Let's Talk About The Instant Pot

The latest craze to hit the home cooking market is the Instant Pot. Suddenly every other cookbook is for Instant Pot recipes, famous chefs are using it for a variety of recipes and more and more people are falling in love with it. What makes it different from a slow cooker (Crock Pot)? Plenty. The basic idea behind an Instant Pot is to have one tool being able to perform multiple tasks. Your slow cooker was great for a set-and-forget recipe. You could toss a roast into it, add a few ingredients and everything was ready when you got home. It was also pretty limited to doing just slow cooking, you couldn't brown meats or thicken sauces with them and they usually had 2 temperature settings, low and high. Enter the Instant Pot. Smart engineering developed a multi tasking appliance capable of combining 7 kitchen appliances in 1, a pressure cooker, a slow cooker, a rice cooker, a steamer, a sautér, a yogurt maker and a warmer. With one purchase I was able to get rid of three different appliances that I had taking up cabinet space. The great thing-all of the functions work! The first thing you will notice is the control panel. No longer is there the option of low or high heat only. The Instant Pot has 14 programmed functions, which can be intimidating at first. I did what you are supposed to do and read the instructions and some of the fear disappeared. Basically you chose what you want to do and then press a button. Almost every Instant Pot recipe book that I have read will not only give you a list of ingredients but will tell you which program to use along the way, even going so far as to tell you which button to press and when. Suddenly the Instant Pot was delightfully easy to use. There are 3 sizes of Pots to choose from. 3, 6 or 8 quarts are the size options with the 6 quart being the #1 selling option on Amazon. There are other options to choose from such as wifi connectivity and type of control buttons but the basic 6 quart unit will do everything you would expect from an Instant Pot. With an Instant Pot you can saute meat and vegetables quickly. In the same pot you can then program the Pot to pressure cook the meat in a rapid length of time, add the other ingredients, cover and wait. One pot, 70% faster than traditional cooking and a delicious meal is ready.