INSTA-POTS

Do you find Insta-Pots more useful than just a pressure cooker on the stovetop?
Kathy

The Instant Pot ... and sous vide, have revolutionized cooking, I think.  Because of these new contraptions, probability of making a mistake resulting in black food has plummeted to less than 5%.

I use one or the other, I dunno, 5 times/week?  

K. Lopez wrote:Do you find Insta-Pots more useful than just a pressure cooker on the stovetop?
Kathy

Not at all... I refuse to use anything non-stick because they are still using PFAS/PFOS chemicals (they may claim to be free on one or another or a couple, but they are just using a familial chemical with a different name (PFOx or PFAx), and they are all just as bad. (There are new laws that are trying to end that deception from the chemical corporation).

I heard you can get a stainless insert for an insta-pot , but honestly... Why bother, it’s still an awfully big lump of plastic... I like my stove top pressure cookers and canners, they work great and are easy to use and clean.

Good Luck!

I'm not impressed with the Instapot. We have one, my daughter likes it for beans, but I don't have little use for it. Ours is stainless steel, so that is available. But the whole thing is a pain to clean, especially the top and vent.

My son loves to buy kitchen gadgets. So of course we have an insta-pot.  He used it a lot when he first got it, but now it just takes up a lot of valuable space. I'm old school. I haven't even tried it.

Well I must be even older school than you Jen, as I have absolutely no idea what an Insta-pot is!!  Had to look it up - not the kind of thing I'd ever use.

I have an instapot and use it weekly to make yogurt for the next week. Chick peas for hummus. A frozen pork roast and 90 minutes for pulled pork. I use it quite a bit, 3-4 days a week for something. The air fryer (a gift) I just haven't figured out yet.

Paul Eusey wrote:

K. Lopez wrote:Do you find Insta-Pots more useful than just a pressure cooker on the stovetop?
Kathy

Not at all... I refuse to use anything non-stick because they are still using PFAS/PFOS chemicals (they may claim to be free on one or another or a couple, but they are just using a familial chemical with a different name (PFOx or PFAx), and they are all just as bad. (There are new laws that are trying to end that deception from the chemical corporation)

I actually bought our instant pot years before it was "cool," because I wanted a non-toxic slow-cooker. I just kept finding out how there were heavy metals in the ones made of clay, and there was teflon in the metal ones. The only stainless steel thing with a slow-cooker function was the Instant Pot. I hadn't wanted a pressure cooker, but it does have a slow cooker function. Ironically, I think I've used the slow-cooker function maybe once. The pressure cooker function is more useful to us.  

The lid of our instant pot is plastic, but the rest of the thing is mostly metal. We bought ours 8 years ago, and it's still going strong. I like that I can "set it and forget it." We use it mostly for making bone broth, as well as cooking in the summer. It heats up the house a lot less than stove-top cooking. It's pretty energy efficient. Ours doesn't have the yogurt setting, but I wish it did!

The insta-pot is good for broths and slow-stewed meats but that’s about all we’ve used it for. I’m not a huge fan of the way the meat all has a similar texture, it’s pull apart, slow cooked for sure in the insta-pot. I know you can make yogurt and there’s a bunch of other settings on it, but haven’t bothered with them. It’s worth for the speediness of broth.

I have two, one gift, one garbage picked...

I like them for making broth, rice and beans, but my favorite thing is to pressure cook a fatty pork roast then cook off the water and brown it in onion, garlic,  peppers, cumin and  its own juices.
It's heaven on a corn tortilla or a toasted bun.
But frankly, I think any pressure cooker could do as well.
Some people ask a big deal about being able to set them  as and forget  them,  but I find the pre-sets give very poor results.
To avoid soggy rice or cruchy beans I look up
settings vetted by the online insta pot  community and adjust from there.

I guess I am one of the lucky ones.  I have been cooking on a wood burning stove for the last 35 years, so if I want a slow cooker, I just put my cast iron pot on the side and it can simmer all day, or even 2 or 3 days for a bone broth.  Probably why I never knew about those insta-pots!

I haven't found an Instant Pot recipe I couldn't do on my stovetop pressure cooker (13 years old and as good looking as the day we got it as a wedding gift)

I wouldn't like a heating pressured kitchen implement to run unattended in my house, so I don't see how the delayed function would be useful (plus it means food sitting at room temp for a while, right?)

And there's more that can go wrong with a device that has electronic components, heating components and a vessel combined. If my range breaks, I can fix most of that myself. If the instapot breaks, I'm doubtful I'll be able to find standard after-market parts for it.

We have an Instant Pot. It gets used maybe once a week.....largely to cook rice.   It is a handy added appliance to have ...but a rice cooker would have been less expensive.  Ours is stainless.

I bought my instant pot because life is busy on the farm and I'm often called away from the stove - sometimes for hours - which isn't great when I'm cooking rice on the stovetop pressure cooker.  Having the timer that turns itself off and to 'keep warm'.  It's saved a lot of time being able to get it going, then get on with my day knowing that food will be ready for me when I'm ready for it.

My Instant pot is Stainless Steel top and bottom.  It has a silicone seal.

With tests from my style of cooking, it is about 10% the amount of electricity as the oven and about 40% of the electricity of cooking the same amount and amount of time on the stove - only the stove takes much longer to cook.  

I got the instant pot with a removable, handled, dishwasher cleanable, stovetop usable, inside pot.
I've used most of the settings - slow cooker, pressure cooker, sous vide, rice cooker, saute, & keep warm.
Used to use the expensive stove top pressure cooker, now mostly using the instant pot instead, as I don't have to monitor it constantly and it will come to temp, cook for a specific time, and shut itself off. If I don't have electricity I'll go back to the stove top one. Otherwise it's really nice to do rice while working on the rest of the meal. "saute" to melt the butter and mix in rice, "cancel", "rice" add broth etc., "start", close lid, let it make rice and keep it warm. Also love being able to sear meat, then add the rest of ingredients and pressure cook or slow cook in the same pot. (I'm more of a pressure vs slow cook kind of cook). If you're in a hurry, release the pressure after cooking and resting, instead of waiting for it to depressurize on its own.
Just have to remember to push "start" after programming.
Only problem I have had is that the sous vide setting will not hold a specific temperature (checked with a thermometer), so unusable for that (bummer, as salmon cooked sous vide is yummy!).

So many people waxing lyrical about this pot, I had to look at it in more details again.  Oh, boy, 1000W to 1200W electric consumption depending on the size!  Enough to make my eyes water. Our solar system in the Pyrenees was delivering 1500W.  A few days without sunshine and there goes my rice!

Joan Candalino wrote:Otherwise it's really nice to do rice while working on the rest of the meal. "saute" to melt the butter and mix in rice, "cancel", "rice" add broth etc., "start", close lid, let it make rice and keep it warm.

I'll do the same thing with my stove top one. Turn on the heat to sauté ingredients. Add liquid. Add lid and wait for pressure to come up (generally within a few seconds). Lower the heat and set kitchen timer. Move the pot to trivet once the timer rings. It's essentially the same thing, except I turn a knob instead of pressing buttons :)

I use ours for hard boiling eggs.
4 minutes and they are perfect !!

We got an Instant Pot when our 30 y.o. pressure cooker's handle died. We'd debated the alternatives, and I was swaying towards a new Stainless Pressure cooker, but Hubby was pressuring me (bad pun...) to get a larger one than I wanted.  (He's not the one who has to lift it or find a spot in the closet!) Before we'd come around to consensus, he saw an Instant Pot on sale and I was so desperate for *something* to replace the pressure cooker, I agreed.
1. It's bigger - won't fit in the cupboard and requires more water in the bottom than my old cooker.
2. It's inner pot is stainless - I'm much happier with that than the aluminum pressure cooker - I'm thinking I'm too exposed to aluminum and trying to reduce that.
3. It can be plugged in outdoors in hot weather.
4. It doesn't go to as high a pressure as my old pressure cooker so things take longer. I've adapted recipes and learned to set timers.
5. I find it takes longer to come up to pressure than my old cooker, so it's not much help for things that only need a few minutes at pressure. Yes, you can release the pressure if you want to come down quickly, but that's a more likely to get messy stuff in the pressure mechanism than lifting the old pot over to the sink and dribbling some water on it.
6. The rice setting is for "white" rice - I had to adapt the pressure setting to do brown.
7. My old slow cooker is easier to check on and add things to. I hadn't heard there were concerns about the pots, so I'll have to look into that.

Bottom line - I use it for bone broth and cooking beans. I went back to a pot on the stove for rice and my old slow-cooker, although I should try again as I think I messed up the instructions on that one - electronic things and me tend not to play nice - I'm known for confusing the machine and myself to the point of requiring a hard re-boot!

Welcome, K Lopez!
There was a similar discussion about a year ago here started by R Ranson that you might find useful.
https://permies.com/t/119228/kitchen/Instant-Pot-pressure-cooker-slow
Lots of folks shared how they use their Insta-Pots, and some of their other kitchen cookers.

Dennis Barrow wrote:I use ours for hard boiling eggs.
4 minutes and they are perfect !!

Des the 4 minutes include time to pressurize/de-pressurize?

For those of you using it for broth or stock, are you using a single chicken carcass or just a meals worth of pork or beef bones. It seems awfully small for broth. My stock pot is 16 quarts. I've never seen an Insta-pot that large, or maybe I just haven't looked enough.

Stacy Witscher wrote:For those of you using it for broth or stock, are you using a single chicken carcass or just a meals worth of pork or beef bones. It seems awfully small for broth. My stock pot is 16 quarts. I've never seen an Insta-pot that large, or maybe I just haven't looked enough.

I tend to broth up whatever bones are around after a meal or two. Otherwise I'd risk discovering science experiments in the back of the fridge. Depending on what we've eaten (duck and chicken carcasses are the most common) I'll end up with a liter or less of broth. If I pour it into a jar while it's hot and there's fat that floats to the top, the fat will seal it and keep it good in the fridge for a week or more. I use the fat in baking - yes it's not perfectly "white" but the flavorful things I make cover any slight flavor in the fat and at least I know I'm eating fat from well raised animals.

If for some reason I've got a large quantity of bones, I haul out my large pressure canner.

I often run the same bones through twice.
The second time, I simmer down the resulting broth for a while, then combine it with the first batch.

This makes me realize that I do get a lot of value from the automatic features.
I wouldn't want to do the bones twice on the stove top, too much attention involved.

Someone just gifted me the 8 quart instant pot (the largest model) and I'm over the moon. Last night I cooked 6 large red potatoes, 8 fat carrots, and a whole 4lb FROZEN SOLID chicken in just over an hour. From frozen to falling-off-the-bone tender. I'm in love. This weekend I'm going to try out the yogurt feature, and I can already confirm it makes the easiest-peel hardboiled eggs I've ever made. Next week I'm going to try out a corned beef roast from the freezer, though on slow cook mode rather than pressure. I love it.

When I do a bone broth in the instant pot,  it turns out to be jelly and needs watering down to use.

Kena Landry wrote:I haven't found an Instant Pot recipe I couldn't do on my stovetop pressure cooker (13 years old and as good looking as the day we got it as a wedding gift)

I wouldn't like a heating pressured kitchen implement to run unattended in my house, so I don't see how the delayed function would be useful (plus it means food sitting at room temp for a while, right?)

They can be set to keep the food in the safe heated temp range.

We have one, but I'm more inclined to use the stove or the slow cooker. Hubs, on the other hand, uses it often - not quite as often as the sous vide, which is almost a daily thing. When our stove died (as in blew up, with John standing in front of it - he's fine,  minor, as explosions go, but, still a dead stove), right before Thanksgiving, and no one could get us a replacement in time, we used all the gadgets, including the stuff I never wanted, and had a wonderful dinner.

William Bronson wrote:

Dennis Barrow wrote:I use ours for hard boiling eggs.
4 minutes and they are perfect !!

Des the 4 minutes include time to pressurize/de-pressurize?

William Bronson, the 4 minutes is pressurized / cook time.  I let the instapot depressurize on its own and them submerse the eggs in ice water bath to cool.
I crack the shells at the bubble end of the egg and usually run cool water at the tap lightly over the egg and the shells come off near perfect each time.

I make most main courses with mine. I love it.

I have 4 pressure cookers, different sizes and use them often. Hopefully more this year! . I have not used insta pot. I tried my ‘rice cooker this week but will go back to a plain stove top pan to cook rice since it tastes better and is easier.
thanks, Marie

Dennis Barrow wrote:

William Bronson, the 4 minutes is pressurized / cook time.  I let the instapot depressurize on its own and them submerse the eggs in ice water bath to cool.
I crack the shells at the bubble end of the egg and usually run cool water at the tap lightly over the egg and the shells come off near perfect each time.

I'm assuming you're talking about standard large or extra large chicken eggs?

Many of our chicken eggs are more like jumbo-sized and our duck eggs are even larger, so I'm wondering if I'd have to adjust the timing at all? Any thoughts?

Experiment?
The more food, the longer it takes to come to pressure and release,  that's why double the recipe or frozen food has the same at pressure time.

Then again,  chicken time varies a lot depending on size and bone.

But I don't know eggs...so?

I use our Insta Pot several times a week. The most use is for our weekly batch of bone broth. 90-150 minutes, depending on the type of bones, and the bones are soft and all the goodness has been pulled out. The broth gels very well when cooled. This saves me a lot of time tending broth on the stove.

I also love it for cooking dry beans. Even beans that are several years old cook up smooth and soft.

It cooks excellent rice also.

I've seen a lot of recipes for the Insta Pot but most look like they are stovetop recipes that you can use in the machine. Not really interested in that aspect.

I just made breakfast in my instant pot.

1 pound favourite short pasta.  4 cups water.  1 broth cube and some spicy cock sauce to taste.  On high  for 1/2 the stovetop cook time minus one min.

For first helping, spoon hot pasta in bowl and top with butter, salt, pepper, and cheese.  Maybe some garlic.

For the rest of the pasta, mix with sauce of choice and put in casserole dish for oven reheat or with tomato sauce for fried pasta.  

Paul Eusey wrote:

K. Lopez wrote:Do you find Insta-Pots more useful than just a pressure cooker on the stovetop?
Kathy

Not at all... I refuse to use anything non-stick because they are still using PFAS/PFOS chemicals (they may claim to be free on one or another or a couple, but they are just using a familial chemical with a different name (PFOx or PFAx), and they are all just as bad. (There are new laws that are trying to end that deception from the chemical corporation).

I heard you can get a stainless insert for an insta-pot , but honestly... Why bother, it’s still an awfully big lump of plastic... I like my stove top pressure cookers and canners, they work great and are easy to use and clean.

Good Luck!

Every Instant Pot I've ever purchased (I have two different sizes) always came with a stainless steel insert. The Ninja Foodi, on the other hand, which I actually love/use more, comes with that nasty nonstick insert; a stainless steel insert is available from a third party.

I agree with Gary. I use my sous vide contraption and my Instant Pots and my Ninja Foodi constantly. And now, being newly acquainted with chaffles (Google it!), I don't think I could live without my Dash multi mini waffle iron. Today I had chaffles made with fresh asparagus out of my garden, and yesterday I made some using my own homemade kimchi. Both were divine. Both were great for somebody who is not at all a cook and is often at a loss for what to do with fresh produce.

I have 2 insta pots,   I find it useful in one to be making yogurt, in the other cooking a full meal.


It does not replace a stove top,    but for what it does it does it perfectly every time.

The best feature for me is the keep warm feature which means I do not have to be there right when the food is done, but means I will have a hot meal when I get to it.       Perfect for me working outside, and I come in and the food is perfectly cooked.

I have stopped cooking huge meals in it,  the reason being it is so fast in cooking small meals I do not have to deal with left overs for the next week unless I want to ;-)

i have been looking into using a rocket stove to make charcoal,   and then with the charcoal charge batteries to run my insta pot on cloudy days,    I have it running off solar now.

I got my first instantpot several years ago just after they were released due to being very interested by its claims. So the first version I had, I thought was great (I have purchased 5 of these now, 2 as gifts for people I love) and all of them have come with a stainless steel insert, and a silicone sealing ring. Pretty much all parts the food can come in contact with are stainless steel or silicone so I do not worry too much about that part. My only dislike on the first one is that I found the "low" setting for the slowcooker feature to be a bit too high.

Then I got the model that you could use remotely with bluetooth and the app, and I was thrilled! I am busy, very busy and I could set my things to follow a script. For bone broth, bring it to pressure for 10 minutes, release, cool down, repeat a few times to really extract the goodness from the bones without having to do all of that manually. I literally dumped the prepared ingredients in, locked the lid, selected the saved recipe from my app and it did the rest. This was also fantastic for canning which is what I use the instantpot for most. I have used it to pressure can literally hundreds of thousands of quarts of food I would not have had time to preserve otherwise. I often live alone and the smaller jars work wonders for me and often, all I have to do if I am really out of time is open a jar and eat. Heat it up on low in the oven while taking a shower if I want it hot. And I also give a lot of canned produce to my family and the small jars work perfectly for my mom and dad who never eat the same thing. My mother is vegan, and my father practically a carnivore.

When pressure canning, I do not have to watch it at all. I did at first, but after really looking into the safety procedures it has in place, I felt confident in leaving it alone while I worked outside. I love my stove-top pressure canner. I can process 14 quarts at a time, but I have to watch it (Of course you can do the pints too, but I forgot how many pints it holds, a lot more than my instant pot for sure.) and if I did not time taking the lid off right it would vacuum tight for many hours (I know that you can do things to speed that up, but I am weird because I refuse to pour cold water on a hot pressure cooker no matter how safe they say it is, I do not like the idea of warping the metal like that.) We had a stove-top one explode when I was a kid and it was terrifying, my grandpa said it was because the seal had a defect he hadn't noticed in it. It still scared me, it did so much damage to the kitchen, luckily not to anyone though! I just find they both have their uses. I would have both instantpots going at the same time pressure canning produce. And sometimes, I would have the one I got for my mother going as well. It does take electricity but then so does the stove I had available. And after something is pressure canned it does not require a refrigerator or freezer for storage until the jar is opened which is how I was able to stockpile the fruits, vegetables, meats, oils, etc that I needed through the winter to feed 15 people every year. Some foods worked better dehydrated, like potatoes, carrots, sweet potatoes, etc. But not all things dehydrate well or safely at all. I felt the instantpots were a crucial tool in my self sufficiency for many years and helped me bring healthier food to those I love and care about.

I use many of the functions on the instantpot, I do love it for beans, I love it for making my famous refried beans, I love it for making carnitas and other delectable things from tough cuts of meat using the pressure function. After having pressure cooked my boiled eggs, and seeing how easily even farm fresh eggs peel, I don't cook them any other way if I can avoid it. Whether I need them soft for ramen eggs, or hard boiled. It was a life changer. I love using it to make my yogurt, or because I did not heat my house if I needed to proof/ferment something for a short time the yogurt setting worked perfectly. I love it for making rice, and it entirely replaced my rice cooker once I got the hang of it. I love it for slow cooking because the new one is much better at that - the temperature settings are right where I expect them to be, so it made me amazing overnight oats, family roasts, and the like. I love it for sousvide, it would make tender duck breasts that needed only a sear, or the most tender grass fed ribeye steak I had ever made (seared it after the sousvide and it was fall apart tender!) and it made amazing custards both savory or sweet using that same function. And I love that it will saute things first, This saves me dishes when I am making many things.

Now that I live in Australia, I got my new instantpot literally the day they were released here and I use it as much as I use my kitchenaid. I am busy running a business, taking care of others, and trying to grow all my own food so any time and effort I can save, I do. I cannot say I use it every day, but I do use it a lot of days. I do not even cook every single day as I rather like to cook in batches and have things ready to go. I also do not have to preserve fresh produce every day but then some days it gets used for hours on end. I would never force anyone to use anything they did not want to, but I cannot recommend the instantpot enough because I have used it to teach literally thousands of people how to feed their familes where otherwise they did not know how. And I love that it is one appliance, that I often turn to instead of a handful (which I can do because I have them all, but not everyone has that luxury or the space to do so.) so I can suggest it for people getting started without them having to break the bank.

I think the most important thing is knowing if the sorts of things it can do works well with your personal situation and style. And being trained enough with it to be comfortable with using it, a lot of people just are not comfortable using pressure cookers whether stove-top or electric.  Finally, understanding expectations, it does take time to come to pressure as well as to release pressure. Pressure cookers, no matter the type, are not good for people who want to see their food frying or boiling right before their eyes and cannot wait the times needed for the cookers to come to pressure and release pressure. They just cannot provide the instant gratification/speed that frying an egg/omelet in a pan has. It does take time to learn the exact times, water ratios, etc. for your specific model. But if I want a tough cut of meat mouthwateringly tender, and not done as a stir-fry than I do not think a pressure cooker can be beat. And if I want a tool that really can take on a lot of hats for me, the multi-cookers really have in my opinion risen to the challenge.

Awesome post, Aimee.

Aimee Hall wrote:Then I got the model that you could use remotely with bluetooth and the app, and I was thrilled! I am busy, very busy and I could set my things to follow a script. For bone broth, bring it to pressure for 10 minutes, release, cool down, repeat a few times to really extract the goodness from the bones without having to do all of that manually. I literally dumped the prepared ingredients in, locked the lid, selected the saved recipe from my app and it did the rest. This was also fantastic for canning which is what I use the instantpot for most. I have used it to pressure can literally hundreds of thousands of quarts of food I would not have had time to preserve otherwise. I often live alone and the smaller jars work wonders for me and often, all I have to do if I am really out of time is open a jar and eat.

You should start a new thread dedicated to specifics of safe canning in the Instant Pot. I'm not sure what you mean by "smaller jars" (pints? half pints?), but I've got two 8-quart Instant Pots and would definitely be interested in doing some canning in them and learning from you. Waterbath only, or can you also do regular pressure canning? (I've read you can't.) I've got an extra room that I was trying to set up as a woodworking workshop, but I wound up moving my two large Instant Pots in there, along with an induction burner, my sous vide/vac sealer setup and all my canning jars. There's no water, but because the liners of the Instant Pots lift out, that's not a big deal. I keep my Ninja Foodi and Instant Pot Mini in the kitchen, and I use those daily.

You have enticed me with the IP bluetooth/app setup. I didn't realize you could set up scripts with it like that!

The instant pot instructions say that the pressure doesn't get high enough to can low acid foods.   But it should be able to seal foods that waterbath canning.

But it is so much smaller than my canner.

r ranson wrote:The instant pot instructions say that the pressure doesn't get high enough to can low acid foods.   But it should be able to seal foods that waterbath canning.

But it is so much smaller than my canner.

That's what I figured (waterbath only). But, really, an 8-quart is perfect for me for that because I have a small garden and, in the past, "not having enough to bother with the canner" kept me from canning. After dragging it around with me for years, I finally gave it away. With the Instant Pot, even if I only want to do one jar, it would not be a big deal because I'm always using it anyway.