Somehow I missed the first phase of the Instant Pot revolution. I must’ve had my head in the sand in 2016 when they sold like hot cakes on Amazon Day. That Christmas season I missed them entirely from Black Friday through the frenetic Christmas selling season. I even missed them on Amazon Day 2017. But when Cyber Monday rolled around I’d heard so much about the Instant Pot that I simply had to get one. I mean seriously, a kitchen techy has to buy something on Cyber Monday. It’s like the law!
When my Instant Pot arrived, I was ready. There wasn’t going to be any sitting around in the box for weeks, collecting dust. I already knew what I wanted to prepare. Oddly, I hadn’t pre-read the manual. I’ve taken to doing that so I’m familiar with my new gadgets when they arrive. I’m off and running as soon as I unbox them. But this time I’d missed the opportunity. Upon opening the manual I realized this Instant Pot wasn’t a simple device. There were buttons all over the front and the user’s manual was somewhat intimidating, even for me! Four pages of Important Safeguards later I was ready to delve into using the thing. But then I had six pages of Control and Features that I needed to learn. My head was spinning with new terminology and tons of ideas for things I could cook.
Duo Mini 7-in-1
LUX60V3 6-in-1
DUO60 7-in-1
DUO Plus 60 9-in-1
DUO80 7-in-1
IP-DUO800 7-in-1
I followed the three steps exactly as printed. About four minutes in, something seemed wrong. There was steam whistling out of the Instant Pot and I began to worry I had another damaged unit! I re-read the steps and checked each one. I realized that at some point I’d bumped the steam release handle to release instead of sealing. I turned the Instant Pot off. Let it cool down. And corrected my error. I was off and running, and in about 15 minutes I’d successfully made steamed water! What a triumph of modern technology. Not!
I immediately cooked an Indian Chicken dish I’d found in the Indian Instant Pot Cookbook and it was amazing. From that point forwards, I’ve used my Instant Pot several times a week, including making some multi-course meals entirely in the Instant Pot. For our most recent Hectic Clan wedding reception, fully 90% of the food for nearly 100 people was prepared or partially-prepared in a single Instant Pot! Yeah, I love it that much.
What Is An Instant Pot?
Let’s backup for a second. Do you even know what an Instant Pot is? I’m sure you’ve seen one online or in a store. You may not have thought much about it, but they are pretty much everywhere. I’m also willing to bet at least one person in your friend group raves about their Instant Pot all the time. If not, you might need to upgrade your friends!
Instant Pot® is actually a registered trademark of Double Insight, Inc. of Ottawa, Canada. Like so many names before it (Kleenex, Band-Aid, and Realtor to name a few), Instant Pot has come to be used as the generic term for electric pressure cookers. While I’m all about using generic names where possible (I try to use slow cooker instead of the trademarked Crock Pot) I’m going to stick with Instant Pot here. It’s confusing enough that people don’t really know what an Instant Pot does, let alone what the generic term would be…
An Instant Pot is actually a multi-function device. It can do a whole bunch of things. While electric pressure cooking is probably the most notable, there are a lot of different ways you can use one. Namely:
- Pressure cook
- Slow cook
- Cook Rice
- Sauté
- Steam
- Warm
- Make Yogurt
- Cook Eggs
- Sterilize
When they say multipurpose in the description of the Instant Pot, they’re not joking!
What Are The Benefits?
Why even bother with an Instant Pot? I mean seriously, what are the benefits?
Oh young Padawan, the benefits are many and easily obtained! First off, you can save time. Sure, when a pressure cooker recipe says it cooks for 12 minutes that’s both true and false. It may cook for 12 minutes, but before it can start cooking the Instant Pot has to come up to pressure. Figure 15 minutes. Then after cooking the pressure cooker has to let off steam. Kind of like every day with your kids…you just need to vent for a while. So will your Instant Pot. If it’s done naturally you’re looking at 10-15 minutes, if you want to move things along faster you can manually vent the Instant Pot. which takes 2-3 minutes. But while the little guy is building up some pressure, cooking, and naturally venting, you can be doing something else. It’s like slow-cooking on a fast schedule. 45 minutes to get a great meal on the table where you actually only have to be involved for maybe 5. I’ll take that kind of timing any day.
Not only do you steal back some time while cooking, the Instant Pot meals are usually made using just one pot. That means less cleanup. Need to sauté some ingredients, mix others, and then cook all of it. It can all happen in the Instant Pot! And the stainless steel inner sleeve cleans up fast! More time saving…plus you don’t have that pile of stuff you need to wash sitting next to the sink for days on end. Or is that just me?
And the Instant Pot is deep…keeping collateral splatter to a minimum (hey, I like that…collateral splatter may be one of my new go-to phrases). So now the counters aren’t pockmarked with grease.
Best off, you can throw in frozen foods for those nights when you forgot to plan ahead. Need to whip up dinner fast and you didn’t defrost? Throw away the number to the pizza delivery folks…toss your frozen meat and veggies into the Instant Pot, add a little water or broth (you’ll never need more than a cup), increase the time to cook defrosted items to account for the frozen ingredients…and you’ve got dinner. Plus you can sneak in an episode of Game of Thrones, Westworld, Lost in Space, or The Big Bang Theory while you’re waiting. Of course, you could also do your workout while you’re watching and you’d be triple-dipping with cooking, working out, and watching TV. Boom!
If you’re not into saving time (What?) you can also save money and space by having one device that does the job of an entire cabinet-full. Seriously, your slow-cooker can be replaced. You’ve now got a rice-cooker to impress your hipster friends. You can sauté in it, so you can cut down on the number of pans. Steaming vegetable is a breeze, so you don’t need a steamer. And if you’re into making yogurt you can pitch your dedicated yogurt maker. One device does it all!
Do you need another benefit before you’re sold?
Fine…how about improving your nutrition. Think about it, when we cook most vegetables they’re immersed in a pot of boiling water. No matter how careful you are and how quickly you pull those veggies out…you just lost a ton of their nutritional value into the boiling water. With your Instant Pot you use a lot less water. All you need is enough to build up steam. So most of the water stays with the vegetables. And where do the nutrients go? Nowhere…they stay in the veggies. Sure, your kids might still not eat them, but at least you know their ignoring nutritious vegetables instead of watered down, weakling veggies!
What Are The Drawbacks?
I know the Instant Pot sounds too good to be true. So I got to thinking about any drawbacks. First off, it’s a multi-function device…so it’s got a whole host of buttons, options, and different things that it can do. That makes it kind of complicated. And sometimes the setting you’re supposed to use isn’t the most intuitive.
Fortunately, there are gobs of recipes on the internet for the Instant Pot. That’s both good and bad. With all those recipes, you’re going to run across some that are duds. But that’s not solely an Instant Pot problem…it’s more of a quality control problem of recipes on the internet in general.
You’re also going to be faced with some historical pressure cooker recipes that need to be adjusted. Anything written for a pressure cooker before 2010 is likely for a stovetop pressure cooker. That means it’s designed for higher pressure. Be aware that you’ll need to make adjustments for those heirloom pressure cooker recipes and you’ll be fine.
While researching this post I ran across a number of articles where the author was bashing his or her Instant Pot because the food wasn’t crisp or crunchy. Let’s face it, you’re cooking in a sealed environment where all the moisture is retained. Of course things aren’t going to be crisp or crunchy. One author complained that the whole chicken she cooked didn’t have a crispy skin. Duh! But seriously, I’m not saying that your brand spanking new Instant Pot can cook everything the way you want it. Heck, you’ve already got a stovetop, oven, and microwave. Each one does different things or you wouldn’t have all of them. If you want crunchy or crispy, cook it a different way! Geez…
Finally there’s that whole timing thing. You have to change your thinking when you see “cooks for two minutes” and recognize that you’re really looking at about half an hour. Just add 30 minutes to every Instant Pot recipe that you see and you’ll be fine. It’s not really a drawback unless you can’t do time math.
Wrap-Up
Are you intrigued with the idea of an Instant Pot? Do you have one still sitting in the box, unopened? Have you tried yours a couple times but just can’t quite get the hang of it? Over the next few months I’ll be delving into other aspects of Instant Pot cooking. Plus there are gobs of sites out there that have Instant Pot recipes, tips, tricks, and traps. Just do a search.
If you haven’t downloaded the Instant Pot app you need to get it. It’s available for both iOS and Android. It’s a great place to start and with over 300 recipes there’s tons of things to try.
So how should you think of your Instant Pot in terms of your other appliances? Well, it’s a set is and remember it device. That is, set it, start cooking, and remember to get the delicious meal out far sooner than you otherwise would have. The reason you need to remember is because you likely got a whole bunch of stuff done while the Instant Pot was doing the heavy lifting of pressure cooking.
Talk about making it a great day in the kitchen!