Anyone have an insta-pot? Thoughts?

LinCharpentier

Son got me one for Christmas I just love it. I did screw up my roast beef last night. It said 35 min. but wasn't done I put it back in and another 35 min. killed it.

toxikon

Tried making beef and barley stew last night (from the Food Lab cookbook) and it turned out really well! I used a bit too much barley so it soaked up most of my broth and became very thick, but I don't mind a nice thick stew. The chuck roast chunks turned out so tender.

kjm3579

I bought one last year and my favorite recipe is a veggie and bean soup -- was just thinking of making it tonight since were getting intensely cold weather and would be a perfect night for hot soup...

MelanieCN77

toxikon wrote: »

MelanieCN77 wrote: »

OldHobo wrote: »

Any idea why they say,

"If you instant release it, it makes the meat quite tough."

The only thing I can think of is that, if you are following a recipe that calls for natural release, the writer has factored the additional cooking taking place during depressurization into the recipe. I may be missing something though.

Correct. It's not the release method that makes anything tough, it's that the cook time is just longer with NPR.

It seems like there's quite a few websites that claim that IR does effect the quality of the meat, though.

https://www.hippressurecooking.com/meat-openings-pcs/

Huh I'll have to pay more attention. I haven't found that to be the case but also nor am I standing over the pot waiting for stews and the like to finish so I can QR.

French_Peasant

OldHobo wrote: »

canadianlbs wrote: »

i have a some-other-brand pressure cooker, not an instant pot. but having given that disclaimer, i do use it a lot; more than i expected i would.

but the really huge revelation for me was stock. i've made stock since idek when, and it's always been perfectly fine in the slow cooker or on the stove. but for some reason i don't understand, the stock that comes out of the pressure cooker isn't just 'fine'. it's incredible.

not even factoring the takes-less-time aspect.

I make stock a lot on the stovetop. Never used a pressure cooker but have a new impulse buy Instant Pot. One of the bones of contention among amateur stock cooks involves temperature. Conventional wisdom is bring to a boil, skim the scum, reduce heat and simmer at about 190°F for x hours. Emphasis is placed on not allowing a prolonged full rolling boil. The reason usually cited is that the final product won't be clear which is really important to high-class chefs with consummés on their mind. Not being a chef, or high class, or interested in stock clarity I've never fretted much about it. "Cloudiness" certainly doesn't detract from the flavor, if anything, quite the opposite.

But logging and monitoring my weight and calorie intake have convinced me there is a more important reason to control the temperature in the stock pot. What is happening at a rolling boil is the fat in the stock gets emulsified in the liquid like oil in mayonnaise. Here is what Shirley O. Corriher says about it in CookWise.

Simmer only. It is very important to simmer stocks and not permit them to boil until after all the fat has been removed. If you boil a stock vigorously, the fat will emulsify or combine with the liquid and form a cloudy, fatty stock. Instead, you want the fat to remain separate and float to the top so that you can remove every bit of it. There are many times in cooking when you do want to make stable emulsions and get fat and liquid to stay together. This, however, is not one of those times.

So I have some experience making and using "cloudy" stock and watching my weight increase more than it should, based on the expected caloric content. But I have no experience with pressure cookers in general or an Instant Pot in particular. Is there any way to prevent fat from being emulsified into the stock using an Instant Pot?

Since you seem to appreciate a good stock, you might want to consider not skimming the fat, or if you do, please save it and use it elsewhere, if you are not already. I never boil a stock, but I also don't throw out a scrap of the fat, because for me that is the entire point of the effort. I will store the stock in quart containers in the freezer and when used in a recipe, I just make sure I add in a quarter cup fat or so (I just log it as lard) per quart used, since that is about what floats to the top of the container. Since I make a roux for just about every stock situation, from a blond roux for chicken n' dumplings to a very dark roux for gumbo, any cloudiness is not a particular concern for me.

For those who have been disappointed in their stock results, make sure you are using enough chicken, and I also highly recommend plenty of the magical trio of onions, celery and carrots (mirepoix; you can save scraps and skins and odds and ends in the freezer till you need it), garlic and bay, and a large bundle of thyme and/or summer savory. I use two chickens in a very large stock pot completely filled with water, and after they have simmered for an hour, I pull them out, shred off most of the meat to freeze separately, and then return all the bones and skin and remaining meat to the stock pot to simmer for another 8 hours or so.

I just got an Instant Pot for Christmas, and am now intrigued about making stock in it--it seems like the perfect size for the random rotisserie chicken carcass you don't have room for in the freezer. I am also curious as to whether it could get even more stock out of the scraps left over from my major stock operation. It kills me to throw out all the scraps as I always suspect there is yet more flavor in there, and (perhaps?) it could be extricated with a second round under pressure.

blueheartrisen

My sister loves hers and uses it multiple times a week, so I bought one. One year later, I passed mine on to her, happy to be rid of it.

Compared to a crockpot, I found it fussy to use. No comparison to an oven because it gives everything a boiled in water or steamed taste. It was surprisingly hard to clean for being non-stick, and lots of piecesparts that all need to go back together just so or the seal won't take. I hated that I had to be very precise on the timing or overshoot the mark because getting up to pressure takes most of the cook time and I didn't want to have to do that more than once per dish. I like the flexibility of being able to add quicker cooking items later in a crockpot, something you cannot do (at least not easily or quickly) in an Instant Pot.

toxikon

blueheartrisen wrote: »

My sister loves hers and uses it multiple times a week, so I bought one. One year later, I passed mine on to her, happy to be rid of it.

Compared to a crockpot, I found it fussy to use. No comparison to an oven because it gives everything a boiled in water or steamed taste. It was surprisingly hard to clean for being non-stick, and lots of piecesparts that all need to go back together just so or the seal won't take. I hated that I had to be very precise on the timing or overshoot the mark because getting up to pressure takes most of the cook time and I didn't want to have to do that more than once per dish. I like the flexibility of being able to add quicker cooking items later in a crockpot, something you cannot do (at least not easily or quickly) in an Instant Pot.

I grabbed a glass lid for my Instant Pot, so I can make use of the slow-cooking aspect of it and have one less gadget taking up space in my small kitchen!

It does take some fiddling to get the cooking times right with pressure cooking, and not being able to have a peek along the way feels new and weird to me. But I'm still really enjoying playing with it!

Making hard-boiled eggs in it was AWESOME. Only needed a cup of water and I could put in as many eggs as I wanted. Took about 4 minutes to pressure cook, about 10 minutes in total including coming to pressure then using instant release. Best of all, the shells practically fell off the eggs. And they were perfectly done.

I'm looking forward to trying out some yogurt and cheesecake recipes too.

Anyway. I can see how it's not for everyone. I was really skeptical when I got it but I just love it now. Your sister is lucky to have two now!!

rheddmobile

Well, I did BBQ ribs in mine, and they were edible, but not great. Maybe if I lived somewhere else I'd be impressed, but here in Memphis I can drive ten minutes and spend twelve bucks to have someone else serve me the best ribs in the world smoked in a smoker with real wood complete with side dishes, and it makes no sense to spend almost as much money, have to mess with cooking and cleaning up after raw meat, and end up with steam boiled ribs. I finished them under the broiler which made them tolerable (as opposed to honestly sort of gross when they first come out of the pot), but it's just not worth the effort for the end product. Sure, they were tender, as advertised, but there's a lot more to quality ribs than just tenderness!

Someone mentioned low carb cheesecake - does anyone have a good low carb cheesecake recipe for the instant pot?

Francl27

blueheartrisen wrote: »

My sister loves hers and uses it multiple times a week, so I bought one. One year later, I passed mine on to her, happy to be rid of it.

Compared to a crockpot, I found it fussy to use. No comparison to an oven because it gives everything a boiled in water or steamed taste. It was surprisingly hard to clean for being non-stick, and lots of piecesparts that all need to go back together just so or the seal won't take. I hated that I had to be very precise on the timing or overshoot the mark because getting up to pressure takes most of the cook time and I didn't want to have to do that more than once per dish. I like the flexibility of being able to add quicker cooking items later in a crockpot, something you cannot do (at least not easily or quickly) in an Instant Pot.

Yes, for my stew I had to add the veggies for an extra 4 minutes after, which meant more getting to pressure etc.

rheddmobile wrote: »

Well, I did BBQ ribs in mine, and they were edible, but not great. Maybe if I lived somewhere else I'd be impressed, but here in Memphis I can drive ten minutes and spend twelve bucks to have someone else serve me the best ribs in the world smoked in a smoker with real wood complete with side dishes, and it makes no sense to spend almost as much money, have to mess with cooking and cleaning up after raw meat, and end up with steam boiled ribs. I finished them under the broiler which made them tolerable (as opposed to honestly sort of gross when they first come out of the pot), but it's just not worth the effort for the end product. Sure, they were tender, as advertised, but there's a lot more to quality ribs than just tenderness!

Someone mentioned low carb cheesecake - does anyone have a good low carb cheesecake recipe for the instant pot?

That's why I'm not sure about ribs either. Lots of good bbq places in the area and it probably won't compare at all. I made wing once and they tasted like sadness, lol.

WinoGelato

rheddmobile wrote: »

Well, I did BBQ ribs in mine, and they were edible, but not great. Maybe if I lived somewhere else I'd be impressed, but here in Memphis I can drive ten minutes and spend twelve bucks to have someone else serve me the best ribs in the world smoked in a smoker with real wood complete with side dishes, and it makes no sense to spend almost as much money, have to mess with cooking and cleaning up after raw meat, and end up with steam boiled ribs. I finished them under the broiler which made them tolerable (as opposed to honestly sort of gross when they first come out of the pot), but it's just not worth the effort for the end product. Sure, they were tender, as advertised, but there's a lot more to quality ribs than just tenderness!

Someone mentioned low carb cheesecake - does anyone have a good low carb cheesecake recipe for the instant pot?

I made ribs tonight and I thought they were really good, and I'm from KC and have been to Memphis dozens of times when it was in my sales territory! Maybe not better than some of my favorite places, but honestly I thought they were better than the ones my husband does on the smoker and grill. They were tender but still on the bone with decent "chew" and I also sauced and finished under the broiler.

wefts

I soaked my blackeyed peas and did 30 min and let the pressure release on its own they were creamier than if I used the slow cooker for 2224 hours and I tossed in a leftover bone in pork loin and dome seasonings and every thing was perfect . still getting used to it but every thing I have done so far is good . I have put the rice cooker and slow cooker away . this has earned its spot on the counter