Instant pots have become more and more popular over recent years, and they have become an increasingly common holiday gift, or housewarming gift to give friends and family.
However, many people do not use their instant pot to its full potential, often due to people being a bit unsure of how they can use this amazing piece of technology.
An instant pot, when used properly can change your culinary life, and make things so much easier, let’s have a look at all the wonderful things you can cook in an instant pot.
What Exactly Is An Instant Pot?
The instant pot is essentially a combination of a pressure cooker and a slow cooker, that runs from the mains electric.
In the same way as a slow cooker, you can essentially put all the ingredients into the pot, and leave it to do it’s thing of creating a tasty meal with minimal intervention from you, but, ike a pressure cooker, it also cooks things much faster than a slow cooker, reducing the cooking time by around 70% on average.
Slow cookers are well renowned for their ability to cook food to perfection over long hours, but an instant pot will give you the same great results, but in far less time.
This means it saves you time, and also money on your utility bills as it’s not running for as long as a slow cooker would.
There are so many great foods you can cook in an instant pot!
Yogurt
This is an unexpected food that you can make in an instant pot – yogurt! Homemade yogurt is far superior to shop bought one. It takes a little more effort to make it at home, but it is well worth it, and an instant pot will make this much easier for you.
Making yogurt is fairly easy, and the instant pot helps here because the milk doesn’t need to be cooked, rather it needs to be held at a constant temperature for several hours to encourage the healthy bacteria to grow, and therefore create yogurt.
You will need a food grade thermometer, but the same one you use for your meat cooking will work just fine.
Other ingredients you will need are a yogurt starter and milk, that’s it! Simple!
There are many recipes available online to help you make homemade yogurt, and will walk through it step by step. It’s important to put in enough liquid to avoid the burn message, but once you’ve had homemade yogurt, you’ll never buy ready made yogurt again.
Rice
Rice is one of those foodstuffs that can be very hard to get right, often it ends up burnt on the bottom, or too watery so you don’t get that lovely fluffy, sticky rice that you’re aiming for, that goes so well with lots of recipes.
Many people have a rice cooker, but this piece of equipment is really only good for making one thing – rice. So it can take up space on your countertop that can be better used by having a piece of equipment that serves more than one purpose.
An instant pot is perfect for cooking rice, as it can keep it at a constant temperature for the time required, and you’ll end up with the perfect rice every time.
Seasonal Drinks
What is better around the holidays than welcoming people to your home with a lovely spiced drink like mulled wine, or spice apple cider?
These drinks are so popular in the fall and at the holidays, but they can be a little bit time consuming.
Here, the instant pot can really help you out. If you are entertaining guests, you can often be very busy trying to make sure everything is cooked to perfection.
Just put the ingredients in your instant pot, and let it do the hard work for you. It has a stirrer within the machine, so it will make sure it doesn’t stagnate in one place, and the constant temperature will ensure your chosen drink is infused with all the spices you place in it.
Hard Boiled Eggs
Boiling eggs isn’t the hardest thing to cook, however if you have an extremely busy life, boiling eggs on the stove top takes up precious minutes of your valuable time, and you can usually only cook a few eggs in a saucepan at any one time.
An instant pot will allow you to boil a whole clutch of eggs together, and takes only a few minutes for them to be boiled to perfection.
You then have ready made snacks for the whole family for the next few days, what could be easier!
Cheesecake
Yes, you read that right – cheesecake can be cooked in an instant pot, in much less time than in the oven.
Baked cheesecakes has to be one of the most heavenly desserts available, but it can be such a long process to make and then cook. It often requires a few hours in the oven on a low temperature.
An instant pot will perfectly cook a cheesecake for you in around thirty to forty minutes. It also removes all the complexities of getting a bain marie in and out of the oven, and the risks that come with that.
Simply put your cheesecake in the instant pot, pour some water around the outside and let it cook, and have the perfect cheesecake in less than an hour.
Roast Chicken
Cooking an entire roast chicken in an instant pot is a revolution! You can cook a whole chicken to perfection in around half an hour, and due to the nature of the instant pot, it retains all the moisture in the meat, making it absolutely perfect.
You can also add in your favourite flavourings, and the instant pot will infuse these into the meat, meaning you have a perfect, flavoursome meal in less time than it takes you to walk the dog.
So, as you can see there are many things you can cook in an instant pot apart from soup, it really is a time saver.
