A while back I wrote about my Instant Pot and how much I like it. When folks talk about their Instant Pot, they’re close to enraptured! While I’m all for loving your kitchen equipment, the more important thing is how tools help you in kitchen. Let’s face it, if you can cook and cleanup faster you get to spend more time doing what you want to do. Isn’t that part of the point of having these tools?

Don’t get me wrong, I love my slow-cooker and traditional cooking as much as anyone. But as the temperatures start toying with the 100-degree mark (that’s 38C for you metric folks!) I’m not really all that anxious to embroil the kitchen. Sure, I’ll spend some time by the grill, but even that is a downer when the temperatures high. For years I’ve been trying to discover ways to continue putting delicious meals on the table without being drenched in sweat. My Instant Pot has definitely helped. That’s a definite “win” in my books!

Instant Pots

The other reason I love my Instant Pot revolves around our hectic schedule. My youngest daughter will start her sophomore year in high school this Fall, so this is our eighth kiddo through the summertime process. Honestly, I believe it’s getting worse. She’s a 3-sport athlete, competing in volleyball, basketball, and track. During the summer, all the coaches think these kids have nothing else to do than work on their particular sport. It’s also become the rage to add weight-lifting and conditioning. The other day she had basketball camp for two hours to start her day, followed by volleyball open gym for over an hour, and she wrapped up her day with four hours of volleyball summer league. On the plus side, all those activities were here in town. Unfortunately, it meant that I had a load of driving to do. While it’s only 20 minutes to the gym and back, that’s 20 minutes per event. And of course, they were spread throughout the day! That led to 60 minutes in the car.

As you can imagine, the day gets pretty fractured. Trying to get meals on the table for the Hectic Family was quite the scheduling nightmare. On the bright side, days like this give me loads of opportunities to hone my meal planning skills. One of the best features of the Instant Pot is that it’s a forgiving device. If an activity runs late, the Instant Pot will simply hold the meal in a “warming phase” so that it’s still hot, but not burned. Try that with your stovetop or oven! Furthermore, because it’s a sealed environment, the foods don’t dry out. Another huge plus!

Summertime Instant Pot Recipes

Here are ten of the recipes that are Hectic Manor favorites using the Instant Pot:

Instant Pot Mac ’n’ Cheese

Just because it’s Summer, that doesn’t mean that Mac ’n’ Cheese leaves the ranks of comfort food. In fact, I think the Hectic Family would be happy if I served this simple dish at least once a week. While it’s not all that hard to make on the stovetop, the boiling water does add to the heat in the kitchen. Plus, you have to be actively involved during the cooking process. With this Instant Pot variation you can set it and leave it alone. This particular recipe isn’t from scratch because it starts with a box of Mac ’n’ Cheese. I’ve tried several brands, and I think every single one turned out better than the stovetop variations. Most importantly, every batch was consistent…never overdone, never under-cooked. With my hectic life, that’s a huge plus.

In addition, this recipes scales beautifully. If you’re going to have a hungry horde descending on your table, you can make several boxes of Mac ’n’ Cheese all at once…all in the same Instant Pot. The only caveat is, as you add more boxes, reduce the amount of water you add per package…unless you like your final product to be soupy. Seriously, I’ve got a couple kids who would be happy if their macaroni was literally swimming in cheese!

Spicy Pineapple Chicken

Donna Houseman over at Hot and Cold Running Mom has a ton of awesome recipes. Every week I find myself saving a couple recipes from her various feeds. This Spicy Pineapple Chicken was a surprise hit at Hectic Manor. You see, Hectic Mom doesn’t like to eat abused fruit. She defines that as any fruit that has been cooked that’s not in a dessert. On the other hand, I’m a huge fan of adding fruit to proteins (especially chicken and pork) to get unique and layered flavors. I won’t give up on trying new recipes and Hectic Mom hasn’t given up on shooting down most of my experiments. Fortunately this one wasn’t shot down, so it’s been added to our regular rotation.

The recipe, as is, doesn’t use an Instant Pot, but it adapted really well. I did all the prep steps, but put the ingredients in the Instant Pot instead of the casserole dish. Then I cooked it on High Pressure for 15 minutes. Then I let it release naturally for 10 minutes. After that I extracted the chicken from the Instant Pot and covered it in foil. Then I added the glaze ingredients to the Instant Pot and used the sauté setting to boil the glaze for about 10 minutes. This was a bit tricky, since the first time I made it the weather was really humid and I couldn’t get the glaze to reduce (you know…thicken up enough to make it useful). I had to go 20 minutes. But every time since then the humidity has been reasonable and 10 minutes has worked fine. Once I had the glaze reduced, I removed it to a bowl, added some oil to the Instant Pot, and reset to sauté. When the Instant Pot was hot, I tossed a few drumsticks in and turned them until they were golden brown. I repeated this until all the drumsticks were browned. Then I added the glaze and stirred everything until the drumsticks were coated and everything was hot.

I easily had a home run with this recipe!

One Pot Penne Pasta

This recipe turned out to a be a close analog to our Sausage and Penne casserole that definitely falls into the comfort food category at Hectic Manor. The tough part about that casserole is that it cooks in the oven for a long time…generating a ton of heat in the kitchen. This Instant Pot recipe doesn’t generate anywhere near the heat, and there’s the added bonus that all the cooking and prep is done right in the Instant Pot…allowing for super-fast cleanup.

Shrimp Scampi Paella

There are three things that I love about this recipes: It’s all done in one pot, you can start with frozen shrimp (so there’s no defrosting), it can be eaten hot or cold. I know, it’s weird to think of eating paella cold…but we did it by accident one night and it turned out to be an awesome way to eat a chilled dish on a horribly hot day. To serve it cold, follow all the instructions, then chill it in the refrigerator for 15-30 minutes. Trust me on this one…it was really good and I’ve added it to my repertoire of chilled foods for hot days!

Hard Boiled Eggs

There are so many things you can do with hard boiled eggs, but boiling them overheats the kitchen (fine for February, but that stinks in July). Then there’s the peeling. I’ve tried every variation and trick in the book to make my eggs easier to peel when boiling them traditionally. Sometimes those tricks work, sometimes they’re utter disasters. Far too often my eggs looks like there were gouged and beaten in a fight! The first time I tried Instant Pot hard-boiled eggs I was skeptical. Too many painful memories of hard-to-peel eggs. But the first batch was so easy to peel. A couple days later I prepared another 18 eggs in the pot in one batch. Not a single damaged egg upon peeling. I estimate that I’ve cooked nearly 300 eggs in my Instant Pot now, and I’ve yet to have one that was hard to peel. In fact, peeling them is actually fun…Hectic Grandson even begs to help me! Follow the instructions in this recipe and you’ll have the same success. Imagine all the things you can do with hard boiled eggs when you don’t have to spend a bunch of time cussing while peeling them…

Brats & Sauerkraut

There’s something about brats and sauerkraut that remind me of Summer. I know it’s traditionally an Octoberfest (or is it Oktoberfest?) food…but I’m a sucker for bratwurst. Maybe it’s my German heritage, or the fact that I grew up where these were served almost every weekend. Whatever it is, I love my brats, but the boiling and then grilling usually means that I’m facing two different over-heated spaces. Yuck!

The very first meal I made in my Instant Pot was a batch of brats. I couldn’t get away with the sauerkraut because most of the Hectic Family thinks it’s gross. I had to make that separately. But the brats were so good. I wanted to test them right out of the Instant Pot, so I didn’t put them on the grill or under the broiler. Boy howdy, they were good! I mean fabulous. The best part is that you can take the time to defrost your brats, or you can add two minutes to the cooking time and cook them from frozen. That’s a huge plus when I forget to defrost something for dinner. I know, it’s never happened to you…but it happens here all the time. Yeah, something about that Hectic to describe my life…

BBQ Chicken Drumsticks

Is it really summer if you’re not eating BBQ at least a couple times a week? But grilling chicken takes f-o-r-e-v-e-r…and it’s hot. And keeping the barbecue sauce from flaming is a full-time job. So you get the disadvantage of standing there at the grill cooking both the chicken and yourself. Or…you can go the Instant Pot route and get practically the same result. The best part…you won’t be grilled yourself!

Chicago-Style Italian Beef Sandwiches

I grew up in the super-boonies of Chicago and many of my culinary ideas came from that great city. Chicago-Style Italian Beef is one of the things I miss the most. I’ve even gone so far as to order from Taste of Chicago and have it flown in. My family doesn’t quite get my obsession, but they like the food anyway. When I discovered this recipe I realized I’d finally found a way to get the same awesome flavor and texture without having to slave over the production process for the better part of a day. Not only that, you can make this early in the day (when it’s cooler) and just reheat it for dinner. Oh, and if you do the reheating in the Instant Pot you’re still only saddled with the cleanup of one cooking device. That’s winning in my book every darned day!

Cheesecake Four Ways

Cheesecake is so cool and refreshing. But if you make a traditional cheesecake (not the variety out of the box), you’ve got a mess on your hands and a hot oven to contend with. Alternatively, you can follow any one of these cheesecake recipes and have reduced cleanup, fast cooking, and a delicious result. Heck, you can make two and only share one!

Mini Blueberry-Almond French Toast Casserole

Don’t think that your Instant Pot is just for entrees at dinner. You can use it to cook up a nutritious breakfast in the time it takes you to shower. Seriously, I’ve prepped the ingredients, started the Instant Pot, and took my shower. By the time I was done…breakfast was served! Since the casserole is in a separate baking dish it’s really easy to serve. The only caveat was that I had to find a baking dish that would fit inside my Instant Pot sleeve with the steam rack installed. But never fear…in my vast array of kitchen paraphernalia…I had two!