen and just needs a dump-and-stir sauce. Handy for when we’re both out of the house for severa hours.
If state pot legalization keeps rolling, expect Ronco to capitalize on this concept. Only $19.95!
Hey, it also makes rice. My going to college next year kidlet will have one in tow for her dorm room.
Me, I use it as a sterilizer for my beer yeast containers. Works
There’s a little popup button - if that’s still up, the pot is still under pressure and you can’t open it (literally can’t - it will not open). Sometimes when I’m pretty sure the pressure is about done, I’ll tap the button with a utensil. If the pressure is low enough, the button will then drop and I can open it.
Letting the pressure release naturally vs immediate release: some foods really need quick release or they’ll be overcooked and inedible.
The biggest time savers I’ve found so far:
- dried beans
- Beef stew (literally 5 minutes or so once it got to pressure).
Would a dedicated rice cooker be more useful for your kid? It would be smaller and always make perfect rice. I actually don’t like using the IP for rice, since I never seem to get the water/rice/time ratio correct to make fluffy rice. That might be even more of a challenge for someone trying to make just a serving or two of rice in the IP.
A small (3 quart) Instant Pot isn’t much larger than a smallish rice cooker, and would do as well on smaller quantities of rice - plus it can do other stuff. I’d definitely choose an IP over a single-use appliance.
Look around at various websites to get ideas on the ratio of water to rice; I seem to recall that in a pressure cooker, the ratio is 1:1 for white rice versus the more typical 2:1.
The instant pot recommends wetting the rice by rinsing it, and also adding its volume in water. So, a bit more than 1-1. I rinsed one cup of white rice, and also added 1.25 cups of water, and the rice came out perfect, fwiw.
Yeah, I’m used to doing a scant 2:1 for stovetop rice (1.5:1 for jasmine rice) and have been a bit skeptical of the ratios for the Instant Pot, at first, but 1:1 works just right. They do recommend rinsing it, and I usually do, but when I don’t, I just add a little extra water (maybe another 1/8 cup per cup of rice) and it’s fine.
At about 6:30 this evening I looked up and realized I hadn’t heard anybody in the kitchen. That meant dinner was not in progress. So I reached into the freezer and found a frozen ginger/teriyaki pork loin.
A whole pork loin, frozen solid. And not just kitchen refrigerator frozen, but deep freeze “this is the freezer-only freezer” frozen. You know what I mean.
I also grabbed a bag of sliced bell peppers and onions, and headed upstairs to the big Instant pot. I got it all in there and started it up just before 7:00, texting the roomies to let them know it was in progress.
Around then I got stuck on a phone call, and roomie started the little instant pot with rice. When I finally came back in the pork was falling apart beautifully (I had trouble slicing it because it just shredded at the touch!) The pot was now full of hot teriyaki sauce, so I hit the saute button and poured in some frozen mixed veg.
I guess we ate around 8:05ish, but it could have been sooner if I hadn’t been on the phone.
Two Instant pots, one delicious dinner, which would have been an impossible situation without them. If we’d had to do that pork in the oven it would have been a jerky log and yet still bloody in the middle at 10:00pm.
And I was able to walk away and deal with other priorities while it cooked.
Now that’s one helluvan endorsement, TrueCelt!
Finally got one. What did it for me is people saying they got rid of their crock pots when they got this. I understand it can function as a crock pot, but still, I really love my crock pot. This thing was really hard to get my hands on. Amazon was sold out, Best Buy was sold out, Boston Store, Target, Walmart, all sold out. I checked them every day. I actually went to a few Targets (had to go there anyways) and not only were they sold out when I checked the aisle, but two of the times there was someone standing there staring at the empty spot while asking an employee if they had anymore in stock.
Kept checking Amazon, they got them in, I ordered mine and the next day it was out of stock again. It was like trying to buy concert tickets.
So, I own a pressure cooker, but this was much easier. Got my ingredients together got home, opened it, cleaned it and started my recipe around 4ish. Including cutting, searing, shredding etc, I was probably eating by 6.
As everyone that has this or has used crock pot knows, this would have taken all day. Not that that’s a problem, but, thought about in the middle of the day, it’s feasible to pick the stuff up on the way home from work and still have it for dinner.
Here’s what I made:
Pressure Cooker Barbacoa Beef
It is adapted for the Instant Pot.
I’m not ready to get rid of my crock pot, but I’ll certainly move the [regular] pressure cooker out of the kitchen. I’m not even sure of the last time I used it.
Oh, and that pressure release thing on top. It’s pretty touchy. I think I bumped it at some point and it let out the steam. It was kind of a PITA close it with steam spraying out, hot too.
One more thing, I see that it does “baked” potatoes. Has anyone tried that? I keep meaning to look into getting a toaster oven, but the main reason would be for baked potatoes. I hate having the oven on for an hour and a half just for a potato. Running this for 15 minutes would be a good alternative.
It sounds like a variant on the Thermomix, which is comprehensively reviewed on this Australian cooking show.
I don’t want to hijack the thread, but I’m reminded that the most valuable cooking appliance in my dorm room was my old-fashioned aluminum popcorn popper. (It was one of the deep ones with a solid aluminum top.) I ended up putting a light dimming extension cord on it (which is probably against the Electrical Code, but who cares?) to better control the heat. Anyway, I could make popcorn, instant potatoes, soup, scrambled and fried eggs, rice, pasta, ramen, and just about anything else you can imagine. Put a piece of screen or a strainer in it and you could steam things, too. I ended up getting rid of my skillet, hot plate, and other stuff.
It cost about $12 back then.
We recently got one and tried it out for the first time today with this recipe:
(I substituted actual spices for the onion soup mix). The entire time, start to finish, was two hours and it came out pretty damn good. Not the best pot roast I’ve ever had, but definitely the easiest and very, very tender and the saute mode give it a really good sear. Overall, I’d give it an 8/10. Next time I’ll use a bit more salt and pepper and less oil. But I’m quite pleased with it. Clean up was a breeze, too.
Update on the baked potatoes: 2 medium(ish) sized baked potatoes in the Instant Pot with a cup of water, set it for 12 minutes. Not done.
But other than being Not Done, they were just as Not Done, if you pulled them out of the oven and way too early. I’m sure setting it to, say, 15 or 16 minutes would have been fine. That is, I’ve tried microwaving potatoes a few times and never really liked them. This seemed like it had potential. I try it again in the next week or so. The thing I wasn’t expecting was that the skin just sloughed off. Normally what I do is cut it in half, flip it over (so the open side is down) and squeeze all the potato out and toss the skin. With this, I just grabbed it with a paper towel and the skin just came right off.
Also, I had a taste for Hominy. I tried to find some kind of recipe that included hominy (other than pozole). Oddly, I found a lot of directions on how to make hominy. As in buying the dried corn and lye and actually making it yourself, in the instant pot.
I had a gang of people over today, and I made butternut squash soup in my Instant Pot (and also got stuff for sandwiches). The soup was divine, and the pot also worked great for keeping it hot and ready for several hours without it getting thick and gross.
You’re not really supposed to use it that way anyway, at least for perishable foods like meat. The manual specifically warns you not to do this. Rather, you’re supposed to cook the food right away (or at least set the timer to start cooking within an hour) and then let the device keep the fully cooked food warm afterwards.