If you are like me, you have been hearing about the Instant Pot for weeks, if not months. And If you are like me, you are thinking to yourself, I should get one but I:
a. don’t have the counter space in my small apartment
b. don’t know how it works and it intimidates me
c. keep forgetting I want one until it comes up again in conversation and I think, oh
yeah, I want one of those.
Well - I finally got one! My sister, who happens to be a trained chef, finally gave up telling me to get one and bought me one for Christmas (thank you Mo!).
So I have to admit that weeks went by with the Instant Pot sitting in the box. I would open it, look at the HUGE manual of instructions and be completely overwhelmed. If you don’t know much about the device, it is like a slow cooker, pressure cooker, and crock pot all combined into one with one too many buttons on it. While I like to fancy myself a decent cook, I felt overwhelmed and unprepared to use this. Furthermore, as I was sat down to write this blog post, I came upon several articles published discussing this “Instant Pot anxiety” so I was not alone by any means.
However, I knew I wanted to change up my cooking game for myself and my family and knew I just needed to take the plunge. Pam reminded me that she was ahead of the craze and had been making chili and soups in one for months and loving the ease of it all.
I just needed to dive in - google some recipes, ask some friends for help and have faith (and hope my kids didn’t reject it). And I’m happy to say it worked! Yes, there are some things I still find confusing and yes I have watched at least four YouTube videos on how to pressure cook in an Instant Pot, for example. But in general, it feels like an absolute game changer in my cooking. It has allowed me to expand my Rolodex of recipes which started to feel tired and boring to all of us, has allowed me to throw even more vegetables in my kids meals without complaint, has taken so much time off prep and cook time which is huge and has opened me up to a little informal club of those who obsess over the Instant Pot. You know that club exists, right?
Here is a cheat sheet of what the functions are of Instant Pot:
Slow cooker
Pressure cooker
Rice cooker
Steamer
Yogurt maker
Browning/saute pan
Warming pot
