5 hours ago, kayb said:I love my Instant Pot. I make all kinds of soups and stews, most of which freeze well, and it's the best thing going for cooking dried beans. I do some roasts, etc., that I would normally braise in the oven for hours and hours -- pulled pork for carnitas, pot roast, and so on. All that freezes well.
You can adapt most any recipe to the Instant Pot, as long as it has enough liquid. If you don't want that much liquid in your dish, you can put water in the bottom of your pot, put in a trivet, and put your dish in a separate vessel to go in the pot (PIP, or Pot-in-Pot, cooking). I have a set of two stacking dishes that are about the equivalent of 6 1/2 inch cake pans that I use a lot for curries; meat and sauce in one, rice in the other. It's marvelous. Think I paid $20 for the pan set, and it's been worth it.
Also, be careful with using thicker liquids. It's usually best to cook in a thin liquid and then thicken later, maybe on the saute function. Thicker liquids will often burn and stick, on the pressure cook function.
Lots of good recipes out there on the web, and some good cookbooks as well.
Thanks kayb. When you mentioned cake pans I remembered that one of the other things I look forward to trying to make is cheesecake, although I believe that this would be done using the slow cooker function. Also, I would need to get a springform pan which is pretty easy to find. Still making my way through the instruction manual.
It's good to hear that one can adapt almost any recipe. I was wondering if there was a cookbook (or cookbooks) that you or anyone else here that has both recipes for top of the stove or oven cooking as well as the pressure cooker/Instant Pot alternative. I'm sure that I will learn through trial and error as I go along, but would definitely prefer to not ruin an entire pot of food in the process.
Edited to add: Doh! Mistakenly said above to make cheesecake with the slow cooker function but it's the pressure cooker function. Sigh, still reading the manual..............
