Kyle's Instant Pot Adventures

[Kyle]

I got an Instant Pot. A giant ass, 8 quart Instant Pot. And it has changed my life. I know what you're thinking: "Kyle, it's just an electronic pressure cooker. That can also saute. And slow cook. And be a rice cooker. And... holy shit! Instant Pots are amazing!"

I know. I know. It's changed my life too.

So I'm starting this thread to record my journey through my new life with an Instant Pot- let's call it my Instant Life. Because before I got an Instant Pot, I don't know that I'd really call it living.

I took it home Friday night and made five or six things with it over the weekend. The only thing I didn't get pictures of were when I boiled eggs in it. So let me tell you how easy that was: One cup of water; half a dozen eggs; turn it on for seven minutes. When it was done I pulled out the eggs and put them in an ice bath to cool. Then they peeled perfectly. Perfect hard boiled eggs. Since I didn't have a picture of it, here's a gif from Cool Hand Luke:



Damn. Paul Newman was good looking.

[Kyle]

But boiled eggs wasn't the first thing I made. When I brought it home, I immediately hand washed the Instant Pot, then prepared to make homemade mac and cheese (). I doubled the recipe, used the sharp cheddar, real Parmesan and evaporated milk. Start to finish took about 15 minutes. Even though I couldn't eat it, the reports from the kids were that it was the best mac and cheese they've had (but I don't think any of them have had anything but boxed mac and cheese unless at a restaurant). My wife reported that it was delicious:

[Kyle]

The next morning I did a simple preparation for a whole chicken (I can't find the bookmark for the recipe- sorry). It was just oil, salt and pepper on the outside, with lemon wedges and a yellow onion stuffed into it. I seared each side for a minute on a hot pan before putting it in the Instant Pot. Here's the "before" shot:



I don't have an after shot because the chicken was so tender that, when I pulled it out of the instant pot, half the meat just came away from it. So breaking down the chicken was a snap and took only a couple of minutes. The chicken was delicious, but I think that next time I'll use a foil sling to lift the chicken out from the metal wire tray that's placed in the bottom. Here's a picture of how to do that:



I also think that I'll cook it less because, even though it was delicious, it was actually a bit too tender, if that's possible.

[Kyle]

Just before lunch on Saturday, I decided I wanted to try making succotash. Now look, I know that a lot of you won't eat succotash because you're afraid of lima beans- but I'm hear to tell you that lima beans are sent straight from heaven as heroin for your taste buds. Stop acting like a five year old and give lima beans a chance. They are truly divine.

So the succotash preparation was pretty simple (), and I altered the recipe just a bit. First- I doubled it. Second because my grocery store only sold limas in 16 oz packages, I had a ratio of 32 oz frozen limas to 24 oz frozen sweet corn. For the bacon, I just bought one of those small packages of 100% real bacon/bacon bits that you find in the salad dressing section of the store, then just added the whole thing. And instead of roasted red peppers, I finely sliced three Serrano peppers and threw them in for the cooking process- seeds and all.

Oh my. This was the bomb:



You might be thinking: couldn't you just cook this all on the stove, or in the microwave? And the answer is: yes. But it's just as easy to cook in the Instant Pot, and because it's cooking under pressure, the flavors-- particularly the bacon-- suffuse and mingle with everything and it is SO GOOD.

One note. At first we thought it wasn't spicy enough, but Serrano peppers are really subtle and it takes a second for the bit to work in. The only thing I would change on this is that I'll do 5 peppers instead of 3 next time.

[Kyle]

For dinner on Saturday, my youngest daughter-- who is an excellent baker-- wanted to get weird with it. She wanted to make a cheesecake. So we did. She found a decent recipe () and got everything we needed. When we sat down to make it we hit a snag- our springform pan was 8" in diameter and just a bit too big to fit in the Instant Pot. So we checked the recipe and saw that we needed a 6" spingform pan. After a trip to both the grocery store and Walmart, we discovered that no one sold anything smaller than an 8" pan in our town. So we improvised and bought a 7" diameter pyrex bowl and decided to try cooking it in that, making sure to SUPER grease the bowl.

We followed the other instructions and put the cheesecake in. When it was done cooking, we took it out and discovered that it looked too liquidy, but we didn't know what to do. You can't just re-pressure-cook it. So we put it in the fridge and hoped it would set up in there.

AND IT DID!



It was kind of a pain in the ass to get out of the pyrex bowl, but it was cooked perfectly. We decided to forego the whipped topping and have the kids just eat it like it was. It was supes-delicious. A big hit.

And for what it's worth, I went on Amazon and bought a 6" springform pan to use for next time.

[Kyle]

Now for a big test. Did this Instant Pot have what it took to make a hearty dinner for my family? There's ten of us and we eat a lot. And we like shredded barbecue. Normally we put a roast in the slow cooker for ten hours, then shred it and serve it on hamburger buns. Could the Instant Pot make this even better?

Oh my. It could.

I decided to go with a pork butt roast. I found a recipe that had a little bit of prep before the Instant Pot, but I thought I'd give it a try (. We cut the pork up and covered it in the dry rub, which was made up primarily of brown sugar and smoked paprika, and let it sit in the fridge for four hours. Then I coated a hot pan with olive oil and seared four sides of the chunks of pork- just a minute a side. Then I dropped it in Instant Pot and set it for 75 minutes (for a 5 lb roast; 15 minutes per pound to shred). To pressure up and down took another twenty to thirty minutes. But in under two hours it was done. And this pork was so super tender, that I put it in a bowl, got two forks and had it completely shredded in under two minutes. While I was doing that, I let the juices boil and reduce in the Instant Pot until it was less than half its original volume, then threw the shredded pork back in. Here's a shot of the pork right after it was shredded but before it was thrown back in the sauce.



Yall. Holy cow, yall. This was the best barbecue we've made at home. The spice rub and searing really made a difference and gave it a really deep, smokey flavor. And it was just. So. Tender. Oh my god it was so good.

[Phoebe]

Interesting. My mom and mother in law both use pressure cookers of the old fashioned kind. Any theory how this relates to the Instant Pot? Is it the same thing in a swankier updated version, or is there an actual new technology involved?

If the difference is 7 minutes vs. 20, I'm not motivated (hard boiled eggs), but if the difference is that I get home from work, realize I haven't planned ahead enough to prepare a meal easily, and end up being able to produce a fully-cooked and well-cooked thing in an hour that otherwise would have taken all afternoon? Now I'm interested.

Also did you purchase your red silicon tools at Costco?

[Mike]

Yancey also just got one and says that even if you forgot to thaw out meat, you can throw in frozen chicken or whatever and still have a perfectly cooked full meal in under an hour.

[Kyle]

Yeah- what Mike said. The thing about boiling eggs for a it’s easier than doing it on the stove, it’s quicker, and it’s “Turn it on and forget it.” That said, I wouldn’t buy it just to boil eggs either.

It is like your mother’s pressure cooker, but it’s a precise and non-monitoring system. Thrown in your pork and barbecue sauce, turn it on and walk away.

[Mike]

The whole Instant Pot thing must be in the air right now. A month ago, my wife says, "You know what we need?" And then two weeks later, Yancey's got one. Now Kyle.

Dammit. If we get one now, it looks like we're just copying.

But no seriously... definitely getting one.

[Phoebe]

The main thing is that you need to get a bigger one.

[Kyle]

[Phoebe]

Good enough for me! But Mike clearly will need a bigger one.

[Mike]

No me. I need the 8 quart. I see the 10 qt but can't imagine how often 8 won't be enough.

[Phoebe]

[Phoebe]

Some of them say they are 6 in one, 7 in 1, 9, 10, what the hell? Some of them you hook up to a Bluetooth some of them blah blah blah blah blah how would you ever know which one to get?

[Kyle]

I don’t care about any of those settings. I only use the manual setting so I can set the time. All those other buttons are like those stupid buttons on my microwave that I never use. The only thing that was important to me were price and size. I found the eight quart for $109.

Yogurt is nasty under any circumstances and I’m allergic to it. So no.

[Kyle]

Okay, I had my first misfire yesterday. I cooked dry kidney beans. I used a recipe to determine the amount of chicken stock and cook time, but then hodge podged the spices together: chipotle peppers in adobo sauce (sliced up); cayenne; minced garlic; fresh cracked black pepper, salt. So I cooked them for awhile (35 minutes) and let them depressurize naturally and when it was done, they looked pretty good and tasted fine- could have used a few more minutes. Then I ladled them out and divided them up into three containers so I could have them for lunch the rest of the week. When I did so, I didn't put any liquid in the containers- just the beans. When I reheated them for lunch and ate it, they were dried out. They were still tender enough- but dried out. So I don't know if the problem was in the cooking or the storage, but I'll crack the code next time.

All that said, I'm still eating them for lunch because the flavor is killer. Chipotle peppers in adobo sauce is a freaking miracle flavor.

[Kyle]

Okay, so last night was the last of the pulled pork, and I'm not going to have much time tonight after work because I need to do some chores then go to a friend's house to play X-Wing. So I decided to make my dinner this morning and then store it in the fridge to just reheat when I get home. I decided to try a gluten-free pasta dish because I'm curious how the gluten-free pasta does in the pressure cooker. The problem with gluten free pasta is that it tends to fall apart and get grainy when it's overcooked. Which means it's fine for a quick boil and then pour red sauce over, but not so much for a dish that you're baking pasta into. On the one hand, I thought the Instant Pot would be a cook "quick cook" method that might complement the gluten free pasta, but on the other hand, I thought the pressure might just disintegrate it.

The Instant Pot worked SO GOOD!

I made a simple gluten-free penne pasta and marinara recipe I found online ([url=https://www.skiptomylou.org/gluten-free-pressure-cooker-pasta-with-meat-sauce/]link[/url). I sauteed onions and garlic and then, instead of ground beef, I browned some italian-seasoned ground turkey. I threw that into the Instant Pot, added a jar of generic marinara, italian seasoning, salt, pepper and the pasta noodles. I had to add two cups of water to soak into the noodles. I gave it all a stir just to mix it up and then set it to cook for eight minutes. After it was done:



Y'all. Y'all! The pasta was cooked to a perfect al dente (which means I'll cook it a minute longer because I actually prefer mine to be a tad softer), and the pasta plumped up-- not just with water-- but was also infused with the sauce. It tasted so good. But I only got a small bite because I can't eat it until later. The most amazing thing was that there wasn't a bunch of extra liquid or anything in the pot. It was the perfect amount of sauce left to generously cover and coat the turkey and the pasta.

This is a homerun, y'all.

[Kyle]

Yesterday Kiki, my youngest daughter, wanted to try another cheesecake. We'd already gotten the 6" springform pan (which fits in the Instant Pot), so we gave it another spin. She picked for Orange Chocolate Cheesecake with Chocolate Ganache. The only thing we changed on the recipe was we used tangelos instead of orange. The problem with making a cheesecake, even in the Instant Pot, is that it still requires a mixer and several bowls and a ton of spatulas and stuff. So it still makes half a dishwasher load of dishes and takes a lot of prep time. But you know what? It's still fun to do and makes great cheesecake. Check it out:



Of course, I couldn't eat it- but everyone else in my family did and they all gave it ten out of ten. We even had enough left over in the recipe to make two more cheesecakes. This recipes was tops.