Was It Worth It: Instant Pot Edition

 Alright team, we are back again with WAS IT WORTH IT?! This time…

The one, the only, the INSTANT POT

so many buttons, so many ways to explode

I'm a little late to the craze- the Instant Pot (or "Instapot" as we mistakenly referred to it for a few weeks) has been around for a while, but it hit frenzy status about 5 years ago. But, 5 years ago, I wasn’t interested in another kitchen gadget. I was happily crockpotting dinners on busy weekdays, using whatever “superfast” Cooking Light recipes looked good (without a care about what foods were inside), and pretty uninterested in learning how to pressure cook. The cookbooks that promised authentic Indian cuisine, easy at home, were very intriguing, but not intriguing enough to invest in one. But my crockpot puttered out and food allergies marched in and I found myself the proud, new owner of a fancy multipurpose pressure cooker (despite the hoards of people I know that own one still in a box).

Is it helpful in the kitchen?

Definitely. From yogurt to beans to falling apart chicken thighs to giant pots of rice, we love almost everything we’ve made in the Instant Pot. You can 100% make homemade yogurt with out it, but with it- it keeps the yogurt at the magical 110 degrees for a full 8 hours without absolutely no wrapping in towels, no trying to keep it insulated, and no worrying about it overnight. (The “boil” function of the yogurt setting is another story. It has never worked on my pot. Sometimes it warms up the soy/coconut milk to a balmy room temperature, sometimes it gets it closer to bathtub temp, but it has never, ever reached boil without me using the sauté function.)

It makes delicious beans, grains, chickpeas in record time, no overnight soaking required. Black beans, kidney beans, chickpeas- they are all more tender and cheaper making them at home instead of buying them in a can. And it can make braised meats in a matter of minutes. My kid loves all slow cooked meat and the Instant Pot is great at delivering meats that you barely need to chew.

Downsides?

Despite all the presets, it’s hard to just jump right into cooking with a pressure cooker. You can’t check on the food while it’s cooking so you have to have specific instructions for the amount of time cooking and how to let the pressure release. If you are making a recipe on the stove, you can stir and taste and adjust and decide it’s done cooking whenever you want. In the Instant Pot, you lock it up, set the timer, and say a little prayer. Because I was too scared to try anything in it, I had to buy a specific Instant Pot cookbook.

The “cook” times are a little deceiving. Sure, you can cook pork shoulder in 0 min on high pressure. But it’s going to take a few minutes for the Instant Pot to reach the high pressure. And if you need to let the pressure release naturally, that can tack on another 20 minutes. Even though cooking on high pressure decreases the cooking time, it's definitely not quick enough to use in the Chopped Kitchen.

It's also a little finicky to use and I’ve gotten the dreaded “burnt” error message twice. If you brown anything with the sauté function before pressure cooking, you need to make sure you scrape up the bottom of the pot completely or it’s just not going to work out. And once you have the burnt error, it’s really unclear how to proceed. Dump the contents of the pot into another bowl, clean the stuck on crispy food off the bottom of the pot, and try again? Cook it the rest of the way on the stove top? Just give up all together and order take out? It really shook my pressure cooking confidence.

What allergies is it good for?

• Garlic- this is probably the biggest thing in our house. Because I have to make all sauces from scratch, this is a real time saver. Usually, I can just leave out the cloves of garlic from the recipe and I don’t have to adjust anything else.
• Milk- dairy free yogurt is an art and the Instant Pot takes away all of the stress during the incubation period. It’s going to keep that milk at 110 deg for however long you want and you are going to have yogurt afterwards. You still have to add sugar and a thickener and pick what kind of non dairy milk you want to use, but at least you know part of the battle is taken care of.
• Sesame- restaurant hummus is so delicious and home-made hummus with chickpeas from a can just isn’t the same. The texture is wrong. No matter how high powered your blender is, if you just pop open a can of chickpeas, it’s not going to be creamy. But, if you cook some dried chickpeas in the Instant Pot (for a few minutes with baking soda on high pressure, drain, rinse, and then longer in normal water) those bad boys are going to puree into the smoothest, creamiest hummus of your dreams. What to use in place of the tahini? I’m not sure. But at least the texture will be good!

SO! IS IT WORTH IT?!

Yes! I love my Instant Pot. Not enough to start a Facebook group, become a “pothead”, and make up my own recipes, but definitely enough to write this post about it.