An Honest Review of my 2020 New Year’s Resolution
My new year’s resolution for 2020 was to cook in my Instant Pot each week for the entire year. I had received it as a gift from my mom and kind of felt like it was big and bulky and I didn’t need a new appliance sitting around. But it’s been all the rage in many families, so I decided I’d give it a shot. A big one. I committed to cooking in it all year. I used it for pressure cooking, sautéing, baking, and slow cooking. This time, this homeschool teacher was getting schooled, and the kids plugged right along with me. So now I’m ready to give my honest review of all these features, my favorite recipes, and my ultimate verdict on whether it’s staying on the counter.
I’m not big into social media. In fact, the most I have done on social media has been related to my little blog here. So I wasn’t really sure what all the fuss was about with these Instant Pots. I love my Crock Pot and I have had the same one for almost two decades. Thus, when I heard you could also use it as a slow cooker, I didn’t quite understand the draw or see a need to replace my beloved old crock. But the biggest reason people buy the Instant Pot is for the pressuring cooking feature. I learned from my mom that my grandmother used to use her old pressure cooker all the time when she was raising her family. That instantly hooked me. My grandmother was an amazing lady and I was very close with her. So if she liked it, I decided I needed to give it a whirl, and off I went to figure it all out.
Honestly, my first recipe in the Instant Pot was not a winner. I received a cookbook from my mom with the Instant Pot and after trying many recipes, I wasn’t impressed. The first meal was macaroni and cheese – one of my fave’s. But not in the Instant Pot. Or at least, it wasn’t so great with the recipe from my book. The pasta was mushy (one of Shug’s pet peeves) and the flavors were off. I was already wondering if I’d make it the full year. But I found a number of other great recipes on the internet from other cooks along the way, and I eventually began tweaking them and figuring it out on my own. I made my mom a killer spaghetti dinner with jarred spaghetti sauce for her birthday and she gushed over it, even asking for the recipe and adopting it as her own. That’s saying a lot because she is a bit of a spaghetti snob with her tried and true homemade spaghetti sauce recipe that she’s been making my whole life. The pasta wasn’t mushy and the flavors were all perfectly melded. It just shows what a difference a good recipe can make.
The things I use it for most frequently are hard boiled eggs, oatmeal, and quinoa because those are staples we have every week in our home. I’ve also added a number of new recipes to my repertoire. Here are some of my favorite recipes I found along the way (in no particular order):
- Spaghetti with Meat Sauce
- Spinach Artichoke Dip (Applebee’s Copycat) from Adventures of a Nurse
- Strawberries and Cream Oatmeal
- Chocolate Chocolate Chip Oatmeal from Peace But Not Quiet
- Barbeque Chicken Sandwiches from Meatloaf and Melodrama
- Corn and Black Bean Tamales from Adventures of a Nurse
- Broccoli Cheddar Soup (Panera Copycat) from Adventures of a Nurse
- French Onion Soup from SimplyRecipes.com (I substituted white wine and chicken bone broth! YUM!)
- Queso from Meatloaf and Melodrama
- Lentil Soup from Well Plated
- French Toast Bread Pudding from Ministry of Curry (A great use for day old or older bread lol)
I tried to give all the features a shot to see if it was truly the multifaceted appliance people tout it as. And it is. I pressure cooked all sorts of things from beans and grains, to soups, meat and fish, and I even “baked” banana bread. I’m still not fully comfortable with the idea that my baked goods won’t have that golden brown look in the Instant Pot, but the other features are more than enough to keep me going. I used the sauté feature to start many dishes in the Instant Pot which made cleanup great. With my busy house full of boys, I’ve always been a fan of the one-pot meals. I slow cooked sweet potato casserole for Christmas and even brought the Instant Pot along for the hour-long car ride, plugging it into the car to keep on cooking! I’ve used a lot of the features, but I’m pretty sure there are still some buttons I have yet to touch on it.
There are a number of other aspects of Instant Pot cooking that I really appreciate. First, I really don’t like dirtying my stovetop. It’s a bit odd because I have a brand new gas stove that I really love. But I also really love to keep it clean. Pans boil over occasionally in our house (and I always have concerns about little ones getting to a hot stove when I can’t stay right in front of it). So having a more self-contained alternative to messing up the stove every day, or even multiple times a day, is nice. Goodness knows we homeschoolers cook A LOT. Second, I love how easy the Instant Pot is to clean. I was skeptical at first, thinking there might be a bunch of tedious attachments that didn’t do so well in the dishwasher (like my juicer has). But the Instant Pot is super simple and not burdensome to clean. I just pop the bowl and basket in the dishwasher, and wash the seal and a couple other small pieces by hand periodically. Easy peasy. Third, I have enjoyed taking it with us in our RV. Camper cooktops are notoriously tiny and when you are cooking for five, it’s hard to make that work. We cook out on the griddle a lot when we are camping but sometimes it rains, or even snows, and having the Instant Pot gives me many more options without having many more appliances to bring with us.
Obviously, the verdict it that it’s a keeper. Could I live without it? Yes. But I’ve decided that it does make cooking faster even if the prep may not be. Things I may have slow cooked before, or not cooked at all because of my lack of forethought, I can pull together pretty quickly in the Instant Pot. Pressure cooking is really phenomenal. I’m not sure where it went in the generation between my grandmother and me but I’m glad it’s back. I get the amazing flavors and tenderness of slow cooking in flash. Just in case I’m not the last person out there to give it a whirl, I highly recommend giving it a try.
If you are interested to learn more about my experience with particular recipes or features of the Instant Pot, be sure to pop over to Instagram and check out my Instant Pot stories.
