So this is all about one pioneering brand: The Crockpot.
Is the subtext that this is marketing - the gifting season is upon us, and the competition from newer brands e.g. Instant Pot, fierce?
Is the subtext that this is marketing - the gifting season is upon us, and the competition from newer brands e.g. Instant Pot, fierce?
We do have a couple of other crock pots / slow cookers which we use to make great dishes like pulled pork etc. It’s just the Instant Pot which hasn’t worked out for us.
Other Instant Pot users: what am I missing? Is the main advantage supposed to be that you can prepare meals fast because it’s a pressure cooker? Or should I pull it out and give it another shot?
But I don't get one, since my head says: "Where would you put it in the small apartment? And anyway you're well fed already. It doesn't fill a gap."
I guess if you're really busy and/or have a lot of mouths to feed then they're better value?
That's it, though. Don't use it to cook real food.
With a pressure cooker, it takes several minutes to depressurize, and the required seal precludes using a wired oven thermometer. So you just have to kind of guess and hope, which often means things are slightly over-cooked (since that's safer than slightly under-cooking).
I find that baking falls into two categories:
1) Pie or roast - No closed cast-iron pot in use, so you don't need to open the oven, you can see in through the glass.
2) Baking bread in the closed cast-iron pot with the lid on, do not open the oven or raise the lid during this phase!
In neither case do you "open the oven and take a quick look"
This can really affect what you are baking, not always a good idea.
Best sources are the pressure cooker recipes on Serious Eats [1], I especially recommend the Pho Ga [2], the Mushroom Risotto [3] and the Bolognese Ragu [4].
Another good source is hippressurecooking (I use the book[5] rather than the website [6]) - the book is worth it for the of method and time alone for e.g. beans, and the recipes are not as good as the Serious Eats ones, but many are good (I like the Filipino Chicken Adobo). I've used it in combination with other sources, as a way to adapt to the faster pressure cooking times (Urad Dal, using the ingredients from Ottolenghi, but method from Hip Pressure Cooking. Mind you if I have the time, I tend now to make the Dishoom House Black Dal).
1: https://www.seriouseats.com/pressure-cooker-recipes-5117325 2: https://www.seriouseats.com/30-minute-pressure-cooker-pho-ga... 3: https://www.seriouseats.com/pressure-cooker-mushroom-risotto... 4: https://www.seriouseats.com/pressure-cooker-ragu-bolognese-s... 5: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hip-Pressure-Cooking-Laura-Passagli... 6: http://www.hippressurecooking.com/
I don't like to use the pressure cooker for meat, for exactly the reasons you state. For one, higher heat of an oven produces different chemical changes, which generally taste better; for two, with pressure cooking, a lot of the fat seeps out of the meat and ends up in the broth, leaving it tough and tasteless. I feel the same way for potatoes and sweet potatoes -- I much prefer the flavor which the higher temperature of the oven brings.
That said, my wife actually prefers chicken / potatoes / sweet potatoes cooked in the pressure cooker; so when we buy a chicken, if I get to it first it's baked, and if she gets to it first it's pressure cooked. :-)
Where the pressure cooker shines is cooking grains and beans: quinoa, freekeh, chickpeas, black beans, kidney beans, lentils, etc. They all take a really long time to cook on the stovetop; but take quite a reasonable amount of time on the pressure cooker. (In fact, we bought our pressure cooker when we were experimenting with a "plant-based" diet.). But then you're not done: you still have to add fat and flavoring.
Workable alternative would be Sous-Vide which allows lower temps but much longer times. Even up to days.
One meat I have sometimes done as apartment dweller is ribs and then oven for glacing.
Pot roast seems like a bad fit since with a roast you’d typically want the roasted outside in the dry heat of the oven. You also need things that have enough water that will generate enough steam to build up pressure, so low moisture things won’t turn out well either.
Other things: it will make a really decent stock in less than an hour. It can do wonders with dry beans. If you want to try again, these guys are mostly pretty reliable as a starting point: https://www.seriouseats.com/pressure-cooker-recipes.