Even just focusing on the pressure cooking aspect, it turns out you can pressure cook all sorts of things you might not expect until you own one. For example, I've made incredible cheesecake in my Instant Pot.
Carnitas in 30 minutes. Pulled chicken in 7 minutes (which is actually really good!). Rice in minutes. There's always another way to do any of these things, but the instant pot does all of them.
My wife has 2 of them, we throw together whole dinners in minutes, the primary one never leaves the counter because it's become a daily tool. Our microwave stopped working about 6 months ago, and instead of replacing it, we just gave the microwaves spot on our counter to the instant pot.
Okay I have a question here, because I own an instant pot and I don't know if I'm understanding pressure cooking correctly or if I'm doing something wrong.
When you say you pressure cook a chicken in 7 minutes, it's 10-15 minutes for the heat and pressure to buildup, plus 7 minutes once pressure is at max, then 1-2 minutes to release the vapor (or wait 20-30 minutes until the pressure subsidies by itself).
If that is how cooking times are my slow cooker can make a mean stew in a few minutes - but you'll need to start it a half day before you want to eat it. If you remove the foil from a lasagna for the last five minutes and set a new timer, did it only take 5 minutes?
I don't get the trend in instant pot directions to say it only takes X minutes when it is really warmup + X + cooldown. It really doesn't help anyone know when to start cooking a meal.
I can make anything from ice cream, cheesecake, pizza, stew, sauces etc. from scratch without a recipe, but I find instant pot recipes to be some of the worst I've ever come across. It has a steep learning curve. That said, I think I'll like it when I figure out how to get what I want out of it. Maybe I'll even write a real recipe for it.
Half a day is a bit of an exaggeration - I've been making the best beef stews of my life in under an hour, including prep, warm up, cook, and steam release.
Likewise pulled pork in just a shade over an hour, perhaps 10 minutes actual prep time.
Then it should be more like 30 seconds, 15 to put things in and 15 to take things out, or are you watching it for those 7 minutes? Just trying to point out that you should quote the actual time it takes.
The soul of marketing is getting people to overlook stuff like the laws of physics, the arrow of time, and compound interest. Any time you find yourself resorting to the word "should," it's a good idea to ask:
1) why would the universe naturally favor order?
2) why would the order it favors please my sensibilities?
Questioning the above premises will often yield opportunities that a rigid attention to preconceived notions would not.
Most home pressure cooking is sensitive to your local air pressure. You already have to adjust for that. And the kinetics of pressure cooking mean that structural changes that happen while getting up to temp will be a rounding error compared to full temp, for all but the shortest cook times.
Hard or soft boiled eggs -- bonus is that when you pressure cook them, it makes the shell stupid easy to get off (crack a ring around the middle, then pull the shell off).
5mins for hard, 4 mins for softer yolk, 1 min for runny (like for eggs benedict), quick release pressure + put in to an ice bath when done.
I've never tried pressure cooking my eggs, but in minimizing prep my favorite way is to steam them.
Put a little water in a pot (maybe half an inch), cover, bring to a boil, then reduce to low for 7 minutes and you have a perfect hardboiled egg. You should still have a bit of water in the pot when done, but not too much to delay boiling. End to end in about 8 minutes you have a cooked egg!
The boiling is almost instant in a small aluminum pot, unlike bringing my pressure cooker up to temp, and you dont have to depressurize.
Unless you're using much smaller eggs than I do, 7 minutes must leave you with almost wet yolks. With standard US "Extra Large" eggs, 13 minutes is a fully-opaque yolk, down to around 9-10 minutes where the center of the yolk is much darker. It's been a while, but I think US "Large" eggs maybe only subtract about a minute from those times.
I have a different rice cooker / multi-function electric cooker which doesn't sell itself as a pressure cooker, though I think it does build up a slight steam pressure when in use.
If you buy a pressure cooker for "when I needed to pressure cook" you might not notice that it's also capable of being a multi-function electric cooker.
My wife has made hard boiled eggs, risotto (kinda) and yogurt in it. Didn't expect any of those. It advertised yogurt, but I didn't expect it to turn out as well as it did.
My girlfriend bought me a sous-vide stick for christmas https://anovaculinary.com/ I'm loving it, and was just trying to figure out how to make yoghurt in it. I was thinking a pot inside a cambro container or a bunch of mason jars in the cambro.
An instant pot is an interesting choice. We have an old-fashioned pressure cooker at home, which doesn't get nearly enough use.
> I'm loving it, and was just trying to figure out how to make yoghurt in it. I was thinking a pot inside a cambro container or a bunch of mason jars in the cambro.
I bought an Anova myself during the last Black Friday sale.
While I haven't made yoghurt in it (and I'm not sure what heating would do to yoghurt cultures), I have aged eggnog in ziploc bags. Polyethylene bags are probably best for anything that doesn't need to set.
I wouldn't recommend mason jars unless you're doing a custard like creme brulee. You can't fully immerse them under water, and if you don't cap them properly, they'll either crack under pressure, or let water in. There's a "fingertip-tight" rule for mason jars, though I haven't tried it [1]:
> Place the lid on the jar. Twist the lid until “fingertip tight,” meaning just barely closed and still possible to open with your fingertips.
> To close the jars fingertip tight, place the lid on top of the jar, then twist the band to tighten using just your fingertips. When you begin to feel resistance, twist once in the opposite direction, then once more in the original direction to tighten.
> Closing the jars until fingertip tight means that air will be able to escape from the jars when you submerge them in water. If you close them too tightly, the trapped air will press against the glass and could crack or break your jars.
I bought a sous vide set up a couple of years ago and I've been very underwhelmed with it. Are there any recipes that you think are especially good?
I think my favorite is probably turkey breast just because it doesn't get dry. Everything else I've made in it (mostly different meats) has been okay, but nothing special. My family and I generally prefer things cooked on our grill.
If you're good at the grill, there's no reason to use a sous vide. Honestly, with very few exceptions, you can do everything the sous vide can do faster using traditional methods.
However, I personally like to pre-cook a bunch of food using sous vide then finish on the grill. Now food is ready with a lot less hassle on my part. Finishing on the grill, a pan, or in the oven is crucial to get good browning flavor!
So, to me, it's either for niche things (precise soft boiled eggs, unique cooking temp for meats), or as a time saving thing I can set, forget, and not fret over precise timings. Or do something like 3 racks of ribs over 24 hours in a cooler.
Otherwise, I agree, it's not my first tool I reach for to whip up dinner.
I have to admit that I don't like the texture of poultry breast meat done sous vide. Maybe I should experiment with not vacuum sealing it (just leave it with minimal air). But if you have an instant read thermometer (or a stick-in-and-wires-out continuous monitoring kind), the key is temperature. Just use a low oven (225 say) and pull it out when its ~135-140.
My favourite thing to sous vide is steaks, which I finish on a steal plate on my grill. But I just use the beer-cooler sous-vide trick, so I can't really do e.g. 72 hour short-ribs.
The actual temperature you choose is really dependent on taste, but some, specifically meats, that shine are salmon, short ribs, steak and smokerless smoked meats like brisket and pork shoulder (hey we can't all have a smoker in our apartment). But getting the taste and texture you like takes some trials. If I had to pick one in particular, it would be short ribs at 185F for 24 hours.
Most cooks, outside of seafood, that I enjoy tend to take >12 hours. I barely use it for something like chicken thighs or pork chops.
I've heard of people using it for massive batch jobs and freezing the now-sealed contents. Like gallons of chili. Or 10+lbs of chicken and seafood. Now prepped and portioned and saveable for the freezer.
Personally I use it for more niche goals.
Taking cheap steak cuts and getting a perfect internal temp as well as batch cooking chicken works out really well.
I also set it up in a cooler and do 3 racks of ribs for BBQ events. Don't worry that the Anova claims it can't control that much water. The insulation of any cooler will let you far exceed it's ratings.
Making cheesecake is one I certainly didn't expect. I still haven't tried it, but I've heard you can get great results because of the moist environment.
Honestly, for eggs I've found this to work a treat:
Take a small pot with a lid, add 1cm (1/2 inch) of water, put eggs in, throw on cooker (up to boiling very quickly). 5 minutes later, soft boiled, 7+ minutes for hard boiled.
Usually find 5 minutes is just enough time to make toast and a coffee. ;)
Using the pressure cooker for eggs, aside from making the shells easier to peel, skips the "wait for water to boil" step and gives you several minutes of flexibility at the end of cooking since the heat shuts off when the timer runs out. You can also do large batches of eggs while only heating 1 cup of water.
