3 Steps To Overcoming Your Fear of Your Instant Pot
If you're like most, you probably bought an electric pressure cooker / Instant Pot or received one as a gift, and it's sitting somewhere in your kitchen collecting dust or shameless starring you down. You may also have told yourself that you will use it tomorrow or after you read more about it. Well, today is your lucky day! It's time to grab your electric pressure cooker by the handles and get to work.
Here is a simple and straightforward breakdown on the basics of an electric pressure cooker anatomy and simple tasks to start overcoming your fear.
If you're wondering why electric pressure cookers are so popular and why you should invest your time learning how to use it, then you can ultimately summarize it into one word; Time.
Using your electric pressure cooker saves you A LOT of time and the best part of it all is that you don’t really have to worry about it; just set and forget it!
step 1: buttons to press
The first step to overcoming your fear is to first get yourself familiar with the basic buttons to press. If you don’t have the Instapot brand of electric pressure cookers, don’t worry. Each electric pressure cooker regardless of the brand or model have very similar functions.
Here are the most important buttons and functions on your electric pressure cooker that you need to know:
Sauté Button:
What?
It is exactly that… Sauté. Instead of getting out your favorite pan to sauté or brown your meats or soften your diced onions, you can easily do it here in this setting. Do exactly what you would do with a pan on the stove, but this time use your electric pressure cooker sauté setting to take care of this task.
Why?
The reason why is because of its ease and clean-ability. You can easily sauté or brown your meats in your electric pressure cooker pot before adding the rest of your ingredients into the same pot to finish the dish you’re making. You only need your electric pressure cooker pot versus several pans that you would normally use on a given dish. With your electric pressure cooker pot, you can saute, cook, serve, keep warm, and then reheat in the same pot the next day. How much easier can that be?! Only one pot to clean!
How?
Say you’re making a Chicken Panang Curry recipe and you need to get dinner on the table in under 30 minutes. Here is a clear example of how you would use your electric pressure cooker to sauté your chicken for this dish. You would start by removing the lid from the electric pressure cooker, then hitting your saute setting (it will have a default time but you can always add more time with the plus (+) button), pressing the start button, waiting a few seconds to heat up, then adding a tablespoon or two of your favorite olive oil, then when the oil is hot, adding your cubed chicken & seasonings and sauteing your chicken into brown. Hit the cancel button when your done sauteing. As you can see, this is ideally the same steps as sauteing your chicken in a pan on the stove, but this time you are using the sauté button on your electric pressure cooker.Pressure Cook Button:
What?
Pressure cooking essentially cooks food by increasing the amount of pressure, or steam, within the pot to cook food and tenderize food more quickly.
Why?
By pressure cooking you will be cutting the time it would normally take to make the same dish on the stovetop by half of the time in your electric pressure cooker.
How?
In keeping with the same Chicken Panang Curry recipe discussed earlier, after sauteing your chicken, you would then gather and dump in your other ingredients for your Panang curry, such as the cubed potatoes, your favorite Panang curry bottled sauce or homemade sauce, sliced carrots, sliced red peppers, and a cup of chicken stock. Then stir and cover by locking your lid into place on your electric pressure cooker. Hit the pressure cook button and adjust the time with the plus (+) or minus (-) button, then pressing the start button.
To easily figure out how much time to add, think about the ingredient in your dish that requires the most time. For example, the cubed potatoes in this dish would normally take about 15 minutes on the stovetop to soften up. For an electric pressure cooker, it would take half the time. So, in this example, you would adjust your time to be 8 minutes on High in your electric pressure cooker for the entire dish.Venting Button:
What?
After your electric pressure cooker counts down and starts to beep signaling that your food is ready, you will need to press the venting button on the top of your lid to release steam and open.
Why?Since you are using an electric pressure cooker, you need the pressure that was building inside of your pot to release into the air before the pressure stabilizes and you can open the lid. Your electric pressure cooker will not allow you to open the lid to your pot without you releasing the steam.
How?
On the top of your electric pressure cooker lid, there will be a button that you either turn or press down to release the steam. Each electric pressure cooker is different, however, with all types you will want to avoid contact with the steam as this can be very hot and damaging. First things first, point your electric pressure cooker so that the steam nozzle is away from you. Then simply press down on the button or use the back of a wooden spoon to engage with the venting button on the top of your lid to release the steam. After you do this, the lid will allow you to twist to open.
step 2: practice makes perfect
The easiest way to get started is to use each setting discussed in Step 1 a handful of times throughout an entire week so that you can get comfortable with each setting. A good goal is to write down 2-3 easy one-pot dishes that you would normally make on your stove, but instead make them in your electric pressure cooker. Then use your electric pressure cooker to make and reheat those 2-3 dishes within that week. Some examples would be, hard boiled eggs or meatballs in tomato sauce, etc. You will see that just 2-3 consistent attempts to use your electric pressure cooker during a solid week will have you loving and obsessing over what to make next!
step 3: find recipes
After you’ve practiced your own dishes, next is to find interesting and fun electric pressure cooker/ Instant Pot recipes you want to try! This becomes so fun because you will let go of that fear of using your electric pressure cooker and start to familiarize yourself with other buttons, such as the yogurt setting or the slow cooker setting, etc. At this point, you will want to learn so much about the capabilities of your electric pressure cooker that it will make your other pots and kitchen appliances jealous!
So, there you have it! Those are the 3 steps to overcoming your fear of your Instant Pot!
Here are a few Instapot recipes for you to check out: