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’m just off to make my Sunday night curry... it’s potato tonight 😋

I have a similar gadget a bertelin, I can adjust the temp in it and sous vide which is great for rare roast beef and steaks. Also use the pressure cooker when time is short. I also batch cook so have it and the slow cooker on the go at the same time.

@mrurddhasabitpart how do you cook the potatoes for mash above the brisket? Do they go on the metal trivet with the meat below?

Katrina- www.supergoldenbakes.com/pressure-cooker-beef-brisket/

I use this recipe , which puts potato's in the trivet on top of the beef - but when I take out the potatoes to "smash" I just go a step further and fully mash. It's my favourite instant pot full meal - meat veg mash and gravy all in one pot.

Really like ours. It’s great for proving bread. I use it for soup, porridge, bolognese, a really good macaroni cheese. We don’t eat meat so probably don’t get the full use of it but what we do get is really good - tastes as good as if it had been slow cooked for hours.

Reading with interest as I was thinking of getting one to make cooking dinner with a baby to put to bed a bit more feasible (she's five months old - I've probably had enough pasta pesto and jacket potatoes with beans to last me a lifetime...)

Looking at the different options, including the Ninja Foodi and wondering - for those who have a model that includes an air fryer, do you reckon it's worth it/what do you use it for?

I have the baby instant pot (3l) and you can’t get an air fryer lid with this size (it’s also not easy to get accessories for one this small - it’s a kit 6 inches dia). The larger ones have more programmes (ie a sous vide - but when would I use this?). I bought it when it was on special offer.

For people who have used it to prove bread - how is it better/different/faster(?) than proving in a bowl?

You use the yoghurt setting to prove dough - it's a consistent, low temperature which accelerates the proving. A bit like using an airing cupboard, which lots of people don't have those anymore.

Terrible grammar - sorry

I use it at least once everyday... curries, stews, soups, even pasta and noodles. There is a whole world of instapot recipe if you google. Wouldn't be without one and the hype is completely justified

makes great rice pudding & I used it for chicken stew as well and beef stew

I use mine all the time. A friend told me to buy an extra internal pot, and the glass lid and I'm glad that I did because it comes in really handy when you make a main course and want to serve it alongside of rice or quinoa. Today I made a bean and vegetable stew, lifted out the inner pot, and cooked rice in the second pot.

Last week it got used on Monday to make a one pot meal of Mexican black beans and sweet potatoes, with the sweet potatoes cunningly steamed above the beans. www.hippressurecooking.com/sweet-potato-and-black-eyed-peas-one-pot-meal/

On Tuesday my groceries were delivered without any of the yogurt I'd ordered, leaving me with just half a pot of plain yogurt from the week before to last all week. I'm shielding so I can't pop out for more, and hate bothering busy neighbours for help with unimportant stuff. That's when I remembered that the instant pot has loads of functions I haven't bothered to use, including a yogurt making setting. I found a recipe for making plain yogurt with UHT milk (so it doesn't need to go through the rigmarole of heat up fresh milk and allowing it to cool to 45°C before adding the live yogurt). 1 litre of UHT milk, 2 tablespoons of dried milk, 2 tablespoons of live yogurt, stir to mix everything together, add any lid or a plate, and press the yogurt button. Lift out the inner pot 8 hours later, allow to cool for a bit before lowing it into cold water in the sink, then decant the fresh yogurt into a milk jug and store it in the fridge. It was so easy that I've added kefir to my next delivery along with some more UHT milk, so that I can experiment with making my own kefir.

On Thursday I made the mushroom risotto from this recipe using Madeira instead of red wine, some dried chanterelle and porcine mushrooms soaked in the stock along with chopped fresh mushrooms. Served with freshly grated parmesan. www.hippressurecooking.com/pressure-cooker-risotto-in-7-minutes/

Yesterday I used it to make a couple of batches of these egg bite things, had some for breakfast and saved the rest for quick lunches. www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/how_to_make_pressure_cooker_egg_bites/ I'd soaked a couple of handfuls of chick peas overnight, so once the egg bites were done I pressure cooked them before dropping them into the blender with a clove of garlic, a dab of harissa and some tahini - much cheaper and just as nice as those little tubs of ready made hummus you get from the grocery shop.

Now I'm thinking that it has been ages since I last made a batch of decadently fudgy instant pot chocolate brownies. www.hippressurecooking.com/borlotti-bean-brownie-cake-for-the-love-of-beans/

I only wish I had a bigger freezer, to store the left overs. It blows my mind when I see the cost of a single portion of ready made risotto in the supermarket, or the price of those measly little pouches of cooked quinoa and lentils. A family who buys those, or gets through a lot of tinned beans would save back the initial cost of the instant pot very quickly.

No, I'm not affiliated in any way with the hip pressure cooker website. I just really appreciate the care she takes to work out the perfect ratio of liquid to grains and the best cooking and decompressing times. I've ever followed a recipe from her site that wasn't good.
www.hippressurecooking.com/pressure-cooker-recipes/

I use mine sooooo much, I would replace it tomorrow if it died.

We had risotto tonight....sauteed the onions celery, mushrooms, added extra butter and toasted the rice, slug of vermouth and then i had some home cooked ham to go in. I then stopped the sautee/cooking as no idea what time dh would be home, he calls, in goes the stock, lid on, 12 minutes on rice low pressure and bingo.!

It really is a brilliant bit of kit.

Mash is great as you can fill the pan and you need little more than a cup of water...they cook without getting waterlogged and mash beautifully

I use mine most days, esp for proving dough, it's so consistent, no more running out of time and trying to cook under proved dough

Overnight yoghurt is fab...esp if you use UHT milk, no buggering about with boiling and cooling milk, make it directly in jars, no mess!

Oxtail and hough cook like a dream too

beans, chickpeas and lentils, no presoaking required, cook in bulk if you cba and freeze

Roast beef! ....4 minutes! A whole chicken in 25, gammon joint 30 mins
I only recently tried the beef but now would not cook topside any other way, beautifully rare,, slices well, tastes succulent moist

As a pp said you have to factor in heating up, and de pressuring, but it really is set and forget!

Overnight yoghurt is fab...esp if you use UHT milk, no buggering about with boiling and cooling milk, make it directly in jars, no mess!

Omg, really? I love the yogurt I made, but it was totally a faff.

When I do yoghurt, I chuck in a couple cartoons of uht whole milk and some left over yoghurt. Press the yoghurt button, after 8 hours I then strain it in the fridge through coffee filter paper in a sieve. It makes it ridiculous thick

@Motherofmonsters

When I do yoghurt, I chuck in a couple cartoons of uht whole milk and some left over yoghurt. Press the yoghurt button, after 8 hours I then strain it in the fridge through coffee filter paper in a sieve. It makes it ridiculous thick

Fab, thank you! Will give it another shot - the whole temperature thing made me stop.

I barely use mine - it's over complicated. I have a £20 rice cooker which I use often and tbh have no need for the IP as we're now vegetarian and so everything would go mushy.

@womanity

Overnight yoghurt is fab...esp if you use UHT milk, no buggering about with boiling and cooling milk, make it directly in jars, no mess!

Omg, really? I love the yogurt I made, but it was totally a faff.

I add a couple of tbs of powdered milk to mine, it makes it really thick without the faff of straining

Couple of tbs in a small amount of UHT which I zap in the micro to warm it as otherwise I fancy it makes the yogurt grainy....do it in a jug big enough to hold all the milk, tip the rest of the milk on top of it, and stir, add the yogurt starter to that and mix well and then I put it in jars. If it is in a cute jar (recycled lidl yogurt jars) then dh will take some to work for breakfast! Otherwise I use the big DouweEgbert jars cos they sit nicely in the fridge and also have lids.

Can you make proper thick Greek yoghurt? I used to love losely farm (thick, tart, fat free) but they stopped making the yoghurt years ago and I’ve never found anything the same.

I use goat yoghurt for a starter but I’ve never managed to get the thickness (using a yoghurt maker not a pot). I use skimmed milk too.

You could probably suffocate on the yoghurt I make as its has hardly any whey in it. I strain it all night but you could just do it for a few hours if you wanted it less thick

Greek yoghurt is natural yoghurt that's been strained to remove some/all of the whey. You can use the whey as the liquid when making bread or in place of milk in scones, etc.

@CausingChaos2 & other ninja users - how is the slow cooker function? "Low" on the instant pot doesn't seem to actually cook anything it's so low so it's hard to use normal slow cooker recipes!

I do really like mine. I guess the test is whether you'd replace it if it broke, and I would.

It doesn't always save time with meals (due to the time it takes to get to pressure and then come back down again), but does leave you free to let the pot do the cooking so you can get on with other things. I like 'one-pot' cooking and it's brilliant for that. We are having risotto tonight in it. I often cook a whole chicken in it, then strip the meat, bones go back in with the liquid and some veggies to make the best stock ever. I used to make Greek yogurt every week too, been out of the habit lately but this threat has inspired me to start again.

I barely use mine - it's over complicated. I have a £20 rice cooker which I use often and tbh have no need for the IP as we're now vegetarian and so everything would go mushy.

I'm vegetarian and I use mine all the time, though I've never used the rice cooker setting. I cook a variety of different kinds of rice, and follow the instructions on this page to cook each kind to perfection. www.hippressurecooking.com/easy-pressure-cooker-steamed-rice/ I did the opposite to you, I pensioned off my old rice cooker and slow cooker, because they no longer earned their space on the countertop once I'd been thoroughly seduced by the instant pot.

Did you know that when you want to pressure cook broccoli florets in the steamer basket you can set the instant pot to cook for zero minutes? The broccoli steams perfectly in the time it takes the pot to come up to pressure, when you hear the beep that's your cue to release the steam immediately, and hoik out your perfectly cooked al dente broccoli. It's a game changer, no more hovering over the pan and testing every two seconds to avoid overcooked mushy vegetables.

I do the same with spuds, carrots and parsnips before roasting them in the air fryer to get that extra crispy roast surface you get from parboiling before roasting, but without having to time them and strain off the water. It's so simple to use silicone gloves to lift the steamer basket out of the instant pot, and tip the contents directly into the pre-heated air fryer, give a quick spray with grapeseed oil, shake, and set them roasting.

Also it is brilliant for cooking quinoa, which is another foodstuff that goes from unpleasantly hard and gritty to soggy mush when you take your eye off the pan for a couple of minutes. I make this recipe www.hippressurecooking.com/1-minute-quinoa-golden-pressure-cooker-pilaf/ serve half of it hot, and save the rest in the fridge, to mix with vegetables, beans, nuts and herbs, to make really easy and healthy salad bowls.

It's not complicated once you realise that the internet is full of people who have already done all the trial and error for you. You just search for a recipe and instant pot and there are usually loads of different pages to choose from where someone else has worked out the liquid ratios, exactly how many minutes it needs to cook, and how to release the pressure for optimal results.

It's not complicated once you realise that the internet is full of people who have already done all the trial and error for you. You just search for a recipe and instant pot and there are usually loads of different pages to choose from where someone else has worked out the liquid ratios, exactly how many minutes it needs to cook, and how to release the pressure for optimal results.

I have all my grains, rices, pastas in storage containers labelled with ratios and IP cook times, because I’m a mf efficiency genius. 😀