Comment by downut | Hacker News Reader

Comment by downut | Hacker News Reader

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I'm doing a complete tear down remodel of the kitchen so I bought some devices to make our 95% cooked from scratch meal lifestyle bearable through the awful times.

A top of the line Breville toaster oven was the first, it's fantastic, but it is also silly to compare it to our 25 y/o Viking duel fuel range, waiting to reenter our life.

A week ago I got my Instant Pot Pro, and I've been putting it through its paces. I boiled some eggs. This is what really irks me about IP fans: it does not take 5 minutes. It has some indeterminate amount of preheat, the 5 min., and then a cool down. The eggs are just fine, as flawless as the following method on a quality gas burner stove: Put eggs and water into pot to just cover, turn burner high"ish"; when bubbles just start, turn down to a very very slow bubble generation and set timer for 10m (12-13min at 5500' elevation), scoop out the eggs when the timer expires and put on the counter, peel when cool enough. I very rarely had to spend any attention monitoring this. The IP is just, but only just, as good.

BUT ITS NOT FIVE MINUTES.

Shouting because why do instant pot fans do this?

Now, I am quite interested in the yogurt thing. That sounds very cool, we love yogurt and industrial yogurt, meh. Also strawberries are cheap right now and I'm thinking of making some exotic French confitures, and mixing that with the yogurt.

Risotto? No brainer on a decent stove. Dried beans? I also have a 30 y/o Magefesa pressure cooker that has a thicker bottom than the instant pot "pot" and does dried beans perfectly. No magic, or even "instant", there.

Another gripe: compared to the Breville that roller knob in the center is a gawdawlful POS. Reeks of cheap.

Compared to the 15 y/o electric range that is going to be tossed out the back doors, and then shot multiple times with 12 gauge 3" buckshot loads, the IP is great, so maybe I'm a little sad that the inevitable PE bankrupt/shitify it happened to it too.

But there's a very big difference when it comes to convenience: the Instant Pot (Or in my case the Sage/Breville Fast Slow Pro, which is great) has a built in timer and cooks automatically. Once you hit "start", you can walk away and come back any time to perfectly cooked eggs.

With a stove top method, you have to stand there and watch the timer, and manually turn off your stove when it's done.

I am curious, do you often put on eggs to boil and then walk away doing other things for an extended period of time?

I am usually still in the kitchen preparing the rest of the meal by the time the alarm rings, so turning off the stove is not a big inconvenience.

I do! If I'm making boiled eggs its usually for a salad, so I want to make the eggs in advance and let them cool down before use anyway. It's nice to be able to set and forget and not have to babysit the pot or risk overcooking them. The pressure-cook method also adds a nice level of no-effort precision: if you want them slightly softer or harder you can just adjust the cook time by a minute or two. But with a pot if you want that level of precision you really have to babysit it... first wait for the water to boil, then add the eggs (risking cracking them when dropping in to boiling water), and start the timer, wait for timer, take them out as soon as timer goes off... it's just so much easier when you can skip all these steps!

There's also another advantage of the instant pot method: because it's cooking under pressure, it compresses the whites very slightly inside the shells as they cook. This means the shells always peel very easily from the eggs! Often when stovetop cooking, I'd get the shells sticking to the eggs which makes them difficult to peel.

When I make eggs in the Instant Pot, I do it on high pressure for 4 minutes, then immediately vent and plunge them into ice water. If I left them in any longer than that or even if I skip the ice bath, they'd be very overdone. I don't see how you can leave them unattended and not end up with very overdone and rubbery eggs.

In fact, if the Instant Pot has any disadvantage vs doing them in a pot, it's that the texture of the whites isn't as nice. The short cooking time that I use helps with that, but you have to be okay with not fully done yolks (which is something I prefer anyway).

I usually do take them out fairly quickly after I hear the end alarm. I also prefer yolks which are still a tiny bit runny, so I agree that a short cooking time and removing them quickly works best!

But it's not the end of the world if you don't as it cools down quite quickly when it vents (if set to quick-release). They might be slightly overdone, but certainly not as bad as forgetting them and leaving them boiling in a pot for 15+ minutes. Which I've done more times than I care to admit.

Ah, that makes sense! Thanks.

I usually make boiled eggs when I take food somewhere (be it for hiking or a lunch in the park). But I also drop them into cold water once they are cooked to stop the cooking, so they are quickly not that hot anymore.

Not having to worry about the timing does sound nice!

"why do instant pot fans do this?"

You may hatenjoy the discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36038796 .

(Hmmm... with hatenjoy I may finally have ticked "create a legit googlewhack" off my bucket list. I see some usages that appear to be "Hat Enjoy" jammed together as a domain name or company name but a portmanteau of hate-enjoy Google is not finding for me. Of course Google isn't what it used to be...)

The Serious Eats recipe requires 20 minutes of cooking time and 3 quarts of water for up to 6 eggs:

https://www.seriouseats.com/perfect-boiled-eggs-recipe

In my Instant Pot it's about 3-4 minutes to bring maybe 4 oz of water to pressure, 4 minutes to pressure cook, maybe a minute to release pressure and I'll do 8 eggs. So that's like half the cooking time.

Cooling time is the same. I plunge the eggs into an ice bath for 5 minutes before refrigerating.

I don't really do it for the time savings though. I mostly do it because it gives me a more consistent result. My egg yolks are always cooked exactly to the same doneness and the eggs are always easy to peel, even when starting with fresh eggs. (Freshness is the primary determinant of how easy eggs are to peel with older eggs being easier to peel than fresh eggs.)

I found that making them using the Serious Eats recipe I didn't always get consistent doneness (it's a lot harder to get the water temp exactly the same on a gas stove even with a thermometer). I also found they weren't always easy to peel.

So yes, the Instant Pot does save me time even with eggs where the time savings is minimal. More importantly it gives me a more consistent result with less attention from me.

YMMV.

On Rissoto, yes it's easy on a stove. But it requires you to stand there for 30 minutes lading in broth a little at a time. At least that's always the way I've done it to get a really nice result. On the Instant Pot, I can add all the ingredients at once an hit a button and 30 minutes later it's perfectly done w/o having required 30 minutes of my attention. I don't do it for the time savings. I do it because it's easier.

On beans, I didn't own a pressure cooker already.

On the yogurt, I never had consistent results trying to incubate naturally. I also tried a Yogotherm, coolers, my oven, the counter. Nothing worked. So I resolved that I needed to buy an incubator and when I learned the Instant Pot could do that and more, I bought it. It was like $80 on sale. I've been making perfect yogurt for like two years now.

Here's my recipe for creamy and nicely tart Bulgarian yogurt.

(I basically clone White Mountain.)

Fill four mason jars with whole milk. I use the Whole Foods brand ultra pasteurized whole milk. Screw lids loosely in place. Put jars into Instant Pot on top of the trivet. Fill with water till it comes up about 3/4 the way up the jars. Place lid on Instant Pot and set it to sous vide setting, 190° for 30 minutes.

When done pasteurizing, remove the mason jars and place them in cool (not cold or they will crack) water. I do this in my sink. After about 15 minutes remove the lid from one and check the temperature is below 110°. If not wait a bit longer. You could just let them cool on the counter top too but I'm a bit impatient with this step.

Add 1 tsp of starter to each jar and stir lightly. Put mason jars back in Instant Pot. Place lid on. Incubate for 8 hours. Once it's done incubating, place jars on counter for an hour or so, then move to the fridge.

For a starter, I use White Mountain Bulgarian Yogurt for a fresh batch. Then I can chain my own yogurt along as starter for months at a time.

I prefer to mix things into my yogurt when I eat it so I like to keep the yogurt itself nice and tart and don't mix anything in to the jars.

I make the yogurt in the mason jars from the start so I don't have to transfer it when it's done.

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