The instructions for my instant pot specifically warned against doing this.
The Colonel modified a home pressure cooker for his first batch, but once he’d worked out the recipe and procedure, the company bought and uses commercial pressure fryers, which run several thousand dollars to start. Home pressure cookers do not seal correctly for oil, and will not get the oil up to a proper temperature anyways.
It is fantastic for making soup stock. I used to simmer it for 4-5 hours, stirring and babysitting it the whole time. Now an hour in the Instant Pot makes the most amazing, silky, collagen enriched stock.
FWIW, Instant Pots are a low pressure pressure cooker. 10-11.5 PSI where at least our conventional pressure cooker, before it was retired, ran up to 15.
The rice cooker takes an hour, I can take frozen chicken breasts, some stock, some veggies, and a curry and have them hot and ready before the rice is done.
Yeah, not sure why your area stores don’t stock Jumbo eggs. Ask the diary manager to see if they can order some for you. I can find them at the local Wegmans and Stop & Shop.
I LOVE my Instant Pot. I use that more than my slow-cooker now. I use it for stew, soups, roast beef, and hard-boiled eggs. I’m always looking for new recipes to try in it.
BTW - Jumbo eggs are plentiful at Walmart and our local grocery store.
Where are you not finding them? All the usual groceries I shop at here in Chicago (Pete’s, Jewel, Mariano’s, Shop & Save) have them.
I’ve never bothered pressure cooking eggs. For me it’s an inch or so of water in a pot, a steaming basket, bring water to boil (maybe 2-3 minutes with that little amount), eggs out of the fridge, 12 minutes for hard boiled. Ice water dunk. Peel. Done.
If you’re afraid of modern pressure cooker explosions, you had better not keep carbonated sodas or beer in the home. They can get up to pressures greater than your typical pressure cooker.
We use our pressure cooker 2-3 x a week; for making oat groats in 25 minutes instead of 3 hours, for making soups and stocks quickly, for making delicious stews and chowders in 30 minutes instead of 4-5 or more hours. Never had an explosive/leakage incident of significance at all in the 30 years we’ve been using it. It was quite the go to device when the kids were at home, with us all having busy schedules, and the need to get food done fast and good.
Yes, though does that really make it a “low pressure” pressure cooker because there is cooking at much lower pressures? That still pretty high. Maybe “medium pressure”? Are there standard definitions for this? The IP operates at around 11.5 psi on HIGH and 7 psi on LOW. It will apparently get to 15 psi briefly while coming to pressure, but the operating pressure is as you said. The difference in cooking times, for those interested, is about 20%. So for every 10 minutes on a 15psi recipe, add 2 minutes using an ~12 psi unit.
I like to put peeled hard boiled eggs into the smoker and cold smoke 'em for 30 minutes. Best deviled eggs ever!
What kind of set-up do you use for that? Like for the cold-smoking, I mean. All these years of smoking and I’ve never bothered to try to figure out a good way of doing it, as it seemed difficult to keep the temp down in at least the equipment I use, a Weber Smokey Mountain. I suppose I could always just light a couple coals and that’s it, but I’m curious what others do.
Masterbuilt Electric Smoker I bought from Home Depot on massive discount a couple of years back. This one. Took me another year to find the cold smoker attachment for it (“slow smoker” in their catalog) but once I had it, it was a game-changer. It keeps the heating element totally separate from the main smoker and just feeds smoke into the cabinet. Fill the hopper with wood chips and it will self-feed for at least a couple of hours.
OK, yeah, that looks perfect. For years I’ve meant to try to jerryrig something like this with ductwork to the WSM, to keep the heat part separate from the smoking area and give it enough run so the smoke is plenty cool. But I never got around to trying. I’ll have to see if one of your units or similar pop up cheap around here. $250 is not a bad price, but I’d feel a little guilty spending money on yet another smoker or grill.
The cold smoker attachment is actually self-contained and has its own power cord. I’ve seen people buy just that and attach it to their other brand smoker or grill just using metal dryer vent tubing.
We don’t own a pressure cooker. Growing up, my mom used one for making artichokes. I wish I had one just for that use.
Try caning without one. And for making a good bone broth you can use a pressure cooker for a few hours or leave your stove on all night (and if making turkey broth, your house will smell like ass while using an open stock pot).
Oh, nice. I did some googling and found this, which would be a perfect project:
Anyway, back to pressure cookers. (But that Masterbuilt unit looks perfect for what I was envisioning.)
It’s tough to cold smoke with just a common vertical smoker. My big grill and smoker has a separate smoke box and it’s 5 feet long so I can move the meat far away from the smoke box. Cold smoking can get tricky because cold smoke isn’t hot and needs some impetus to move. My earliest attempt resulting in a large cardboard box filled with dense cold smoke while only a trickle of it made it’s way into my smoker.
If your vertical smoker has a shelf for a water pan right above the fire you might do fairly well with just a few coals burning in the bottom with wet wood chips to provide the flavor. Just add the wood chips a little at a time so you don’t end up with a pile of burning chips heating up the smoker.
Well yeah, that’s because a instant pot is a pressure cooker, among other things.
Mostly pressure cookers ate intended to speed up moist heat cooking methods. So things like cooking tough meat, beans, vegetables, etc… are all going to be accelerated in a pressure cooker.
And example might be if you want to make scratch chicken soup, you could debone a chicken and make stock in a pressure cooker in under an hour, instead of several hours. It ta it from an all day affair to an afternoon with some time left over.
If you’re regularly cooking hard boiled eggs under pressure, try cooking them for 45-60 minutes. The longer time will brown the whites similar in a similar process to how meat browns when it’s cooked. It gives the eggs a more savory taste. I know it can seem weird to think about browing the whites of the eggs, but it’s worth trying it out because they taste pretty good that way. It’s similar to how grilled meat tastes different than baked meat.