I bought the 8 quart and sometimes I wish it was bigger. But I do a lot of bulk cooking.
Thanks. What’s the smallest about of food you can cook in it? Do you mostly use it with pressure, or as a slow cooker?
I looked at the Instant Pot on Amazon, there are a concerning number of negative reviews. Quite a few people loved it for several months until it quit working. They claim no customer service. I don’t know, I still use a regular stovetop pressure cooker.
My wife could speak better to this as she was more involved, but our first Instant Pot had an electronic defect show up after just a few days of use. As I recall, my wife exchanged emails with their customer service over a weekend, and we had a replacement about a week later without much hassle. And the new one has been working well ever since. Seems to have been a very solid purchase for our household.
We have the Bluetooth-enabled version, if it matters.
I got one and am still learning all the functions - but so far I have pressure cooked a batch of beans, used it as a rice cooker, and did the saute the beast/classic pot roast. I have a sauerbraten marinating for the 17th [had a frozen hunk of cow, made up the pickle, added both to a heavy vacuum sealing bag and tossed in the fridge til thawed, then back in the freezer. When I take it out the wednesday before the 17th I will toss it back in the fridge to thaw and finish marinading.] I plan on doing the classic saute then crock pot cook the sauerbraten, though I might pressure cook it as an experiment though.
I am thinking of doing the homemade yoghurt recipe I found online, and I am thinking of getting one of the flan inserts [I think it could also be used to do a classic plum pudding.]
We used to make yogurt in our oven, back when we had a gas oven with a pilot light. The recipe, as I recall, was:
Buy some milk and some yogurt you like. Bring the milk to a boil on the stove, to kill any stray pathogens, and let it cool to yogurt-friendly temps. Stir in a spoonful of yogurt. Put it in the warm oven and wait until it’s done.
Yes, we had an error. I wrote to them and we had a replacement in 10 days. The new one is trucking along fine.
My only real quarrel with it is the gasket is stinky. I kept meaning to order more gaskets, and this thread inspired me!
I’ve had mine since July of 2016 using it 4 or five times a week and it works fine for me. I haven’t needed customer service so I can’t say anything about that.
I’ve had mine for about two years, FWIW. With how often I use it, I’d consider it worth it, even if I had to buy a new one every two years.
I got the 6 quart instant pot a few months ago and it’s worked great for whatever I’ve used it for. I mostly use it for making chicken stock (in 1/4 the time it takes on the stove) and for that I wish I had the 8 quart version. But for most other things the 6 quart would probably be a good all-around size, depends on what you’re mostly going to use it for.
I don’t know the answer to the ‘‘smallest amount of food.’’
I use it mostly with pressure.
Here’s an example of how I used it today:
Dumped in chopped carrots, onions and peppers on ‘‘sautee’’ setting for 5 minutes, stirred with garlic.
Added beans (dry), corn, spices, 8 cups of chicken broth and 2lbs of frozen solid chicken.
Set to cook on medium pressure for 1 hour.
Viola. Chicken and black bean soup.
Update: I got one as a Christmas present. starting out small, boiling water… Since then I did a couple of beef dishes (short ribs in a dark wine-based sauce, for example), chick and beef broth, and even successfully cooked bean soup. Then I tried to make hard boiled eggs for Passover.
My husband had put the pot away after the last time it was used, and he put the gasket around the inner pot, under the lip, instead of where it belongs on the lid. “I didn’t know where it went”. (which is weird, since he uses a stove-top pressure cooker all the time – you’d think he was familiar with how the gasket works.) I didn’t notice, since I’ve always put it away in its “use location” in the lid. I put water in the pot, carefully arranged the eggs, and set it to cook…
A while later I noticed that it said “burn”. I unplugged it, plugged it in again, nothing happens. So I cooked the eggs on the stove (they came out perfect). After everything had cooled down, I examined the pot, noticed the mis-placed gasket, put the gasket where it belonged and tried to turn on the pot. No dice. It hasn’t worked since. The on-line trouble shooting page says the fuse is blown. That’s not a user-serviceable part.
I called customer service. After a long phone call, I was promised I’d get an email, to which I should reply with all sorts of photos. (photo of the pot plugged in and not working, photo of the serial number, photo of the sales receipt…)
Wish me luck. I won’t be surprised if getting it fixed ends up being a lot more trouble than buying a new one.
Bump to let y’all know Amazon has the 3 qt version as a deal of the day at $59.99
Yay! Lots of emails later, they are sending me a new pot. “At this time, we are sending you a full unit to replace your base, please feel free to keep the working parts of your original as spares.”
I have enjoyed the thing, I hope the replacement comes soon.
I’m “meh” on it. I just don’t find that it saves me all that much time, plus it has limitations that annoy me. For instance, I’ve found it works way better on thawed meat (v frozen) and that means that I have to remember to get the meat out of the freezer before I leave for work. If that’s the case, it’s just as easy for cook it the old fashioned way.
Every time this thread gets bumped I think the same thing (and so close to 4/20, too!)
I am a big fan of slow-cooking cuts of meat on the Big Green Egg: pork shoulder, brisket, chuck roast – all those tough, inedible cuts that magically transform into tender treats when subjected to six hours at 225, with the fat rendering down to provide moisture and a flavor bath.
I say that as prologue: I was skeptical of the InstaPot when it first was described.
But last night, dinner plans out fell through, and I did the following:
Took 5 pounds of chuck roast
1 cup of water
1 envelope of Lipton Onion Soup
1 envelope of instant gravy
1 envelope of ranch dressing mix
Tossed all that into the IP, set it for 2 hours on “Meat,” and came back 2 1/2 hours later to a delicious, tender, pot roast.
Prep time: 2 minutes.
We live in the future, as far as I’m concerned. Maybe the smoky taste wasn’t there (I bet I could have bought liquid smoke, though!) but the ease of the cook can’t be beat.
Further update – the replacement has been working fine. I mostly use it to brew stock and cook beans.
The thing I like most about it is the “set it and forget it” aspect. I can throw all the stock ingredients into the instant pot, tell it to cook, and walk away. I don’t have to fiddle to get the stove to just barely simmer, and I don’t have to stay home (or awake) to supervise. When it finishes, it holds the food on “warm” indefinitely, so if the broth finishes but it’s late enough that I don’t want to strain it before bed, it is happy to sit overnight. (or until tomorrow night.) Similarly, I can start chili or split pea soup when it happens to be convenient to do so, and serve it at supper time, without needing to pay attention to it in-between.
It is also pretty easy to clean.
The thing I like least about it is that we don’t have enough electrical outlets, so I need to unplug the toaster to use it, and sometimes forget to plug the toaster in again. The toaster isn’t obvious about not being “on” when it’s unplugged.
The other thing I don’t like is how much counter space it takes up. But I like it enough to keep it.
Being single, I have a 3-quart, and I LOVE it. Yeah, the gasket absorbs odors, so I got an extra one (shipping is free, no less) and store them in the freezer in bags labeled “sweet” and “savory”.
My favorite use for it is cooking pasta. It actually takes less time, and is great during the summer because it doesn’t steam up the kitchen; however, one thing I’ve learned is that you will need more liquid than you think you will. If I dump in a jar of spaghetti sauce, I fill the jar about half-full of water, shake it up, and pour that in too. It doesn’t dilute the flavor, and you do need extra water so it will reach pressure.
Oh yeah, that’s the other thing I like about it. It’s really well insulated, so it doesn’t heat up the kitchen.