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Comment by orm | Hacker News Reader

Instant Pot. Can be used as a rice cooker, slow cooker, pressure cooker (mostly known for this last use)

Though probably not as good for rice specifically as an actual high-end rice cooker, it greatly increased the range of foods I eat.

Makes it easy to make nice one pot meals overnight for multiple days, you can make really good broth soups from chickens etc quickly, or slowly if you prefer.

If you like to try tougher cuts of meat, this is also a good reason to get it. The fact it doesn't occupy one burner is also helpful.

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We got an Instant Pot and our Zoji rice cooker has collected dust ever since. It is great for brown basmati rice where the Zoji is weak and slow. Try 360g brown basmati rice (we don't bother rinsing it), 705g water, a quarter tsp of salt, 1 tsp of oil. Cook 23m on high and then let it sit for 10min before venting the rest of the pressure off. Remove lid, fluff the rice, and wait a minute or two before serving.

The one weakness of the Instant Pot is that most models won't go to 15psi and there is the odd recipe where a longer cooking time can't compensate. For example, there is a Modernist Cuisine recipe for pressure cooked root vegetables that uses a bit of baking soda to help bring a caramelized flavor to the party. Works great in a 15 psi cooker but is a disaster in an instant pot: the veggies just taste like baking soda. I suspect that stocks made in the Instant Pot might not be as good as well for similar reasons but haven't tried that yet.

If you're cooking both rice and a meal however, you might need that extra rice cooker (and cook the meal in the instant pot). You could also stack the portions in the instant pot, but that doesn't work for all types of meals.

I'm just the other way: had an Instant Pot for a couple years (which is great) but I bought a Zojirushi rice cooker and LOVE LOVE LOVE it. Japanese medium-grain rice in the Zoji is amazing. I cook 1-2 cups nearly every day to snack on.

Really easy to make yoghurt with too!

Dump in a gallon of milk, heat it up, let it cool, add a couple spoons of a store bought plain yoghurt (if you don't have some started saved from the last batch), put the lid back on and hit the yoghurt button and come back in like 8-10 hours. If you prefer a thicker yoghurt, strain it a bit before storing.

Gallon of yoghurt for the price of a gallon of milk and probably like 20 minutes of active work.

100%. I’ve been doing it for 24 hours lately.

Mine mostly sits because I find the instructions and UX inscrutable. I've made some great ribs, but just as often something goes wrong and the device doesn't warm up enough, or doesn't form a seal and cooks off the liquid or burns the meat.

You don't get any indication that things are going right until the timer starts going down, but that's many minutes after you start it. It also comes with two completely incompatible rice recipes, one of which doesn't use rice mode, and no explanation of why. Just terrible UX.

That’s not been my experience with mine, but I don’t use any of the program modes (except for Yogurt). I just follow recipes online and set the time.

InstantPot is fantastic. It is the only way I have made brown rice which matches the quality of my local Thai restaurant.

What's your brown rice approach? I've tried a few diff ones I've found online but none have turned out amazing

1-to-1 ratio of dry rice to water, by volume. I typically make 3-4 cups (dry) at one time.

Multigrain setting on the Instant Pot, shortest cook time. I believe it is 20 minutes at full pressure. I do not know if the multigrain setting is on every Instant Pot.

20-30 minutes of natural steam release once the pressure cooking is complete.

Turns out soft and minimally sticky every time. Perfect for my palate. I was eating it with just butter and soy sauce for a while.

I do pot-in-pot with 1:1 ratio of water to brown rice. We have a number of small stainless steel bowls that we set on top of the wire trivet (don't forget a small amount of water in the main pot too). I cook for ~15 minutes for most brown rice and then let the instant pot sit undisturbed for another 10-15 minutes while the pressure naturally releases, and the rice has a chance to take up any unabsorbed water.

White rice is the same deal, though I usually go a few minutes less (~12 minutes). I like to add a very small amount of some sort of oil to the inner pot with the rice.

Me too. Instant pot for the win. Haven't tried meat in it. It's been Indian curries and lentil soups & such. I also bought a 3 quart version for my motorhome!

Do you follow any recipes online? Those sound great and I would love to expand my instant pot game beyond pressurized rice making.

I've scrabbled together a pot roast recipe I follow loosely that gets praised every time I make it. I get a chuck roast (or something similar), evenly coat in salt and pepper to taste, saute it in the insta pot(about 6-7 minutes each side to brown it), deglaze with red wine vinegar, then put in half a small package of carrots and little red potatoes(onions can be added but nobody likes them here). I also add 2-3 pepperoncinis on this bottom layer, then I put the roast back in, put the rest of the carrots/potatoes/another couple of pepperoncinis on top and around. Then I add a cup of water and beef bullion, and set the pressure cook feature to around 1 hour 10 minutes or so. I use the keep-warm mode and while it's ready to go once the main pressure is done, it just gets better over time (and you can do it before leaving for work and come home to lunch or supper already waiting). I'm really lazy when it comes to cooking, but this has been easy, fast and delicious (plus leftovers!).

An even easier thing is shredded BBQ chicken. They can even be frozen and it's done in an hour. Would write the recipe but leaving for lunch now.

I have a similar pot roast recipe, but I've found it comes out better in a slow cooker, or a dutch oven. I've never really been all that impressed with the results of the Instant Pot. Time savings? Even that depends - building and releasing pressure adds 40+ minutes to cook time.

I do a very similar version, minus the pepperoncini. One thing that I've found can really take it up a notch is to add just a touch of soy/worcestershire sauce, maybe about 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon of each. IMO it adds a nice savory background flavor.

This is a fantastic instant pot recipe -- it's an adaptation of a Colombian pressure-cooker stew to an instant pot by Kenji Lopez Alt.

Easy, fast, flavorful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-riGSANPe3g

Direct link: https://www.seriouseats.com/colombian-chicken-stew-with-pota...

Just note that in 3:25 or so in the video, Kenji modifies the recipe to reduce cooking time (from 25 to 15 minutes).

Its wonderful for chilis, stews, pot roast, short ribs, etc. I've even made whole chickens in it and bone broth.

I just learned that I can make ten potatoes in about twenty minutes in my pressure cooker which has been a huge help for meal prepping. It's so great for so many things!

My Instant Pot-branded Instant Pot is pretty much useless as a slow cooker. Unfortunately, I donated mine upon getting the Instant Pot before realizing this. Maybe newer models have fixed this but the three times I tried, had to end up pressure cooking as it never got warm enough, even on high, to slow cook.

I love our Instant Pot! I keep finding uses for it. The other day I'd forgotten to thaw a 4-pack of pre-cooked chicken sausages. Threw them into the Instant Pot (steam tray w/ a cup of water under them), 5 minutes on low pressure (~10 min total), and they were totally warmed through.

I was using it as well, but after talking to my very knowledgeable dentist, pressure cookers destroy most of the vitamins from foods. Since talking to her I started using my pot without the pressure valve, semi open, and use it as a small simmering device, similar to a pot on a stove, but without needing to remember to turn it off.

What? That's the absolute opposite of what happens. More vitamins are retained in the food in a pressure cooker because of less water/more steam and less oxygen.

Pressure cooking has been a game changer for me!

The latest revisions of the instantpot do a good job of sous vide. I've tried a sous vide roast [0] so far, 24 hours later I had the best roast I've ever had. Incredible.

[0]: https://sousvideways.com/sous-vide-chuck-roast/

I especially like cooking pork via sous vide (in my Instant Pot). Pork is really hard to cook in a regular oven/pan without making it tough, but a couple of hours sous vide, and then quick searing makes it wonderful!

I haven’t gotten there yet. Do you have any recipes you can share?

I've had 3 Instant Pots die on me over the span of six months. I got a Yedi instead and it's kept working for two years so far.

https://www.amazon.com/Yedi-Programmable-Pressure-Steamer-Ac...

Yes! we got one last year and although we use it mostly just to cook beans (this being a mexican household) it has improved our lives enormously.

Mine is also an air fryer. :D

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