My dad got me an Instant Pot for Christmas, and I confess I do not understand it. You cannot put ingredients in it, start it up, and go to work leaving it to cook all day like a crock pot, arriving home to a delicious ready-to-go meal. Instead, in order to cook anything, you must first let it build pressure for 10, 20, 30 minutes. Then it cooks said thing anywhere from 30 minutes to a couple of hours. Then you must de-pressurize it, which is supposedly better to do naturally. Who knows how long that might take because I have never been patient enough to wait, because by this time I am HUNGRY. But it takes at least a couple of minutes to do that even with the vent while violent bursts of steam blast the undersides of your kitchen cabinet and possibly burn the shit out of you if you are not careful. Then the food inside is exactly the same as what I could have made on my stove in far less time.
Take this recipe, for example. It brags about being an easy weeknight meal that only takes 20 minutes, yet there are no fewer than SIX different vegetables that you must chop up, PLUS an entire bunch of lacinato kale that you must SHRED, resulting in at least 45 minutes of prep time. AT LEAST. True, once you have finished the endless chopping you simply toss everything into the pot and you only need to heat it on high for five minutes. Except it will take at least 20 minutes to get the pot up to pressure and then the recommended natural de-pressurizing after, which will take some mysterious amount of time that nobody knows or talks about EVER.
I can see that the pot will be great, and actually faster, for cooking dried legumes, and probably makes a good stew, but I'm not convinced about anything else. If you have a favorite recipe, or technique, help a girl out. I want to believe.
My friend Susan is an expert, I’m going to tell her you need help. She does everything in her IP
Posted by: Jill Dotson | 14 January 2020 at 11:48
Cool! Thank you, Jill.
Posted by: nina | 14 January 2020 at 13:45