My friends got me an Instant Pot for Christmas. I didn’t know I wanted one but now…I’m addicted to the thing! I’ve already bought 2 cookbooks, joined 3 FB groups, a YouTube channel, and a subreddit. (I’ve also used the thing to cook with.)
While I’ve been sticking to main dishes so far, I’m tempted by the multiple cheesecake recipes I keep seeing. Have any Dopers tried making desserts or anything other than meat dishes in their pot? What were the results. Any tips or warnings for the newbie? I’m all ears!
I’ve not made any desserts or other sweets in my Instant Pot yet but I’ll pass along a tip that you’ve probably already come across. It might be a smart idea to have a sealing ring that you use exclusively for sweet items to avoid tastes transferring from the regular ring. Not sure how important this is but it is something I read a lot when I first got our pot.
I have a friend who is super into her Instant Pot. She’s been making instructional videos and demonstrating recipes for quite some time now. She makes everything from appetizers to desserts, even cheesecake! If you’re interested, you can find her links here. She’s just getting started with her social media, but she’s legit. We’ve been friends since high school.
I bought mine at a B&M store. I love love love it! I do second a second gasket, one for sweet and one for savory dishes; I keep both in the freezer between uses to keep the smell down.
I just made a pot of split pea soup in mine. MMMMMMMM!
We got ours in December and are using it almost daily. Tonight we made black beans in it. Tip: don’t slow-cook the beans, pressure-cook them. 8 hours of slow-cooking left them still pretty tough; 20 minutes of pressure-cooking softened them right up.
We’ve also made lots of rice and oatmeal in them, as well as rice pudding. They’re great for refried beans (pressure-cook then saute with grease and spices) and for broth/stock.
And I’m trying to use less plastic, so I’ve started making yogurt in it. A half-gallon of milk makes a quart of thick yogurt and a quart of whey, and the whey is good in bread.
My go-to recipe site is pressureluckcooking.com. Jeff is awesome! He also has a YouTube channel (under Pressure Luck), and demonstrates how to make every single recipe. I’ve made about 18 of his recipes so far, all easy and yummy.
I guess the only tip I have is to think about getting a steam diverter accessory - it’s usually silicone, and goes over the pressure release valve. This way the steam doesn’t go straight up, and ruin the underside of your cabinets. There’s a really cute one where the steam comes out of a guy’s ears! :-). You can find different ones on Amazon.
I’m thinking about getting one, probably one of the three-quart ones. But they range in price from about sixty bucks (for one that can do six different things) to 120 bucks (for one that can do ten things). Are those additional features worth it?
I have a Cosori electric pressure cooker – pretty much the same as Instant Pot, just a different brand. I use it a lot, couple of times a week at least, mostly for one-pot meal types of things but have tried one cheesecake that works well, is very easy, and everybody likes it.
I’ve made some pot roasts which were very good, some one-pot pasta dishes that were OK. Lots of beans, like for red beans and rice and 15 bean soup. Several pots of congee for my Dad after he had dental surgery and needed a very soft diet for a couple weeks; the chicken got tender enough that he could eat it. Made risotto a couple of times and it was OK, definitely quick and easy, but my traditional method is better.
Followed the recipe closely except I left out the coriander because I don’t like it and used shredded carrots from a bag rather than chopping whole ones. Really good stuff, highly recommended.
RE: Additional features (6 settings vs 10 settings) – I find that I almost always just use Manual settings anyway. IMHO those features are more about marketing than actual usefulness. The exception might be that if you intend to use it to make yogurt it would probably be handy to have one with a fully automatic yogurt setting.