Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Updated 12/9/2018 Still going strong, still using the heck out of it. Made a cheesecake last night after I cooked a corned beef! Glad to have two different color sealing rings so the cake doesn't smell like corned beef. The Instant Pot folks have a two pack of rings, red and blue, quite handy. I use red for everyday and blue for sweets. I also finally broke down and bought a steamer basket with a handle, works better than the one I mention below. Updated: 9/26/2017 I’ve had my Instant Pot (IP) going on two years; I bought it on Black Friday 2015. I am still as enthusiastic about it now as I was when I bought it, but I don’t use it as much anymore. I use it a few times a week mainly for side dishes or one pot meals. I love it for steaming vegetables, easy peeling hard boiled eggs, creamy risotto, and it makes a mean mac’n’cheese! Lots of one pot meals like chili, sausage and peppers, butter chicken, even ziti spaghetti. Super for soups. I love, love, love making an Olive Garden copycat Zuppa Toscana in it. It’s not Instant Cooking... it takes time to get to pressure, add the actual cooking time, and then a cool-down (or natural release) period. Your recipe might state a cook time of 30 minutes but it doesn’t mention the 10-20 minutes it takes to get to pressure and the 10-15 minutes it might need for a natural pressure release. Be sure to factor that in so your family isn’t waiting at the table 30 minutes before your dinner is ready. You’ll know what ‘hangry’ means then! There is definitely a learning curve with this cooker. Pressure cooking is dependent on density – and you’ll see that in the charts that the Instant Pot company has on it’s website; something cut into chunks will cook faster than a big solid piece. I think the hardest thing to learn to cook in the IP is meat. I pretty gave up on roasts. It just takes practice and patience. I recommend using recipes when you are learning how to use your IP. There are great free recipes online, some of my favorite websites are Pressure Cooking Today, This Old Gal, and Dad Cooks Dinner. Instant Pot also has a company sponsored Facebook group that posts recipes and is a good place to learn about your pot. I love that I can cook pot-in-pot, in winter I put steel-cut oats with all my add-ins (raisins, vanilla, cinnamon, almond milk) into a small stainless-steel bowl, set that on the included trivet, throw a cup of water in the bottom of the IP, set it for 5 minutes manual pressure and then go get ready for work. By the time I’m done, it’s cooked, depressurized, and so yummy. Way easier to clean a little bowl too. The recipe for that comes with the IP. I rarely use my Instant Pot as a slow cooker, I have found that most everything I cooked in my slow cooker can be cooked at pressure. The pea soup I cooked all day in the slow cooker took an hour in the IP (15 min to come to pressure, 30 minutes on the Soup setting, 15 min natural release) and tasted just as good. I can do a corned beef in 90 minutes (plus that extra half hour I mentioned above). If you do use it as a slow cooker, please know that the low setting on the IP is equivalent to ‘stay warm’ on your slow cooker. It also only heats from the bottom not the sides like a traditional slow cooker. That hasn’t seemed to make a difference from what I can tell though. Now to some specific tips: Getting the lid on properly: The instructions say to line up the arrows to get the lid aligned with the pot before you close it and seal the vent. The arrows are really hard to see and honestly, you don’t need them. Don’t bother painting them white like some folks suggest. Instead, learn this: at the back of the Instant Pot is a black ‘ledge’ that the lid fits onto, the lid then slides to the right to close it. Put the lid on with the sealing mechanism at that point. It will make sense when you start to use it. Look from above when you put the lid on and you’ll see what I’m talking about. Kind hard to explain, see the 3rd photo below. Accessories: My sealing ring lasted nearly a year. Towards the end of the 10th month it had stretched out so much that the only way to have it stay inside the lid was to freeze it. Although it worked, it’s not the best thing to do. I keep two rings on hand now, one for sweets and one for savory. The rings DO pick up odors and you don’t want a green curry smell on your custard. They are relatively inexpensive so buy one with your IP order. I use the RSVP Endurance Stainless Steel 3 Quart Wide Rim Mesh Basket for a steamer basket. I did pry the riveted handles off but if I was to do it again I would bend them upwards in a vise. It’s hard to get this basket out of the pot without handles. I bought a pot lifter (see last photo) but it didn’t work well – it is designed to lift from the outside of a pot, not the inside. Now I just put my silicone mitts on and pick the basket up. That said, I am very happy with the basket. It can hold 5 lbs. of diced potatoes with a few raw eggs balanced on top (which by the way can be cooked together for 4 minutes on high pressure, quick release, for a great potato salad base– don’t forget to put one cup of water into the bottom of the pot though). I use these style silicone mitts when handling the inner pot. Dexas Mini Silicone Oven Mitt with Raised Nibs, Red. The inner pot (stainless steel liner) spins when you stir food. I had tried binder clips to hold it in place when I stirred but it’s just easier to hold the pot while wearing one of these. Lots of recipes call for stirring something in at the end, or sauteing something at the beginning, and the spinning is just annoying. As mentioned above, the mitts are great for taking the hot stainless-steel liner out of the pot. Highly recommend. I resisted the lure of the cheesecake for about 10 months then I finally succumbed. Way too many pictures of IP cheesecakes on Facebook. Pretty much anything that can be cooked bain-marie style can be done in the IP (think custard, crème brulee). I bought the Nordic Ware Leakproof Springform Pan, 7 Inch which works great. Some people like push pans. The only thing I can say about this is that a 6” cheesecake has a few less calories than a 9” one. The IP makes cheesecakes a breeze to cook. Beware. Two last things 1) This cannot be used for canning. Electric pressure cookers do not come up to a high enough pressure to safely can food. They also don’t maintain a steady heat, they have on/off heat cycles. You need a stovetop pressure canner to be safe. 2) Don't be scared of this thing - it has lots of safety features. As long as you follow the directions you will be fine. Never force the lid off - it slides easily when pressure is gone. Open the lid away from you so any residual steam is blocked by the lid. Use common sense and you will be just fine! This is a great purchase – you’ll love it!