{"id":166418,"date":"2017-04-04T04:13:52","date_gmt":"2017-04-04T04:13:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/i-replaced-all-of-my-cookware-with-the-instant-pot-for-one-week-heres-what-i-learned\/"},"modified":"2017-04-04T04:13:52","modified_gmt":"2017-04-04T04:13:52","slug":"i-replaced-all-of-my-cookware-with-the-instant-pot-for-one-week-heres-what-i-learned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/i-replaced-all-of-my-cookware-with-the-instant-pot-for-one-week-heres-what-i-learned\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I Replaced All Of My Cookware With The Instant Pot For One Week\u2014Here\u2019s What I Learned’"},"content":{"rendered":"
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While there are several electric pressure cookers on the market (other well-reviewed ones include the\u00a0Breville Fast Slow Pro<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0Cuisinart CPC-600<\/a>), the Instant Pot seems to inspire a special intensity of devotion. The\u00a0Instant Pot Community Facebook group<\/a>\u00a0(where people trade tips on how to cook everything from cheesecake to barbecued pork chops)\u00a0has over 400,000 members. The Instant Pot is the #1 bestselling item in the Kitchen Home department on Amazon.com (with\u00a017, 211 customer reviews<\/a>\u00a0when I checked,\u00a0most of them positive).<\/p>\n

But none of those things won me over. In the end, I decided to check out the Instant Pot for 2 reasons:<\/p>\n

1. A lot of serious cooks were also freaking out about it<\/a>.<\/p>\n

2. Lydia.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

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A post shared by Karen Shimizu (@karemizu)<\/a> on Jan 4, 2017 at 5:14pm PST<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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My youngest daughter Lydia is 22 months old, and in a seriously clingy phase. When I cook she is right alongside me, clutching a handful of my clothing and sob-screaming at me to pick her up. My husband usually swoops in, but she invariably escapes and darts right back to my side. So lately, cooking has stopped feeling quite so zen and the interval between getting home and getting everyone fed has become the most stressful part of my day.<\/p>\n

Could a pressure-cooker take the pressure off of my weeknight family meals? I decided to find out.\u00a0<\/p>\n

RELATED: ‘I Tried Going Vegan For A Week\u2014Here’s What Happened’<\/a><\/h3>\n

I borrowed an Instant Pot from a friend, and cooked with it for a week. For me, this meant making breakfasts and dinners in it\u2014lunch is generally tupperwared leftovers. I tried out recipes that I typically make during the week\u2013pasta with sauce, a whole chicken, chilis, and stews\u2014plus a handful of recipes that I usually wouldn\u2019t attempt between Monday and Friday (I\u2019m looking at you, risotto).\u00a0<\/p>\n

I used two cookbooks: The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook For Your Instant Pot<\/em> by Kathy Hester<\/a> and Paleo Cooking With Your Instant Pot <\/em>by Jennifer Robins<\/a>\u00a0(I\u2019m neither paleo- nor vegan, but I figured the two would balance each other out), as well as the vast number of recipes posted online by Instant Pot enthusiasts.<\/p>\n

Here’s what I learned.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Instant Pot Is MUCH Simpler Than It Looks<\/h3>\n

Like a traditional pressure cooker\u2014the kind you might use on a stovetop\u2014The Instant Pot reduces cooking times by trapping the steam from boiling liquids. The trapped steam increases the pressure inside the pot, which raises the maximum temperature that the liquid can reach. In other words, cooking food inside a pressure cooker cooks at higher temperatures than you can reach with non-pressurized cooking. It\u2019s a simple concept that starts to seem really, really complicated when you\u2019re getting ready to cook with the Instant Pot for the first time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"The

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The hardest part about getting started with the Instant Pot was, well, getting started with it. The thing has a control panel with 20 different labels, and the product manual felt as \u00a0technical as the one for my station wagon. I finally put it away and instead referred to the introductory chapters of my two cookbooks, which helpfully zeroed in on the buttons I would use most:\u00a0<\/p>\n

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  • Manual:<\/strong> lets you adjust the pressure cooking time and temperature using + and \u2013 buttons.<\/li>\n
  • Saut\u00e9:<\/strong>\u00a0is for saut\u00e9ing right in the pot, for cooking onions and browning meat and such before adding ingredients for pressure cooking.\u00a0<\/li>\n
  • Keep Warm\/Cancel:<\/strong> to end the saut\u00e9 function and transition to pressure cooking.\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    Once I realized I could ignore the rest of the buttons and labels, my panic subsided and I started cooking.\u00a0<\/p>\n

    It Threw Off My Mornings<\/h3>\n

    The first meal I made in the Instant Pot was breakfast. I followed a recipe for pear cardamom steel-cut oats with a pressure-cooking time of three minutes. I usually make overnight steel-cut oats<\/strong><\/a> in a rice cooker, so they\u2019re ready when I roll out of bed, but 3 minutes in the morning didn\u2019t sound like much more work! I added the oats, water, and cardamom to the pot, locked the lid, set the timer, and waited.<\/p>\n

    \"Steel

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    Which is when I learned that the Instant Pot doesn\u2019t always save you that much time. In addition to the time that each recipe cooks once pressurized (three minutes, in this case), there\u2019s an unspecified interval when you are waiting for the Instant Pot to reach its pressurized state. In the case of the oatmeal, this was another five minutes. When it was done, it had made half the volume I was expecting. Happily, because it cooked so quickly, I was able to make a second batch in 8 minutes for the grownups while the kids ate theirs. Still, the waiting around for the Instant Pot to pressurize didn\u2019t feel like time saved\u2013it felt like time wasted.\u00a0<\/p>\n

    RELATED: ‘I Ate Oatmeal Every Morning For A Month\u2014Here’s What Happened’<\/a><\/h3>\n

    Similarly, once the pot has pressurized, it needs to de-pressurize before it is safe to open. There are two ways to depressurize the Instant Pot: one is manually, by turning a valve on the lid to vent steam\u2014a method that one cookbook called \u201cmanually releasing\u201d pressure and another called \u201cquick pressure release\u201d. Whatever you call it, this is the faster way to get to your food\u2014it takes just a minute or so. (Also, it is extremely important to wear an oven mitt and keep exposed skin far from the vent: steam jets out of the valve and shoots several feet into the air when you use this method.)<\/p>\n

    Looking for more breakfast ideas? Try these 11 ideas for avocado toast:<\/em><\/p>\n

    But not all recipes will turn out if you vent the steam manually. For some, instructions say to let the pressure release naturally\u2014which is to say, you need to account for some waiting-around time as the pressure cooker depressurizes on its own. (There\u2019s a little silver peg that drops down when the lid is safe to open). This can add anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes to your cook time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

    It Gave Me Back My Evenings<\/h3>\n

    Dinner was the magic meal for the Instant Pot in my household. This is where my skepticism well and truly evaporated.<\/p>\n

    I was super excited to find a recipe for one-pot pasta<\/a>, which called for putting dried pasta noodles in the pot, covering them with a watery sauce, and pressure cooking them together. It took 25 minutes altogether and came out pretty well: the noodles cooked to al-dente (a little unevenly, but all were cooked through), and absorbed a lot of the sauce; and while that\u2019s roughly as long as it would have taken me to make the same meal on the stovetop, I enjoyed the novel experience of ignoring the food and instead helping my older daughter with her homework while snuggling the baby. \u00a0(Scroll through my efforts below to see how each dish went\u2014and see recipe links at the bottom of the story.)<\/p>\n

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    A post shared by Karen Shimizu (@karemizu)<\/a> on Mar 20, 2017 at 12:39pm PDT<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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    One night, I made a whole chicken (showered with cumin and salt and cooked with a single chopped onion for 25 minutes). The meat was super juicy and suffused with the flavor of cumin, which had penetrated throughout the meat, and the skin had the sticky texture of steamed chicken feet from a dim sum cart (which I happen to love, but not everyone will appreciate). I shredded the breast meat for chicken tacos, saved the dark meat for a killer chicken salad, and that same night, tossed the carcass in the Instant Pot to make a two-hour chicken stock<\/a>. Ordinarily making stock would take 4 hours or more, and I\u2019d do it on a weekend. Instead, the Instant Pot did its thing while my husband and I did ours: Putting the kids to bed and binge-watching The Santa Clarita Diet<\/em>. (Learn how bone broth can help you lose weight with Women’s Health’s Bone Broth Diet<\/a><\/em>.)<\/em><\/p>\n

    I\u2019ve Got Two New Tools For Weeknight Dinners<\/h3>\n

    After a week of pressure cooking, was I sold on the Instant Pot? Definitely. But would I want to cook with it exclusively?\u00a0\u00a0Definitely not. I missed the caramelized flavors and the roasty crunch I get from cooking things in the oven, and I missed eating vegetables that still had some crispness to them.<\/p>\n

    But the more valuable thing I learned from my week with the Instant Pot was realizing what was missing from my standard routine. By engrossing myself at the stove from the minute I got home from work, I was missing out\u2014on time with my young kids, on time with my spouse, and on time to myself. By committing to a mostly hands-off way of making dinner for a week, I found my weekdays could be way calmer and happier all around\u2013and that we could still share a home-cooked meal together at the end of it.<\/p>\n

    It wasn\u2019t so much what<\/em> I was cooking before as how<\/em> I was cooking that was stressing me out. Going forward, whether dinner gets made in an Instant Pot or in the oven or on the stove, I want to make a point of building in time to give more attention to my family, or myself, depending on what the day calls for. It might take a little longer for dinner to get on the table, but I think we\u2019re all going to be happier when we finally do sit down to eat.\u00a0<\/p>\n

    Want To Try Out The Instant Pot?\u00a0<\/h3>\n

    The version I tried out is the six-quart Instant Pot IP-DUO60 7-in-1 Multi-Functional Pressure Cooker<\/a>, retailing for $99.99 on Amazon.com.\u00a0<\/p>\n

    My favorite recipes were:<\/p>\n