Timing Adjustments For High
The pressure inside the cooker is affected by external pressure. If you live a high-altitude the cooking time for pressure-cooked foods will also be affected.
formula to adjust high-altitude pressure cooking times
Increase pressure cooking time by 5% for every 1000 ft above 2000 ft elevation . Multiply the recommended cooking time by the number on the table. The result will likely be a decimal value just round that up to the next minute.
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More information: PSI FAQ: How are pressure cooking times affected by high altitudes?
Dont Get Too Caught Up In What All The Buttons Mean
For the most part, the buttons on the control panel are there to help you decide on your cooking time. For example, if there is a fish button, pressing it will likely mean that your food will cook for a short time . The chicken button will be slightly longer . Some electric pressure cookers have a saute feature, which comes in handy to pre-caramelize your mirepoix, if youre making soup or stew . New models have a sterilize function , and most come with a slow cook option, which means exactly what you think it means: slow cooking without pressure. When it comes to frozen food, learn if you can cook frozen meat in an Instant Pot.
Psst: Heres why you should trade your slow cooker for an Instant Pot.
A Quick Recap Of Key Cooking Stages
As we discussed in this post, there are three key phases to cooking in the Instant Pot. Once you add all ingredients and liquids, secure and lock the lid and choose your setting and time, the following things happen:
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Buying An Instant Pot Here’s What You Need To Know
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Over the past few years, Instant Pots have become a staple in small kitchen appliances. Busy parents use them to get dinner on the table in minutes, while batch cookers use them to simplify midweek meals. Some people prefer them for their ability to cook just about everything from pot roast to yogurt. Staying home has become the new norm to help prevent coronavirus from spreading, so you’re probably using your time indoors to cook more and try out new recipes. Alongside summer cooking staples like grills, an Instant Pot is a relatively quick, easy and affordable way to whip up home-cooked meals while under quarantine. Here’s everything you should know about an Instant pot, including how it works, best Instant Pots to buy and more.
A few years ago the idea that people would be cooking in pressure cookers en masse was unthinkable, says Elizabeth Barbone, a cookbook author and the creator of the pressure-cooker blog Cook Fast, Eat Well. Its been really fun to see folks not only embrace it, but to embrace it in different ways.
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What Is A Pressure Cooker
A pressure cooker is a tightly sealed cooking pot that cooks food with high pressure.
Pressure cookers have been around for over 300 years, but it was only after World War II that they became super popular.
But what happened? Is it because people dont know how to use a pressure cooker? Why isnt everyone using them now?
One word: Greed.
Many businesses started manufacturing faulty pressure cookers fulfilling the soaring demand. Eventually, exploding incidents happened over and over again until homemakers were too scared to use them.
However, its starting to have a big comeback because the new generation of pressure cookers are so much safer to use.
Preset Buttons On Instant Pot Multicookers
The functions vary between Instant Pot models, so it can help to consider which functions you expect to use the most when choosing one. This helps ensure you get the model that fits your unique cooking style so you’re able to make your favorite dishes with greater ease. The Instant Pot Lux series comes with six integrated functions, and the Duo series and Ultra series have extra functions for things like making cakes and yogurt. Some of the common Instant Pot functions to look for include:
- Slow cooking for tenderizing tough cuts of meat and for preparing meals ahead of time
- Rice cooking to create side dishes
- Saute function to sear food and lock in flavors
- Pressure cooking to quickly cook meats and vegetables
- Steaming for preparing fresh, nutritious vegetables
- Warming to get leftovers ready without investing a lot of extra time or effort
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How To Cook Using An Instant Pot
For a quick and dirty guide, it’s as easy as this:
If using your Instant Pot still seems daunting and you need more detailed instructions on how to use it, we’ve got you covered.
Once you’ve found a safe place to put your Instant Pot I keep mine on a kitchen counter away from other appliances take a moment to gently handwash the removable pot and the interior of the lid before you first use it. Next, plug in the unit.
If you are using meat or vegetables like garlic and onions that benefit from browning, you’ll want to use the sauté function first. With some recipes you can skip the searing shredded chicken from frozen comes to mind but for the most part, you want to brown or sear your meat first to add and lock-in flavors. Press the Stop or Cancel button to stop the sautéing, and add your other ingredients. If there is an excessive amount of grease left in the pot, drain it before continuing.
Before you press Start to begin the cooking process, make sure the steam valve is in the closed position. If it’s left open, the pressure will never build up, and your meal will take much longer to cook.
Why Use The Instant Pot To Cook Beans
Reason 524 why you need an Instant Pot Pressure Cooker in your life: Dried Beans.
Rock hard beans perfectly tender in about an hour with zero babysitting. BOOM! Now you can justify that second pressure cooker!
Slow cooker beans take 10-12 hours to soften and make your house smell like a Mexican restaurant.
Stovetop beans take up to 4 hours and involve dedicated pot watching to make sure the water doesn’t overflow or evaporate.
Who has time for that?!
Today is a Dried Beans 101 course on how to cook beans in the electric pressure cooker, AKA Instant Pot.
Also Check: How Long To Cook Spaghetti Squash In Instant Pot
What Is Pot Roast
Pot roast is more of a method than a specific cut of meat. To make it, sear a large cut of beef until browned on all sides, and then cook it with aromatics like herbs, onions, carrots, and broth until its melt-in-your-mouth tender.
You can make this in a Dutch oven on the stove-top, in the oven, in a slow cooker, and in a pressure cooker. In this recipe, we are using a pressure cooker to make the pot roast. A pressure cooker takes the cook time down dramatically.
What About Other Instant Pot Models
- Duo Plus: Like the Duo, but with a blue LCD display and few more settings . You can toggle to sound off or on.
- Smart WiFi: Generally like the Duo, but you can pair it with an app and use your smartphone to control some of its functions.
- Lux: No yogurt making setting. Does not need a drip catcher. Each setting will remember the cook time you programmed most recently.
- Ultra: Has a central control knob, not as many buttons, and a few more special settings. Has a feature to automatically adjust for pressure cooking at altitude. Quick release button keeps fingers away from the steam release valve. Each setting will remember the cook time you programmed most recently.
- Max: This has a touch screen, a sous-vide function, heats faster, can be programmed to automatically release steam, and offers an altitude adjustment option.
Also Check: What To Do If Your Instant Pot Says Burn
Can I Add Meat
This recipe is based on the creamy sausage tortellini recipe in our Electric Pressure Cooker Cookbook.
If you want to add a little more protein to this meal, add sausage for a richer, smokier flavor. To do so, brown the sausage in the pressure cooking pot on the Sauté function before you add the remaining ingredients. Then follow the recipe as written.
You could also swap cheese tortellini for your favorite meat-filled pasta with no changes to the recipe.
Choose Similar Ingredients To Another Pot
One of the easiest ways to adjust a pot-in-pot recipe is to choose a recipe that uses similar ingredients and base your cook time off of that. For example, if you want to make a Snickers Cheesecake, I recommend starting with my Peanut Butter Cup Cheesecake recipe and adapting it to your candy of choice.
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Inspecting Your Instant Pot Before Each Use
1. Remove the stainless steel inner pot and look inside the instant pot base. You will see the heating element. The heating element should always be free of debris and dry before you use you the Instant Pot. After washing, I always dry my stainless steel inner pot thoroughly before returning it to the base unit.
2. Check that the silicone sealing ring is fitted properly onto the lid and is clean and free of tears.
3. Remove the steam release valve from the Instant Pot lid by gently pulling it straight up. Make sure it is clean and free of debris. Some foods, such as applesauce, pasta and oatmeal may froth and foam when you cook them and can clog the steam release valve. Check the steam release valve each time you use your Instant Pot. If it is dirty clean it under running water and then put it back on the Instant Pot lid.
4. Check the float valve to ensure it is clean and free of debris. Clean it with warm water as needed. You may place the lid under running water as needed to wash it.
Making sure that all parts of your Instant Pot are clean and in good working condition can help you to have the best success with pressure cooking. My post about the Instant Pot burn message tells you both how to prevent getting this warning and what to do if you do get a burn message.
An Analysis Of The Most Useful Functions On The Instant Pot And Other Multi
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The Instant Pot’s ascendance has been so sudden, so swift, so far-reaching, and so utterly dominating that it’s hard to think of another kitchen product in recent history that has so thoroughly cornered the market.
Before the Instant Pot, when I tried to convince people that a pressure cooker was worth buying, their eyes would glaze over. Now that the Instant Pot has taken off so explosively, it seems nearly everyone owns a pressure cooker, even if half of them don’t seem to realize it.
And that, really, speaks to the power of the Instant Pot. People own them, people love them, and people often have no idea what they even are. So let’s set this straight: “Instant Pot” is a brand name for a multi-cooker, and a multi-cooker is basically an electric pressure cooker with a few bells and whistles thrown in for good measure.
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Natural Vs Manual Pressure Release
When the cook time is up on your Instant Pot, there’s still one more step — releasing the pressure.
There are two ways the pressure can be released. With natural pressure release, the valve on the lid stays in Sealing position and the pressure dissipates naturally over time. This can take anywhere from 20 minutes to more than an hour, depending on what you were cooking. Low-liquid meals take much less time than high-liquid meals, like soup or chili.
The other option is manual pressure release . Here, you’ll carefully move the valve into Venting position and watch as steam shoots out of it, releasing the pressure. This method is much faster, but very high-liquid meals, like soup, can still take about 15 minutes to release pressure manually.
So which one should you use? Consider that with natural pressure release, the Instant Pot is still full of pressure, so the food will continue cooking while the Instant Pot is in Sealing mode. Manual pressure release is useful — and necessary — when you’ve built in enough cooking time and cooking needs to be stopped as fast as possible.
If the goal is to cook a meal quickly, set enough time on the Instant Pot to cook your food and release the pressure manually when the time is up.
What Is A Multi
If you own an Instant Pot, what you really own is a multi-cooker. If you don’t own an Instant Pot, but have been debating whether or not to pick one up, you should know that there are many other multi-cooker brands on the market, some of which are worth considering .
A multi-cooker usually includes a base unit, where the control panel and heating element live an insert, which holds the food itself and can be removed for easy cleaning a lid with a gasket and valve, for pressure-cooking and various accessories, like measuring cups and a steaming basket, depending on the model.
As the name implies, what’s most appealing about a multi-cooker is the range of cooking options it offers. It steams! It sears! It simmers! It cooks beans! It cooks rice! It cooks stews! It cooks chili! It makes yogurt! It’s a pressure cooker! It’s a slow cooker! It can make my bed and clean my toilet and rub my feet and sanitize my dentures! All! In! One!
Do you know how we know it can do all those things? Because it has buttons on the front that tell us so!*
*Okay, I lied it won’t sanitize your dentures. But man, does a multi-cooker make a mean bed.
Let’s cut through this noise. A multi-cooker is really just a couple of things, plus a whole lot of preset modes. It is, in the simplest sense, an electric pot its lid has a gasket that can seal the pot shut to trap steam and build pressure, and the cooker has sensors in it to automatically control heat and pressure as needed.
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