{Guest Post} 5 Things I Know About The Instant Pot – with a recipe!

Posted on: August 11, 2016 | Guest Posts, Postpartum

I am so grateful to have Sarah Halsrud share a guest blog post with us today!  As a loyal slow cooker user, I have been hesitant to make the leap over to Instant Pot.  However, after her great information I think I will be checking out Amazon for one now!!

5 Things I Know About The Instant Pot

By: Sarah Halsrud

As a working mother of three (with another on the way!), if there is ONE thing I know how to do, it’s how to get as many things done in as little time as possible. While I love to cook, and I really love to eat, I’m often just too tired to prepare a big meal in the evening. And I really hate doing dishes. So, all too often, we’re eating out (expensive fast!) or warming up a frozen pizza (boring fast!)

Enter the Instant Pot. I’ve owned an Instant Pot for two weeks now, and it quickly earned two kitchen appliance titles: Most Used and Most Loved. If you’re not familiar with an Instant Pot, imagine a mix of pressure cooker, Crock Pot, and rice cooker, all in one appliance that takes up less space than your microwave. Here are 5 things I know about the Instant Pot:

There are multiple built-in functions, making it easy to just dump in your ingredients, put on the lid, and push the right button. The Instant Pot beeps to tell you when it’s done. If you don’t happen to be around, it’ll keep things warm for you with the “Keep Warm” function that automatically kicks on when your food is cooked. With these functions, you can make soup, meat/stew, beans/chili, yogurt, porridge/oatmeal, rice, slow cook your favorite roast, or steam your veggies. If your dish doesn’t specifically fit into one of those categories, don’t worry. You can also manually select high or low pressure cooking for any amount of time. I actually haven’t even used the specific rice function yet – I just dump in the rice and water, set it to high pressure for 4 minutes, and voila!

It has a little bit of a learning curve. I’ve used the high pressure cook function the most, and it took a few tries to get some of the recipes just right. For example, fresh butternut squash was done in an easy 12 minutes, but poached eggs varied depending on which material I cooked them in. In a stainless steel bowl set inside the Instant Pot, they only take about 3 minutes on low pressure. In a glass Pyrex dish set inside the Instant Pot, poached eggs take closer to 5 minutes.

The inner pot is stainless steel. This happens to be my favorite feature of the Instant Pot – stainless steel is easy to clean, can go in the dishwasher, and I don’t have to worry about scratching off any Teflon coating or having chemicals from plastic leaching off into my food.

It’s great for those days you didn’t prep ahead of time! Thanks to the pressure cooking function, you can cook food straight from the freezer, or even make perfect beans from dry, un-soaked beans. Seriously, it’s amazing. 

Macaroni and cheese is THE BEST. The first time I made macaroni and cheese, my 5-year old asked if we could always eat this kind of macaroni and cheese. If that’s not a glowing endorsement, I don’t know what is! Here’s the recipe I follow:

Instant Pot Macaroni and Cheese – no boiling, no draining the noodles, only one pot to clean!

Ingredients

16 oz package macaroni noodles
4 cups water
3 tbsp butter
1 c whipping cream or whole milk
2 c shredded cheese, or a block of cheese cut into chunks
2 tsp salt
2 tsp paprika
Pepper, to taste
Directions

1. Put noodles, water, and butter into Instant Pot. Cook on high pressure for 4 minutes.
2. Use Quick Release valve to release steam.
3. Stir in cream, cheese, salt, paprika, and pepper. Set the lid back on for a few minutes to allow the cheese to melt. Stir again, then enjoy!

If you are wanting to see more of what Sarah has to offer the Northeast Arkansas and Memphis, Tennessee area, check her out at Homesteading Doula!