Instant Pot update
Well, it’s been a week since the Instant Pot arrived.
As I said last week, I felt a little guilty about buying the Instant Pot (on sale) rather than paying to ship the old pressure cooker back. But the more I’ve used it this week, the better I’ve felt about the decision. It really is a nice machine, and there are a number of things about it that just work better than my old unit.
Tonight, I wasn’t sure what to do for dinner and found a half a bag of frozen shrimp. I cooked them in the pot, in a steamer basket, and they came out great.
Last night, I made spaghetti in the pot. This is significant. When I bought my old GoWiseUSA pressure cooker last January, I had been using it about a week when I started working on a cooking feature for our Life & Leisure section. So that I could get a good photo, I brought the cooker up to the newspaper and tried to make spaghetti. I wanted a dramatic photo of spaghetti being dropped into the pot with one hand while sauce was poured in with the other. It made a great photo — but it also made it harder to get the spaghetti completely submerged in the sauce. The spaghetti came out undercooked. Murphy’s Law: The first time I made anything in the cooker to share with others was also the first time I made something that turned out badly.
This time, I was very careful to make sure the spaghetti was submerged and that I had the right ratio of water to jarred spaghetti sauce. The spaghetti cooked up just perfectly in the sauce. It seemed just barely undercooked when the cooker was first opened, and it looked like there was too much sauce, but after a good stir, and by the time it got to the bowl, it was just perfect. I added some freshly-grated real parmesan cheese — not the stuff from the green can. I had it for dinner last night and lunch today, and there’s still a little more left in the fridge.
Get John I. Carney’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
I also made yogurt this week. It turned out OK, with one reservation. The one universal complaint that electric pressure cooker owners have is with the silicone sealing ring that creates an airtight seal between the lid and the pot. The rings are terrible about picking up aromas from the dishes you cook. Some people even buy two rings in different colors so that they can use one for sweet dishes and the other for savory dishes. I scoffed at that idea in a piece I wrote for last Sunday’s paper, saying that while the rings absorb odors, it wasn’t like they passed them along. Well, I spoke too soon. The yogurt I made this week had just a tiny bit of smell from some beef short ribs I’d cooked a day earlier. It was noticeable when you took a spoonful of the yogurt by itself; less so when you added honey and granola.
Maybe I will need to get the red and blue sealing rings after all. I think it’s $10 for the set.
I was at Walmart this morning, and while I was there I ended up buying an Instant Pot cookbook as well as four little oven-safe glass bowls (with lids for storage) which I can use, pot-in-pot, if I ever want to make individual desserts or something like that. Earlier this week, I ordered a springform pan — I may try my hand at cheesecake next week (using some farm-fresh, or at least backyard-fresh, eggs from my co-worker Jason Reynolds!).
I was already a member of a general electric pressure cooker group on Facebook — that’s how I found out about the sale, because one of the moderators remembered that I was in the market for an IP and thoughtfully tagged me in a post. But I’ve also joined the official, authorized Instant Pot group. It’s huuuge — don’t join unless you want a lot of different recipes and tips and newbie questions filling up your news feed. But there’s a lot of good information.
By the way, the Instant Pot brand name is used interchangeably by some with “electric pressure cooker.” But that may have to change. When I was at Walmart this morning, I saw, for the first time in person, an Instant Pot that is not a pressure cooker. It’s a big rectangular countertop roaster. It has the same multi-function controls, high-tech sensors and displays as the pressure cooker. So I guess the company is branching out. Maybe they’ll do an air fryer at some point.
There seem to have been several isolated sales on various Instant Pot models recently. If you haven’t yet gotten on the electric pressure cooker bandwagon, I suggest you keep your eyes open. This is not a gimmick — it’s a versatile appliance that’s good for quick last-minute meals or elaborate creations. Yes, there’s a learning curve. A number of newbie messages to the Facebook group are along the lines of “yes, but what do I do with it now?” Once you jump in and start finding the answers to that question, you’ll wonder how you got along without it.
