9 ms·

Counterpoint, we were gifted an instant pot and used it about half a dozen times before realizing it was an extra piece of kitchen equipment that did absolutely

Counterpoint, we were gifted an instant pot and used it about half a dozen times before realizing it was an extra piece of kitchen equipment that did absolutely nothing for us in terms of food quality or ease of cooking. It sat in the back of a deep cupboard for a couple of years until we threw it away when we moved.

irrational 3y ago
That is interesting. Like OP, we use ours constantly. I consider it to be the kitchen appliance I would never do without. I wonder if it comes down to OP and we making more similar foods than what you eat.
- nikole9696 3y ago
  This is quite possible. I use mine to cook wild rice, which takes awhile stovetop. And hard boiled eggs, which come out great. Everything else I've tried with it, I might as well just cook with the stove or oven. I don't like most recipes I've seen and am somewhat of a picky eater.
  - Eisenstein 3y ago
    It is wonderful to use instead of an oven since it doesn't heat up the whole room and you can pressure cook dry beans without soaking to fully done in about 20 - 30 minutes.
    - taylodl 3y ago
      > It is wonderful to use instead of an oven since it doesn't heat up the whole room Energy efficiency is a big point. Between my Instant Pot and Air Fryer I have few opportunities to turn on the oven. These devices heat up faster, cook faster, and provide more consistent results. This is especially true now that I'm an empty nester and no longer cooking for a large family. It also makes it easy to resist the temptation to rely on processed foods.
    - Marsymars 3y ago
      If I’m being really miserly about heat output and/or food smells I’ll walk my pot out to the back deck to release. (Could also plug into an outdoor outlet to cook, but gets logistically complicated with timing if I’m not already hanging out on the deck.)
      - drewm1980 3y ago
        IIRC you're really not suppose to do this. A pressurized pressure cooker is not something you want to drop accidentally.
  - nvy 3y ago
    I primarily use mine to make rice, beef stews, and hummus. All of those take less time and are just as good if not better than stovetop. Once I made shawarma in mine, that was pretty neat.
    - pessimizer 3y ago
      You use it to make hummus? Is there a good recipe that you use, or are they just floating out there?
      - nvy 3y ago
        I have one from my sister-in-law, that she got from her (Israeli) partner's grandmother, which is a very traditional Israeli hummus recipe. That recipe is for stovetop and I adapted it to the instant pot. The trick is to use baking soda when you cook the chickpeas in the instant pot, because it dissolves/softens the shells. Then you take them out and rinse thoroughly in water to get rid the baking soda taste, before slapping them into a food processor with tahini and whatever else. Good quality tahini also makes a difference. Lots of north American brands have a wildly different taste than what's common in the middle east.
        selimthegrim 3y ago
        Baking soda also um…degasses the chickpeas shall we say
- Marsymars 3y ago
  Interestingly, different people also use pressure cookers in entirely different ways, which I learned when my partner and I moved in together, and we both brought an Instant Pot the household. I use mine exclusively for single items that I want to cook efficiently in bulk - eggs, beans, potatoes, yams, etc. (Most recently, made a pot full of chick peas this weekend to split between hummus and a quinoa salad.) She uses hers for single-pot soups, stews, etc. that are ready to eat as-is.
bombcar 3y ago
Ours is mainly a glorified rice cooker that sometimes does something else. As a rice cooker, it cooks rice.
- pessimizer 3y ago
  You're missing out, because you should be using it to make beans. As a bean cooker, it turns a annoying multi-hour job into from dry to beautifully cooked in an hour. As a rice cooker, you should just use a rice cooker, they're like 1/3 the price and you can run it at the same time as the bean cooker.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    I really do need to get into the bean scene, but we have had issues [1] in the past. [1] https://www.whelenmassnotification.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/03/CRW2.mp3 https://www.whelenmassnotification.com/wp-content/uploads/si...
  - imp0cat 3y ago
    YMMV, but the rice cooker is mostly collecting dust since I got and Instant Pot. Why? The IP is much faster than a rice cooker. Also, the inner vessel is more durable - it's stainless steel (as opposed to the non-stick coating in the rice cooker), so no worries about scratches, dishwasher, etc... .
cdumler 3y ago
It's a tool. What you get out of it will depend on what you expect of it. What I try to tell people is that Instant Pot is not something that makes food better nor does it necessarily cook things faster. When you factor in the time it takes to get up to pressure and the time it takes for it release it, it isn't necessarily faster than normal cooking. What is does do it take care of itself. In other words, I can throw a bunch of stuff in the pot, configure it for cook time then turn off the heat, set a timer and know that in 45 minutes it will be ready to serve. In a house hold where multitasking is a necessity, that is a huge boon. Finally, one pot to clean up.
- ksaj 3y ago
  There is also the pressure cooker option. That's where our household gets the most mileage out of it. Pressure cooking is easy. Instant Pot pressure cooking is automagic.
  - koolba 3y ago
    Pressure cooking itself is magical but the InstantPot is like a level one mage casting magical missile. Even the “high pressure” setting is pretty low compared to a real pressure cooker. Thankfully most meals have low HP.
    - ksaj 3y ago
      Yes, you might not use it as an industrial broaster, which requires a significant amount of pressure. But for most home use, InstaPot is painless. And the cleanup is really easy.
    - chongli 3y ago
      Instant Pot sold a model called the Max which went up to the full pressure of stovetop pressure cookers. It didn’t sell. The problem is that it took so much longer to reach the highest pressure. The main limitation? North American household 110V 15-amp circuits max out at 1650W (and typical appliances max out around 1350W to leave margin). If we had European 240V circuits we could have an Instant Pot designed for well over 2000W and it wouldn’t be an issue. The same story goes for electric kettles. Alec of Technology Connections [1] went into extensive detail about it! [1] https://youtu.be/_yMMTVVJI4c https://youtu.be/_yMMTVVJI4c
js2 3y ago
Things I use mine for regularly: - Hard-boiled eggs. Takes just 5 minutes. Not much time savings, but the eggs are consistently easy to peel and yes, I've tried it Serious Eats way too. - Incubating yogurt. Makes a perfect batch of four mason jars worth every time. - Risotto. Saves the 30 minutes of attending to rice where you slowly ladle in the broth. - Black beans. Start from dry beans in a pinch, no soaking needed.
- downut 3y ago
  I'm doing a complete tear down remodel of the kitchen so I bought some devices to make our 95% cooked from scratch meal lifestyle bearable through the awful times. A top of the line Breville toaster oven was the first, it's fantastic, but it is also silly to compare it to our 25 y/o Viking duel fuel range, waiting to reenter our life. A week ago I got my Instant Pot Pro, and I've been putting it through its paces. I boiled some eggs. This is what really irks me about IP fans: it does not take 5 minutes. It has some indeterminate amount of preheat, the 5 min., and then a cool down. The eggs are just fine, as flawless as the following method on a quality gas burner stove: Put eggs and water into pot to just cover, turn burner high"ish"; when bubbles just start, turn down to a very very slow bubble generation and set timer for 10m (12-13min at 5500' elevation), scoop out the eggs when the timer expires and put on the counter, peel when cool enough. I very rarely had to spend any attention monitoring this. The IP is just, but only just, as good. BUT ITS NOT FIVE MINUTES. Shouting because why do instant pot fans do this? Now, I am quite interested in the yogurt thing. That sounds very cool, we love yogurt and industrial yogurt, meh. Also strawberries are cheap right now and I'm thinking of making some exotic French confitures, and mixing that with the yogurt. Risotto? No brainer on a decent stove. Dried beans? I also have a 30 y/o Magefesa pressure cooker that has a thicker bottom than the instant pot "pot" and does dried beans perfectly. No magic, or even "instant", there. Another gripe: compared to the Breville that roller knob in the center is a gawdawlful POS. Reeks of cheap. Compared to the 15 y/o electric range that is going to be tossed out the back doors, and then shot multiple times with 12 gauge 3" buckshot loads, the IP is great, so maybe I'm a little sad that the inevitable PE bankrupt/shitify it happened to it too.
  - jerf 3y ago
spacemadness 3y ago
[flagged]
drewm1980 3y ago
It's not just the convenience. Pressure cookers are way more energy efficient than boiling a big pot of food on an electric stove. If you're using an electric air conditioner to re-extract that heat from your house, the savings are even bigger. You do need to know how long your food needs to cook up front, or be tolerant of overcooked food.

irrational 3y ago

That is interesting. Like OP, we use ours constantly. I consider it to be the kitchen appliance I would never do without. I wonder if it comes down to OP and we making more similar foods than what you eat.

nikole9696 3y ago
This is quite possible. I use mine to cook wild rice, which takes awhile stovetop. And hard boiled eggs, which come out great. Everything else I've tried with it, I might as well just cook with the stove or oven. I don't like most recipes I've seen and am somewhat of a picky eater.
- Eisenstein 3y ago
  It is wonderful to use instead of an oven since it doesn't heat up the whole room and you can pressure cook dry beans without soaking to fully done in about 20 - 30 minutes.
  - taylodl 3y ago
    > It is wonderful to use instead of an oven since it doesn't heat up the whole room Energy efficiency is a big point. Between my Instant Pot and Air Fryer I have few opportunities to turn on the oven. These devices heat up faster, cook faster, and provide more consistent results. This is especially true now that I'm an empty nester and no longer cooking for a large family. It also makes it easy to resist the temptation to rely on processed foods.
  - Marsymars 3y ago
    If I’m being really miserly about heat output and/or food smells I’ll walk my pot out to the back deck to release. (Could also plug into an outdoor outlet to cook, but gets logistically complicated with timing if I’m not already hanging out on the deck.)
    - drewm1980 3y ago
      IIRC you're really not suppose to do this. A pressurized pressure cooker is not something you want to drop accidentally.
- nvy 3y ago
  I primarily use mine to make rice, beef stews, and hummus. All of those take less time and are just as good if not better than stovetop. Once I made shawarma in mine, that was pretty neat.
  - pessimizer 3y ago
    You use it to make hummus? Is there a good recipe that you use, or are they just floating out there?
    - nvy 3y ago
      I have one from my sister-in-law, that she got from her (Israeli) partner's grandmother, which is a very traditional Israeli hummus recipe. That recipe is for stovetop and I adapted it to the instant pot. The trick is to use baking soda when you cook the chickpeas in the instant pot, because it dissolves/softens the shells. Then you take them out and rinse thoroughly in water to get rid the baking soda taste, before slapping them into a food processor with tahini and whatever else. Good quality tahini also makes a difference. Lots of north American brands have a wildly different taste than what's common in the middle east.
      - selimthegrim 3y ago
        Baking soda also um…degasses the chickpeas shall we say
Marsymars 3y ago
Interestingly, different people also use pressure cookers in entirely different ways, which I learned when my partner and I moved in together, and we both brought an Instant Pot the household. I use mine exclusively for single items that I want to cook efficiently in bulk - eggs, beans, potatoes, yams, etc. (Most recently, made a pot full of chick peas this weekend to split between hummus and a quinoa salad.) She uses hers for single-pot soups, stews, etc. that are ready to eat as-is.

bombcar 3y ago

Ours is mainly a glorified rice cooker that sometimes does something else. As a rice cooker, it cooks rice.

pessimizer 3y ago
You're missing out, because you should be using it to make beans. As a bean cooker, it turns a annoying multi-hour job into from dry to beautifully cooked in an hour. As a rice cooker, you should just use a rice cooker, they're like 1/3 the price and you can run it at the same time as the bean cooker.
- bombcar 3y ago
  I really do need to get into the bean scene, but we have had issues [1] in the past. [1] https://www.whelenmassnotification.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/03/CRW2.mp3 https://www.whelenmassnotification.com/wp-content/uploads/si...
- imp0cat 3y ago
  YMMV, but the rice cooker is mostly collecting dust since I got and Instant Pot. Why? The IP is much faster than a rice cooker. Also, the inner vessel is more durable - it's stainless steel (as opposed to the non-stick coating in the rice cooker), so no worries about scratches, dishwasher, etc... .

cdumler 3y ago

It's a tool. What you get out of it will depend on what you expect of it. What I try to tell people is that Instant Pot is not something that makes food better nor does it necessarily cook things faster. When you factor in the time it takes to get up to pressure and the time it takes for it release it, it isn't necessarily faster than normal cooking. What is does do it take care of itself. In other words, I can throw a bunch of stuff in the pot, configure it for cook time then turn off the heat, set a timer and know that in 45 minutes it will be ready to serve. In a house hold where multitasking is a necessity, that is a huge boon. Finally, one pot to clean up.

ksaj 3y ago
There is also the pressure cooker option. That's where our household gets the most mileage out of it. Pressure cooking is easy. Instant Pot pressure cooking is automagic.
- koolba 3y ago
  Pressure cooking itself is magical but the InstantPot is like a level one mage casting magical missile. Even the “high pressure” setting is pretty low compared to a real pressure cooker. Thankfully most meals have low HP.
  - ksaj 3y ago
    Yes, you might not use it as an industrial broaster, which requires a significant amount of pressure. But for most home use, InstaPot is painless. And the cleanup is really easy.
  - chongli 3y ago
    Instant Pot sold a model called the Max which went up to the full pressure of stovetop pressure cookers. It didn’t sell. The problem is that it took so much longer to reach the highest pressure. The main limitation? North American household 110V 15-amp circuits max out at 1650W (and typical appliances max out around 1350W to leave margin). If we had European 240V circuits we could have an Instant Pot designed for well over 2000W and it wouldn’t be an issue. The same story goes for electric kettles. Alec of Technology Connections [1] went into extensive detail about it! [1] https://youtu.be/_yMMTVVJI4c https://youtu.be/_yMMTVVJI4c

js2 3y ago

Things I use mine for regularly: - Hard-boiled eggs. Takes just 5 minutes. Not much time savings, but the eggs are consistently easy to peel and yes, I've tried it Serious Eats way too. - Incubating yogurt. Makes a perfect batch of four mason jars worth every time. - Risotto. Saves the 30 minutes of attending to rice where you slowly ladle in the broth. - Black beans. Start from dry beans in a pinch, no soaking needed.

downut 3y ago
I'm doing a complete tear down remodel of the kitchen so I bought some devices to make our 95% cooked from scratch meal lifestyle bearable through the awful times. A top of the line Breville toaster oven was the first, it's fantastic, but it is also silly to compare it to our 25 y/o Viking duel fuel range, waiting to reenter our life. A week ago I got my Instant Pot Pro, and I've been putting it through its paces. I boiled some eggs. This is what really irks me about IP fans: it does not take 5 minutes. It has some indeterminate amount of preheat, the 5 min., and then a cool down. The eggs are just fine, as flawless as the following method on a quality gas burner stove: Put eggs and water into pot to just cover, turn burner high"ish"; when bubbles just start, turn down to a very very slow bubble generation and set timer for 10m (12-13min at 5500' elevation), scoop out the eggs when the timer expires and put on the counter, peel when cool enough. I very rarely had to spend any attention monitoring this. The IP is just, but only just, as good. BUT ITS NOT FIVE MINUTES. Shouting because why do instant pot fans do this? Now, I am quite interested in the yogurt thing. That sounds very cool, we love yogurt and industrial yogurt, meh. Also strawberries are cheap right now and I'm thinking of making some exotic French confitures, and mixing that with the yogurt. Risotto? No brainer on a decent stove. Dried beans? I also have a 30 y/o Magefesa pressure cooker that has a thicker bottom than the instant pot "pot" and does dried beans perfectly. No magic, or even "instant", there. Another gripe: compared to the Breville that roller knob in the center is a gawdawlful POS. Reeks of cheap. Compared to the 15 y/o electric range that is going to be tossed out the back doors, and then shot multiple times with 12 gauge 3" buckshot loads, the IP is great, so maybe I'm a little sad that the inevitable PE bankrupt/shitify it happened to it too.
- jerf 3y ago

spacemadness 3y ago

[flagged]

drewm1980 3y ago

It's not just the convenience. Pressure cookers are way more energy efficient than boiling a big pot of food on an electric stove. If you're using an electric air conditioner to re-extract that heat from your house, the savings are even bigger. You do need to know how long your food needs to cook up front, or be tolerant of overcooked food.