Let’s talk about the Instant Pot. Hands up if you got one around a certain recent holiday?
For a first-timer, it can feel like some sort of mysterious potential-to-explode gadget that ends up sitting in the back of your kitchen cabinet for years out of fear. Or, it’s only lugged out to make that pot of brown rice or mysterious batch of dry beans (which, yes, is still an excellent use).
But we’ve been around the Instant Pot block a few times. And we’re here to tell you that this little beauty basically lives on our countertop at this point. It’s our rice cooker, soup maker, freezer meal magician, last-minute dinner miracle all in one. And we just can’t stop.
FIRST THINGS FIRST – WHAT IS AN INSTANT POT?
LINKS IN THIS POST ARE AMAZON AFFILIATE LINKS TO PRODUCTS WE LOVE.
The Instant Pot is an electric pressure cooker but also a slow cooker, yogurt maker, rice cooker, big sauté pot, steamer, and more! We have the 6-Quart Instant Pot Duo which is what we use for all our Instant Pot recipes. They also make a 3-Quart Instant Pot Mini and a hefty 8-quart Instant Pot.
The Instant Pot is an absolute game-changer, especially on busy nights. Most recipes are dump and cook, and all you have to do is set it all up and then WALK AWAY to do other fun stuff like watch TV, walk your dog, clean your house, have a dance party, etc.
BONUS: it also cooks food way faster (70%!) than other ways to cook and it’s all done in one pot. Do you get why we love this thing yet?
If you’re still not convinced, the Instant Pot is PRIME for meal prepping and freezer meals – no thawing required! You can check out all our freezer meal Instant Pot recipes here if you’re into that kind of stuff (answer: you definitely are).
So the Instant Pot is pretty great, right? Here are some of our favorite ways to use it.
The Instant Pot is a master at shortening the cooking times for notoriously long recipes. Example: this beef ragu. Beef short ribs take hours in the oven to become fork tender, but all the Instant Pot needs is a little over 30 minutes. Serve it up over a giant bowl of pasta or gnocchi and you’ll never go back to oven roasting short ribs again.
One of the most OMG moments of owning an Instant Pot is when you realize you can make yogurt. It’s a bit time consuming, but simple and uncomplicated. You’ll want to make sure you have an instant read thermometer to check the temperature of the milk (the one you use for meat works perfectly!). The result is a creamy and naturally sweet yogurt.
