Instant Pot - yay or nay?

[NotMyWay]

My Facebook feed is filled with videos of delicious meals being made in an Instant Pot in 10 seconds flat. Is this an amazing kitchen must have or a complete waste of time?

I have one and I mostly only use it for soup, but I do love it. I like being able to go and do things elsewhere in the house rather than keep an eye on the stove.

Mine is dusty. I don't use it well

I bought one. Made a chilli, got the burnt message almost straightaway. Put it back in the cupboard and there it still languishes.

I make porridge in mine every morning as I can leave it and have a cup of tea in peace.

Great for risotto too and Dhal not so good for tomato based dishes as they get burn message unless tomatoes are on top.

Make a delicious steamed sponge pudding in it too.

I have a foodie ninja but similar thing. Delicious tender beef stew cooked in 25 mins yesterday evening 🤤

I want one!!

I have a Ninja Foodi and it is pretty great. Some things are obviously better than others. I use it for pasta dishes, risotto and casseroles. The air fryer is great for bacon, sausages, potatoes, chicken etc. It’s also easy to clean. The biggest misconception is that it will cut back on cooking time but for most things, that isn’t the case.

I bought the Crock pot Express instead. I love it and use it a few times a week. I make pasta sauces, curries and risotto with it. I also use it to steam potatoes for mash.

I love my instant pot. As long as you have somewhere to store it (or lots of counter space) i would thoroughly recommend. Great for curries, stews, i use it for making stock without watching a pot for hours. I can chuck rice in, some frozen veg, frozen chicken or fish and some stock and leave it to do its thing. Flavours are great. It's not that it's quick per se, it's that you can set and forget.

I love mine. I don't use it as much as it can be used, but I use it most days.

I make yogurt in it.
Cook dried beans.
Chilli/Bolognese etc
Stew
Soup
Stock
Ham
Cowboy beans

People use it for proving bread.

Also for rice, but I get on well with rice in the microwave.

I love mine - had it for over a year and use it most weeks. Favourite recipes as a pressure cooker are pulled pork, chicken tajine, butter chicken, steamed pudding and always use it for potatoes. I also use the slow cooker function to make chicken burrito filling.

Love mine, use it nearly every day.Best thing is you can set it and walk away, great for pulses, rice,proving dough,all the usual stiff, chilli, curry etc, lovely potatoes for mash.

@Zebra100

Love mine, use it nearly every day.Best thing is you can set it and walk away, great for pulses, rice,proving dough,all the usual stiff, chilli, curry etc, lovely potatoes for mash.

This. If you cook any of those things it is brilliant. As well as the above, I use to make different kinds of porridge - I had quinoa this morning, but also love amaranth, buckwheat as well as oats. I think in the year I've had it I've saved back the cost and more just using it for pulses (I eat a lot of them). It is one of my favourite things ever.

First off, it’s not that fast. It’s really counterintuitive when people talk about the time things take. There’s the reaching pressure time, the cooking time, and the time it takes for the pressure to drop. It’s not by a massive time saver on that score.

What it brings is that once you’ve set it running, you can walk away and do other stuff. That’s great.

I use it for rice, risotto, stews, cooking dried pulses, cooking ham, sauces, soups... it’s been great but it takes a lot of counter space and it does depend on what sort of food you cook.

I love mine. I use it maybe twice a week on average. It makes perfect rice, lovely pasta dishes, shredded meats etc in great time.
It isn't always quicker than the hob but is nicer and mch less hassle.

I have one on order, hopefully coming next week.

I’ve gone for the duo crisp air fryer model

I love mine. Don’t reckon it saves any time at all, but you can walk away and leave it so I love the convenience.

I also am happy to let tween DD use it, where I wouldn’t leave her to cook solo on the hob.

Also, they’re really ugly. Like really.

I caved and bought one last year. It's great. Don't use it half as much as I should, but it's perfect for those times when you forget to read the cooking time on recipes and should have started 3 hours earlier.

Another fan here - I love the hands off aspect of it (for risotto particularly) plus being able to cook with dried beans without faffing around with soaking (chilli in under an hour including pressurisation time). Which is an important thing to be aware of - you need to allow time for the pot to come to pressure so some claims of how quickly you can cook things are misleading!

I love mine. It makes fantastic stews, chilli and bolognese sauce with much more depth of flavour than the hob or oven. I can put oats and milk in a small jug inside the pot and set the timer so that porridge is waiting for me in the morning. Making stock is painless and I also use mine as a rice cooker. Haven’t tried making yoghurt in mine yet but that’s in my future.

I don’t think I would have bought one myself. Got one for a present though and I wouldn’t be without it.

It can take quite a while to come up to pressure and when cooking meat, you need to wait until the pressure comes back down naturally. For me, the fact that I don’t have to stand over the hob and can go and do other things is where I save time.

I never cook stews, soups, gammon, potatoes, risotto or chicken breasts on the hob now. I can put chicken breasts straight from the freezer into the instant pot and it comes out so tender you can shred it.

I didn’t know you could put a jug in the instant pot. What’s the jug made of @Katrinawaves? I’d worry incase it shattered.

I use a small Pyrex measuring jug @MazDazzle

It's basically a pressure cooker isn't it?