21 Easy, Stress-Free Instant Pot Recipes For Spring (2024)

FAQs

What should I make first in my new Instant Pot? ›

When it comes to breaking your Instant Pot in, it's a good idea to start with some basic foods and simple meals you're already familiar with, then slowly expand your Instant Pot repertoire from there. Try making staples like eggs, sweet potatoes, rice, or lentils using just the pressure cooker function.

Hard-, medium, and soft-cooked eggs come out perfectly when cooked on a low-pressure setting. Along with eggs, you might see an occasional recipe for vegetables and fish use low pressure. Most of those recipes, however, give an alternative for cooking at high pressure with a shorter cook time.

They are great with stews, soups, and beans, and if they're good with beans, they should be good with lentils, although lentils and spit peas cook pretty fast on their own. And they are good with rice. Almost anything that can be cooked in a normal pot can be cooked in a pressure cooker.

The Instant Pot's burn message simply means that your Instant Pot has detected that its inner pot has gotten too hot. There may be a slight amount of burned food at the bottom of your pot, but not enough to ruin whatever you're cooking.

Pressure cookers require liquid, usually water, to generate steam. “Jiggle top” cookers need a minimum of one cup of water, while valve cookers need at least half a cup. Put food in the cooker first, then add water.

It is safe to cook frozen food in a pressure cooker because it uses pressure to move food through the "Danger Zone" quickly. As a result, you don't run into the issues that you would find by cooking frozen food in a slow cooker, where it can stay too long in the Danger Zone and could become unsafe.

Yes, the Instant Pot is widely considered an effective and versatile pressure cooker. Many users find it worth the price due to its convenience, time-saving features, and ability to perform various cooking functions in one appliance.

I like to assume 20 minutes for every pound of meat. So, for my 3-pound beef chuck, I will need to cook at high pressure for 1 hour. After the hour, I release the pressure and shred the tender beef. When the beef is done, you can make our optional gravy.

To play it safe, we recommend waiting for 15 minutes after you've turned your cooker off to open it. This will allow enough time for its internal temperature and pressure to drop to safe levels. It's important to note that if the lid seems slightly stuck at first, you'll need to wait a bit longer.

How do you use an old fashioned pressure cooker? ›

For an old-fashion-type pressure cooker, place the cooker on medium-high heat and brown the foods. Then add liquids and remaining ingredients, cover, bring pressure up, and complete the pressure cooking. For newer cookers, most have a brown function—see manufacturer's instructions.

As the ingredients cook under pressure, their flavors are concentrated, resulting in a richer taste. Tenderization: Pressure cooking breaks down tough fibers in meats and other ingredients, making them more tender and juicy.

You can cook most food in a pressure cooker. However, most people use it to cook food that takes a long time to cook with conventional methods.

In a pressure cooker, you put the food in and something that takes hours and hours, like short ribs, can cook in just 45 minutes or an hour. Instead of simmering chicken stock on the stove for hours, you can make it in about an hour. As a Personal Chef, speed is of the essence and I use my pressure cookers a lot.

Chefs tend to prefer stovetop pressure cookers and, of course, being present during cooking. For home cooks drawn to hands-off convenience, electric pressure cookers take the guesswork out of cooking and offer pre-programmed settings, from baking to air frying, with no need for prior experience.