Loving The Instant Pot

I still love the Cuisinart pressure cooker but oh . . I am terribly infatuated with the Instant Pot, and I haven’t even used it as a pressure cooker yet. As you know, I bought the Cuisinart pressure cooker several months ago and I have used it so much. Some days, I use it two or three times in one day. Last week when I was cooking beans and meat (not together), I was wishing I had two pots so that’s when I decided to order the Instant Pot.

You know I’ve already used it to make yogurt and that worked out so well. The milk didn’t scorch to the bottom of the pot, like it sometimes does on the stovetop and I didn’t go off and forget about it, let the temp get too high and have to throw it out.

Today I decided to use it as a slow cooker and a rice cooker (not at the same time!).  I have a slow cooker, but I’ve never been crazy about slow cooking because to me, everything I make tastes like a “crock pot”. Maybe it’s all in my head . . from all those years I stuck a whole chicken in the crock pot, added a few seasonings, went off to work and left it cooking all day and ended up with a dry, stringy chicken . . that tasted like a crock pot!

I’m not ready to say that the Instant Pot does not leave food with that crock pot taste but what we had tonight was perfect in every way and I didn’t notice a hint of crock pot taste! I will give you the recipe I used in a later post.

The chops were seasoned and browned in the Instant Pot and it did an excellent job of browning . . every bit as good as the Cuisinart. The Cuisinart is non-stick and the Instant Pot is not. The meat did not stick but there was a brown residue stuck to the bottom of the pan but after adding the liquid and letting it all cook for 4 hours, there was no scrubbing necessary.

A sauce was added and the whole thing cooked for 4-1/2 hours and it was amazing! 

Because I wanted to use it as a rice cooker, I took out the pork chops, and separately, poured the juice into another pan and thickened the gravy in that pan, then shredded the pork and put it back into the gravy. Had I not been going to use the Instant Pot as a rice cooker, I could have done all that in the same pot.

As a rice cooker, it takes 12 minutes to cook the rice. I opened it as soon as the 12 minutes were up and it wasn’t quite ready so next time, I will let it sit and let the pressure reduce on it’s own so I will probably allow about 20 minutes to cook the rice. I ended up putting the lid back on and cooking the rice one more minute, then letting it sit about 5 minutes before reducing the pressure and removing the lid and it was great.

I have the Zojirushi rice cooker; have had it for 5 or 6 years and have used it several times a week . . every week . . during that time. I love it but I think the Instant Pot cooked the rice at least as good, if not better, than did the Zoji rice cooker.

If I can put my slow cooker and my rice cooker in the storage room and clear out those two cabinets, that will be so helpful. 

One thing where the Instant Pot definitely wins over the Cuisinart . . 

Both handles have little slots and the lid will fit down into either handle. I can’t tell you how many times I take the lid off the Cuisinart and stand there thinking . . where am I going to put this? I have precious little countertop and it’s a pretty big lid. It is so convenient to be able to stand it up on the handle and not have to put a hot lid down somewhere.

I told Vince tonight . . I could have steamed the asparagus in the Instant Pot too but I was cooking the rice in there. Maybe I need another one!  He didn’t think that was a good idea.

I am very happy I got the Instant Pot to go along with the Cuisinart.