The Instant Pot Duo Evo Plus is currently on sale at Amazon for $70 which according to camelcamelcamel.com is $30 cheaper than the previous low. I love gadgets, especially gadgets the result in good food. I use sous vide frequently and I have a BBQ drum smoker which both produce food that is better than other methods.
People rave about their Instant Pots so this seems like a perfect match for me. If I’m understanding it, though, the main advantage of the IP (and pressure cookers in general) is the speed at which they cook, not the quality of the result. If one cooks every day that’s a big deal but I cook less often and more as a hobby so I don’t mind the extra time if the results are better. For example I take an entire afternoon to make French Onion soup; I brine my fried chicken overnight. So I’m wondering if an IP is right for me and I’m worried it will just end up taking space in my kitchen.
That’s a long-winded prelude to the main question: what dishes/meals taste best when prepared with an IP?
I bought one a few months ago and I love it. It’s great for stews and soups and not so great for things that are normally grilled or broiled in my experience.
My best two successes have been avgolemono soup and beef stroganoff. Recipes below:
I made some galbi jjim in it which was fucking amazing. Dunno if I’ve ever had it NOT from an IP but holy cow it was good AND it made much less of a mess than it could have made in a conventional manner because the gochujang stains pretty hard if it splatters. And now I want to make some.
I completely get where the OP is coming from. I like gadgets, too, and I’ve had my IP for a year or so.
I agree that it’s biggest selling point is its quickness, which, to me, ranks very low in priority in kitchen appliance features.
I’ve made some good, never amazing, dishes in it, but once I got an air fryer the IP has been relegated mostly to boiled egg duty (a task at which it does excel).
I mostly use mine for making chicken stock. I don’t think it makes better chicken stock than simmering on the stove, just a lot faster-- an hour (1 1/2 hours including heat up and cool down) as opposed to 4-5 hours simmering. It does seem to extract the collagen out of the bones better than on the stove-- when I refrigerate the stock it seems more likely to get that jello consistency.
I also make hard boiled eggs in the IP and it does do that job very well.
I don’t have a instant pot but do have a pressure cooker which i use a lot. It is fantastic for tough cuts of meat, and making things like beef/lamb stews and chili’s better IMHO then regular pot cooking and a hell of a lot quicker. Results, especially the texture are somewhat similar to a slow cooker but the flavor is more intense like it’s suppose to be. I do find slow cooking flavor very lacking, sort of washed out.
Stew, soups and roasts are the best in an IP. Why cook something all day long in a crockpot when it will be done in under an hour in the IP (including prep)?
Thanks for the responses, all! I especially liked don_t_ask’s link and it was as I suspected. Given unlimited funds and space in my kitchen I’d get an Instant Pot but for now I’ll pass.
Broth/stock is the biggest thing for me. You can get a full and flavorful broth in a fraction of the time in an Instapot. Just remember you’re not going to get much/any evaporation, so use a little less water than you would if doing it on the stovetop. But I do remember reading about chefs who swear by making stock in a pressure cooker vs the conventional stovetop method.
I love it for beans, as well. It also works well as a rice cooker. I’ll do some stews in it or I will do one part of the stew in it and finish it on the stovetop to save a lot of time. (My stews typically take two hours or so to do. With an Instapot I could reduce that to about 45 minutes.)
Plus it has a slow cooking mode if you want to slow cook. (I haven’t used that, though.)
To be honest, it’s my most used non-stovetop appliance in the kitchen. I use it probably three times a week on average. I know I’m going to use it today for the chicken thighs I have defrosted.
While I have a pressure cooker (though not an instantpot), I use it for very little other than beans. Most soups and stews I do in a slow cooker, which does take longer, but gives me the ability to sample and tinker with. Since I’m cooking for myself and the wife, speed is rarely needed.
The only other class of dishes I like it for is ones that I would otherwise slow cook, but use a lot of dairy, in that I’ve had dairy break down more than I like in a slow cooker (probably because I also like to cook with acid). In that case, the slower time frame of the pressure cooker is good. But even then, it’s a 3-4 time a year thing. So, here’s the one dish that my instant pot gets used for.
Although I add about a cup of my homemade chicken stock to up the mouthfeel and use canned Rotel with chilis instead of canned tomatoes. Adds more flavor for the same easy of pantry stocking.
The appeal of cooking slowly on the stovetop for hours is the smell wafting thru the house, maybe for hours before eating. Anticipating a delicious meal is part of the joy of cooking. Instapots and microwaves rob you of that. I’m retired of course, so I have the time to spend.
Here’s the thing, if you already have a pressure cooker and/or a slow cooker, an Instant Pot isn’t going to really buy you anything in terms of your meal’s flavor or whatever. They’re just a more convenient version of what you already have.
And neither of those devices necessarily does anything you can’t do with a regular old pot- they just speed it up, or make it more hands-off. For example, we tend to be pretty militant about reusing chicken bones/trimmings and vegetable trimmings to make stock. We tend to use the pressure cooker if we’re somewhat crunched for time, or the slow-cooker if we aren’t and need an extra burner on the stove. But there’s nothing special about either one- if we had neither, we could just use a pot on the stove- it would be more fiddly than either, and somewhere in between on speed.
Same thing with beans, as a matter of fact. And stuff like cream of soups.
So my thinking is that if you already have a pressure cooker and a slow cooker, then there’s no real need to get an Instant Pot. If you don’t have either, then an Instant Pot is the way to go. If you have one but not the other, then it’s probably worth some research and introspection to see if you’d prefer a standalone slow cooker/pressure cooker, or an Instant Pot.
One thing to consider though, is that Instant Pots typically don’t generate as much pressure (and therefore temperature, and faster cooking time) as dedicated pressure cookers.
Sure, if you have a stovetop pressure cooker and slow cooker maybe you don’t want an Instant Por. I had a stovetop pressure cooker, but I didn’t like using it. The Instant Pot made pressure cooling brainless for me. Plus I didn’t have a rice maker, and while it took me months to get around to trying that functionality, now I use it all the time. Once again makes making rice completely brainless. I’m good at stovetop rice, but you do have to set a timer and adjust the gas once it comes to a boil. With the pot, it’s set it and forget it. Plus it frees up stovetop space.
I had a slow cooker and I gave it away. It was a waste of space to me and I used it pretty much never. At least now I know I have the ability to use it on the Instant Pot. So that’s like three functionalities; pressure cooker, rice cooker, slow cooker all in one. Oh, plus it does have a yogurt setting which I have used once that worked really welll.
It truly is my best kitchen buy of the last five years or so. Come to think of it, really my only major kitchen buy in that time period.
The Instant Pot isn’t a true pressure cooker (it’s technically a multi-cooker). It does cook under pressure but it doesn’t get to a high enough pressure for doing canning. It is also therefore safer than a true pressure cooker.
The IP can be used as a slow cooker (like a Crock Pot) but it’s not super well suited for that. It does have a slow cook function but it has a metal pot while a slow cooker typically has a ceramic pot which retains heat much better.
You need to have at least two cups of water (or something watery like broth) in the IP for it to come up to pressure. That means that you need to make at least a cup if rice to use it to make rice. I am single and never make that much rice so I still make my rice on the stove which is just as easy anyway. This is a repeating theme but while the IP is pretty good at making rice, a dedicated rice cooker will do a better job.
One thing that I like is that the IP has a saute function. It would be silly to use it just to saute something but if you have to saute something as part of an entire recipe (like garlic and onions in a stew), it’s nice to use it for that. In the stroganoff recipe that I linked above, you first saute the onions in the IP. Then you brown the meat in the IP. Then you add the chicken stock and spices and pressure cook. It saves having to clean an extra pan. (Then you add the noodles dry and pressure cook some more).
Second, the Instant Pot Max apparently has a “Pressure Canning” setting, with two pressure levels: 6.5 psi for high acid foods; 15 for low acid foods. That said, I wouldn’t pressure can in anything but a pressure canner, or a pressure cooker/pressure canner (something that is explicitly both.)
I’m not sure about that. I cook with 1/4 - 1/2 cup liquid all the time. (Look at the Butter Chicken recipe posted before.) Most food I cook (chicken, beef, onions, etc.) releases a shit ton of water while it cooks, so the only thing I need to do is make sure I have enough liquid not to scorch the bottom of the pot. Two cups of water is a shitton and I never use anything close to that unless I’m making broth/stock. Otherwise, my stews would come out bland, bland, bland. Hell, most people add way too much liquid when making stew on the stovetop, too.
One thing about the IP that’s pretty darned handy is that you can set it up and when all is done it will hold your dish at temperature essentially indefinitely without actually cooking it more so it’s great if you have time to cook right now but might not later and if you don’t know exactly when you’re going to be serving it. That right there is one of my favorite features of the IP.
The OP mentions one Instant Pot model on sale at Amazon. There’s another one also on sale there. It’s a three-quart, 9-in-1 model and I ordered it on Saturday. It’s supposed to be delivered later today. There are a couple of dishes I want try with it.
(And by the way, I wonder about the differing levels of Instant Pot models. One has nine features, another seven, a third has only six. My suspicion is the only difference between them is the software and they’re just limiting the feature set in particular models.)
