Instant Pot owners, what's your favorite recipie?

[Zorro]

Whats the difference between the power XL pot from Bed and Bath and the Insta pot. They are both the same price....

 

[PJFrylar]

The 6 quart size should be good for small families. I have a 5 and 6 quart size. The 5 quart size makes dinner for me with 3-4 days of left overs.

I've never used the power XL pot, but a quick look on the internet seems to indicate it cooks at a lower PSI and will be slower. Someone said the one pressure setting on the power XL was roughly equivalent to the low pressure setting on the Instant Pot (which has a low an high pressure). General consensus seems to be instant pot > power xl.

 

[tailes151]

So far this recipe has been favorite dish I've mad in my IP. Awesome Chicken Green Chili. Don't skip on the fish sauce.

 

[zinfamous]

I'm literally on Amazon right now about to order the 6 quart. I really don't need the 8 quart, I'm just a single dude who occasionally cooks for friends. And I'm not even fat, I got a Leonardo DiCaprio Dad Bod!

Shit is dead sexy I tell you!

When I get a fat girlfriend I'll order the 8 quart!

You don't need a fat girlfriend or even a second you to justify the larger size. Consider that you can make 2-4 extra meals per week in a single cook with the larger size (this greatly increases your weekly efficiency if you are the type to prepare lunches, and some dinners, in advance. Makes life cheap, easy, tasty).

Also, if you want to make real stock (which you should always do), it is better to have that larger capacity.

How efficient is a single whole chicken ~$5-$8 each (depending on where you live?). Roast that badboy with some potatoes, carrots, abbles or whatever, and you've got about 5-7 meals on that chicken + potatoes alone.

Reserve the carcass--and especially all loose bones and tissue and sinew that you don't eat, and the neck if it came with your bird--saute it in your instant pot, fill with water, celery, carrots spices, and you now have like 6-8 quarts of real stock. That alone is the backbone of, basically, all of your meals.

You think you are making risotto without real chicken stock? Bitch, please!

 

[Kaido]

Reserve the carcass--and especially all loose bones and tissue and sinew that you don't eat, and the neck if it came with your bird--saute it in your instant pot, fill with water, celery, carrots spices, and you now have like 6-8 quarts of real stock. That alone is the backbone of, basically, all of your meals.

I just started making bone broth in my IP last year. It's not quite chicken noodle soup, but it's pretty dang good on a cold winter day haha. I usually start my day by chugging 16oz of water right when I wake up to get re-hydrated, but on cold mornings I just heat up some bone broth & drink that instead. Winter's Gatorade!

 

[Ns1]

Isn't bone broth just....broth?

 

[agent00f]

The 6 quart size should be good for small families. I have a 5 and 6 quart size. The 5 quart size makes dinner for me with 3-4 days of left overs.

I've never used the power XL pot, but a quick look on the internet seems to indicate it cooks at a lower PSI and will be slower. Someone said the one pressure setting on the power XL was roughly equivalent to the low pressure setting on the Instant Pot (which has a low an high pressure). General consensus seems to be instant pot > power xl.

The way these electrics work is they control for temperature and not pressure per se (except the safety release valve), not unlike a sous vide cooker but set to >100degC. The common temp they target is around 115degC though some are lower.

Would be pretty trivial to set them to the ~120degC or 15psi the "proper" manual/spring pressure ones operate at, but for some reason none of them do, I suspect because without a low cutoff valve they can oscillate to higher than 15psi so averaging 10-12 is on the safe side. There's a simple hack some guy did to add resistance to the temp probe on the Cuisinart electric to get the extra 5deg, which supposedly makes a difference in a few things like eggs.

 

[ElFenix]

i got the 6 quart for xmas, need to make some shredded beef to test it out

 

[Kaido]

Isn't bone broth just....broth?

Yes...ish. There are basically 3 sisters:

1. Broth
2. Stock
3. Bone broth

For starters, we'll call broth & stock the same thing (say, chicken broth & chicken stock). It's not really (stock usually has little bits of meat in it, for example), but for the sake of discussion, to differentiate, we'll use the word stock for broth and bone broth for bone broth. So now we just have stock & bone broth. Stock is usually a specific animal for a specific flavor, like chicken broth or bone broth (huge flavor difference over the store-bought varieties, btw). Bone broth is more of bones & veggies plus meat (the meat is used during cooking, for bonus flavor...usually just bits of meat left on the bone, and sometimes with some chicken wings or whatever thrown in, and sometimes with more flavorful animals & bones like oxtail, and sometimes with the bones roasted for extra flavor) for the purpose of getting the vitamins, minerals, and specifically the gelatin from the bones. In NYC, they sell it as a hot drink on cold days (whereas I wouldn't sip just broth...I'd add noodles, chicken, and veggies to it to make a soup). There's a lot of overlap, but the basic idea is that you would drink bone broth as a gelatinous drink (typically warmed up, with the gelatin melted so it's liquid, and usually for the perceived health benefits, or flavor, if it's a really good cook), whereas you'd use stock as a base for other things like soup. Particularly with bone broth, you can also re-use previously-brothed bones to eek more flavor & healthy stuff out of them (tip - you can also freeze bones from say whole chicken meals to make bone broth later down the road).

The IP makes making stock & bone broth really easy because you don't have to babysit the stove while you make it. It's still something of a developing field, however. Here's a good overview:

http://fearlesseating.net/instant-pot-bone-broth/

Nom Nom paleo has a good starter recipe that uses various types of bones, leeks, fish sauce, etc:

http://nomnompaleo.com/post/16004110328/quick-pressure-cooker-bone-broth

You can also saute up (IP has a saute feature, very useful to brown stuff up before you PC your food) a mirepoix (onion, celery, carrot) or holy trinity (green bell pepper, onion, celery) for some extra flavor, if you'd like. You can do fish meat stock as well:

http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/stock-vs-broth-are-you-confused/

This Old Gal has a pretty good system that lists the tools she uses:

http://thisoldgal.com/pressure-cooker-bone-broth/

Tons of links on google if you search for "Instant Pot bone broth" as well - everyone has their own take on it. In theory, bone broth is a healthy drink; as far as actual health impact, who knows. Pretty much I just tell people to drink it if they like the taste. If you have a place that serves it in your area (well, a place that makes a good batch, because it can be very bland if you don't flavor it up), try it out there first, otherwise it's pretty easy to just throw leftover stuff in your IP & let it stew for a bit, then strain it. That's the great thing about the Instant Pot...push a button & let it do the work for you, no babysitting required!

 

[Kaido]

The way these electrics work is they control for temperature and not pressure per se (except the safety release valve), not unlike a sous vide cooker but set to >100degC. The common temp they target is around 115degC though some are lower.

Would be pretty trivial to set them to the ~120degC or 15psi the "proper" manual/spring pressure ones operate at, but for some reason none of them do, I suspect because without a low cutoff valve they can oscillate to higher than 15psi so averaging 10-12 is on the safe side. There's a simple hack some guy did to add resistance to the temp probe on the Cuisinart electric to get the extra 5deg, which supposedly makes a difference in a few things like eggs.

I've been tempted to pick up a stove-top manual pressure cooker for the extra PSI, but I'm so spoiled by automation & convenience with my plug-in appliances that I just haven't bothered. My workflow is constantly changing, but lately all of my indoor cooking pretty much boils down to just four devices:

1. Instant Pot
2. Anova
3. Induction hotplate
4. Convection toaster oven

The IP gets used for everything, pretty much a daily-use kind of thing. The Anova largely handles meats (primarily chicken, pork, and beef). Although I have a regular stovetop range, I rarely use it because the induction hotplate (which goes up to 575F in 5-degree increments) heats up SO much faster it's not even funny, plus I'm usually a one-pan kind of guy & rarely put the four burners to good use. I also rarely use my regular oven anymore because the preheat & cook times on the convection toaster oven are so much quicker & more convenient for small-batch stuff, like a few rolls or a half-dozen cookies. Appliance cooking ftw!

 

[agent00f]

I've been tempted to pick up a stove-top manual pressure cooker for the extra PSI, but I'm so spoiled by automation & convenience with my plug-in appliances that I just haven't bothered. My workflow is constantly changing, but lately all of my indoor cooking pretty much boils down to just four devices:

1. Instant Pot
2. Anova
3. Induction hotplate
4. Convection toaster oven

The IP gets used for everything, pretty much a daily-use kind of thing. The Anova largely handles meats (primarily chicken, pork, and beef). Although I have a regular stovetop range, I rarely use it because the induction hotplate (which goes up to 575F in 5-degree increments) heats up SO much faster it's not even funny, plus I'm usually a one-pan kind of guy & rarely put the four burners to good use. I also rarely use my regular oven anymore because the preheat & cook times on the convection toaster oven are so much quicker & more convenient for small-batch stuff, like a few rolls or a half-dozen cookies. Appliance cooking ftw!

I use pretty much the same setup. You should try more vegetables & such in the anova, carrots are a pretty good start, though I guess caramelized in PC is better.

 

[MrSquished]

Gonna fire up the IP for the first time tonight to do a pot roast.

Is there a chance I can die?

 

[Kaido]

Gonna fire up the IP for the first time tonight to do a pot roast.

Is there a chance I can die?

Nah. 10 safety features on the IP, it won't blow up. It's not like the old stove-top models.

Do a steam clean first:

http://www.pressurecookrecipes.com/instant-pot-water-test/

This will make sure everything is in working order & will let you get familiar with how it works. Some tips:

1. The lid is a little tricky to put on the first time. It will drop flush once you get it lined up, then twist & it will do a doodlie doo noise telling you it's shut properly.

2. The vent knob is fiddly. It's supposed to be that way. It jiggles. It's supposed to be that way. You point it at you to release the steam, you point it to the left to lock it for pressure cooking. Again, it's wobbly, so when you turn it left, you can kind of twist it around & up and down. That's normal.

3. Two types of pressure release: natural & quick. Natural is where you wait 10 or 20 minutes for it to depressurize naturally. Quick is where you twist the wobbly vent & it shoots out like a choo choo train. You won't die, but it will scare the crap out of you the first time you do it Don't put your hand over it because your fingers will liquify from the hot steam. Instead, twist it sideways. I suggest using a dish towel the first time to protect your hands...once you get the hang of it you can twist it with your fingers without worry about getting hurt.

4. All pressure cooker recipes lie. They don't include pressurization ("preheat") time. If you have 5 quarts of liquid in there, it's gonna take like half an hour to pressurize due to the volume. One cup of jasmine rice (with one cup of water) takes 6 minutes to preheat (plus 3 minutes to cook, plus a 10-minute natural release = 19 minutes total). It's all automatic, but it's important to learn what the preheat times are for your recipe (quantity you're cooking, plus it may vary by a few minutes based on elevation, room temp, etc.). That's one of the reasons I tell everyone to make each recipe a few times...test it out, nail it down, then replicate your perfected recipe & write that puppy down in OneNote (or whatever note-taking system you use for storing recipes).

 

[Kaido]

I use pretty much the same setup. You should try more vegetables & such in the anova, carrots are a pretty good start, though I guess caramelized in PC is better.

Yeah, I can bag them, but it's even easier to just toss them in the IP & press go. I'm running two 6qt IP's now, so I usually do meat in the Anova, a starch in the IP (potato/sweet potato or some type of rice), and the veggie in the 2nd IP. Making dinner is almost as easy as microwaving a TV dinner now, but tastes way better (and is far healthier haha).

 

[MrSquished]

Nah. 10 safety features on the IP, it won't blow up. It's not like the old stove-top models.

Do a steam clean first:

http://www.pressurecookrecipes.com/instant-pot-water-test/

This will make sure everything is in working order & will let you get familiar with how it works. Some tips:

1. The lid is a little tricky to put on the first time. It will drop flush once you get it lined up, then twist & it will do a doodlie doo noise telling you it's shut properly.

2. The vent knob is fiddly. It's supposed to be that way. It jiggles. It's supposed to be that way. You point it at you to release the steam, you point it to the left to lock it for pressure cooking. Again, it's wobbly, so when you turn it left, you can kind of twist it around & up and down. That's normal.

3. Two types of pressure release: natural & quick. Natural is where you wait 10 or 20 minutes for it to depressurize naturally. Quick is where you twist the wobbly vent & it shoots out like a choo choo train. You won't die, but it will scare the crap out of you the first time you do it Don't put your hand over it because your fingers will liquify from the hot steam. Instead, twist it sideways. I suggest using a dish towel the first time to protect your hands...once you get the hang of it you can twist it with your fingers without worry about getting hurt.

4. All pressure cooker recipes lie. They don't include pressurization ("preheat") time. If you have 5 quarts of liquid in there, it's gonna take like half an hour to pressurize due to the volume. One cup of jasmine rice (with one cup of water) takes 6 minutes to preheat (plus 3 minutes to cook, plus a 10-minute natural release = 19 minutes total). It's all automatic, but it's important to learn what the preheat times are for your recipe (quantity you're cooking, plus it may vary by a few minutes based on elevation, room temp, etc.). That's one of the reasons I tell everyone to make each recipe a few times...test it out, nail it down, then replicate your perfected recipe & write that puppy down in OneNote (or whatever note-taking system you use for storing recipes).

Thanks for the good tips. Cooking time suggestion? I am combining 2 recipes. One says to cook the 2-3lb roast on the Meat/Stew setting for 45 minutes. Another says to do the 3-4lb roast on High Pressure for 80 minutes. I got a 4lb roast. I was leaning towards the 80 minutes on HP. What do you think?

 

[agent00f]

Thanks for the good tips. Cooking time suggestion? I am combining 2 recipes. One says to cook the 2-3lb roast on the Meat/Stew setting for 45 minutes. Another says to do the 3-4lb roast on High Pressure for 80 minutes. I got a 4lb roast. I was leaning towards the 80 minutes on HP. What do you think?

Weight is not an important factor. For some perspective, 35 min will tenderize short ribs, a relative tough cut, and 90 min will pulverize even brisket. "Roast" can mean anything from ribeye to relatively tougher rump, so adjust accordingly but 45min will tenderize most anything. This is submerged; add 50% time if steaming. If you prefer greater uniformity I would suggest cutting a piece in two, and brown both before and after for max flavor.

 

[MrSquished]

Weight is not an important factor. For some perspective, 35 min will tenderize short ribs, a relative tough cut, and 90 min will pulverize even brisket. "Roast" can mean anything from ribeye to relatively tougher rump, so adjust accordingly but 45min will tenderize most anything. This is submerged; add 50% time if steaming. If you prefer greater uniformity I would suggest cutting a piece in two, and brown both before and after for max flavor.

Interesting. This will be cooked with 3 cups of liquid stock/wine and some worcesteshire. So I'll do 55 minutes on high pressure, then depressurize to throw in the potatoes and carrots, and then the whole thing will go another 15 minutes. I think I'll bew safe.

 

[agent00f]

I'd recommend checking for tenderness after the 55, or 35 for that matter.

 

[Ns1]

Yes...ish. There are basically 3 sisters:

1. Broth
2. Stock
3. Bone broth

For starters, we'll call broth & stock the same thing (say, chicken broth & chicken stock). It's not really (stock usually has little bits of meat in it, for example), but for the sake of discussion, to differentiate, we'll use the word stock for broth and bone broth for bone broth. So now we just have stock & bone broth. Stock is usually a specific animal for a specific flavor, like chicken broth or bone broth (huge flavor difference over the store-bought varieties, btw). Bone broth is more of bones & veggies plus meat (the meat is used during cooking, for bonus flavor...usually just bits of meat left on the bone, and sometimes with some chicken wings or whatever thrown in, and sometimes with more flavorful animals & bones like oxtail, and sometimes with the bones roasted for extra flavor) for the purpose of getting the vitamins, minerals, and specifically the gelatin from the bones. In NYC, they sell it as a hot drink on cold days (whereas I wouldn't sip just broth...I'd add noodles, chicken, and veggies to it to make a soup). There's a lot of overlap, but the basic idea is that you would drink bone broth as a gelatinous drink (typically warmed up, with the gelatin melted so it's liquid, and usually for the perceived health benefits, or flavor, if it's a really good cook), whereas you'd use stock as a base for other things like soup. Particularly with bone broth, you can also re-use previously-brothed bones to eek more flavor & healthy stuff out of them (tip - you can also freeze bones from say whole chicken meals to make bone broth later down the road).

Thanks. I guess every stock my family has ever made is bone broth, and we only buy broth/stock in cans. I mean it sounds like bone broth is the foundation for 100% of all asian noodle soups.

 

[agent00f]

The terminology isn't well defined. In the french school they roast just about everything then scrape the lot into a pot and call it stock; broth is more the byproduct of boiling meat, with the assumption that the meat is part of the meal at some point. Most asian places don't do the roast step so miss out on that darker flavor, though I guess vietnamese makes up for it with enough marrow gelatin to set solid at room temp.

 

[MrSquished]

I'm already a fan after one use. Read Kaido's tips and scanned the instruction manual.

Made a big 4.25lb chuck roast. Cut it in two. Searing it first was super easy - the saute setting is a charm. Gets nice and hot. After adding a few more ingredients put it on Meat/Stew and crushed it on high pressure for 55 minutes. I bet I coulda done it in 45 minutes. Then depressurized using the quick release, chucked in potatoes, carrots and mushrooms and brought it back up to pressure for another 20 minutes.

There was so much liquid it was almost near the top. I only put in about 3 cups of liquid plus whatever water the sauteed onions released and the juices from the meat. But the liquid, it was no more than 2 inches away from the top when done.

The meat was pull apart tender - just used tongs to shred pieces of meat off of it. Everything else was cooked nicely.

This was all done in half the time a roast would have taken by any other method. How cool is that?

Next is a simple whole chicken. My buddy tried a whole chicken with lemon and herbs for the first time the other day. 30 min cook time, it came out well he said.

The instant pot is gonna be awesome.

 

[Kaido]

The terminology isn't well defined. In the french school they roast just about everything then scrape the lot into a pot and call it stock; broth is more the byproduct of boiling meat, with the assumption that the meat is part of the meal at some point. Most asian places don't do the roast step so miss out on that darker flavor, though I guess vietnamese makes up for it with enough marrow gelatin to set solid at room temp.

Yeah and most Asian recipes consider cloudy broth better for flavor than clear broth, whereas more Americans like clear broth for drinking bone broth visually.

It was funny, my first batch of bone broth set up like a giant gummy bear haha.

 

[Kaido]

Thanks. I guess every stock my family has ever made is bone broth, and we only buy broth/stock in cans. I mean it sounds like bone broth is the foundation for 100% of all asian noodle soups.

I think of it more like a tree...the trunk is broth & the branches are all of the variations. Maybe you want carrots & celery. Maybe you want a mirepoix roasted up first for additional flavor. Maybe you add apple cider vinegar & fish sauce for a deeper, darker flavor. Maybe you use a mix of oxtail, chicken bones, chicken wings, and steak bones. Maybe you filter it for a clear broth, maybe you leave chunks of meat in. Lots of variations, just depends on what you're making & what flavor/texture you're after.

 

[Kaido]

I'm already a fan after one use. Read Kaido's tips and scanned the instruction manual.

Made a big 4.25lb chuck roast. Cut it in two. Searing it first was super easy - the saute setting is a charm. Gets nice and hot. After adding a few more ingredients put it on Meat/Stew and crushed it on high pressure for 55 minutes. I bet I coulda done it in 45 minutes. Then depressurized using the quick release, chucked in potatoes, carrots and mushrooms and brought it back up to pressure for another 20 minutes.

There was so much liquid it was almost near the top. I only put in about 3 cups of liquid plus whatever water the sauteed onions released and the juices from the meat. But the liquid, it was no more than 2 inches away from the top when done.

The meat was pull apart tender - just used tongs to shred pieces of meat off of it. Everything else was cooked nicely.

This was all done in half the time a roast would have taken by any other method. How cool is that?

Next is a simple whole chicken. My buddy tried a whole chicken with lemon and herbs for the first time the other day. 30 min cook time, it came out well he said.

The instant pot is gonna be awesome.

CraKaJaX recommended this recipe for IP chicken:

http://healinggourmet.com/healthy-recipes/pressure-cooker-chicken/

Yeah, the IP really only needs 1 cup of liquid to operate (which doesn't always mean water or broth, depends on how juicy your ingredients are too). Just make sure not to go above the "Max Fill" line in the inner pot because it can boil up & cork the vent. One-pot cooking like you did is really awesome though...sear the meat using the saute, do the first pressure-cook run to tenderize the meat, then do a second PC run to do the veggies, then serve...just one pot to clean up & super easy process.

Pro tip: sign up for a free Microsoft OneNote account here:

https://www.onenote.com/

It's like EverNote, but a little cleaner in visual design. I have a notebook for my recipes, with folders for each type (dinner, dessert, chicken, etc.). Like the Anova, the Instant Pot makes replicating recipes exactly the same every time trivial, so once you nail down a recipe, you know that it will always come out awesome. So like with yours, I'd add a WIP recipe & then try it on 45 minutes next go-around to see if it comes out the same but reduces cooking time. If so, update your recipe & lock it into a folder called say "Beef" and now you've got a nice little personal database of recipes. I end up tweaking most recipes to my personal preference, but always forget what I did to make them taste awesome, so writing them down like that really helps me down the road when I need to pull up the recipe for reference.

One of these days I need to post like a 2-week IP menu thread haha. Lately I've been working on cloning Olive Garden chicken dishes & common chicken dishes like chicken marsala. My goal is to get them into "dump meals" that I can put in ziplocs in the freezer & then just dump into my IP during the week. Been using cornstarch as a thickener post-pressure-cook to thicken up the sauces with pretty good results (see that IP crack chicken in a previous post).

 

[Kaido]

Weight is not an important factor. For some perspective, 35 min will tenderize short ribs, a relative tough cut, and 90 min will pulverize even brisket. "Roast" can mean anything from ribeye to relatively tougher rump, so adjust accordingly but 45min will tenderize most anything. This is submerged; add 50% time if steaming. If you prefer greater uniformity I would suggest cutting a piece in two, and brown both before and after for max flavor.

That's what I do with my IP kalua pork, I split a 5-pound pork shoulder into 3 pieces:

http://nomnompaleo.com/post/111934821818/pressure-cooker-kalua-pig

Of course, I shred it after, so it doesn't really matter anyway, but it does make it a lot easier to manage in the pot!