I wrote recently about how I got an Instant Pot. I had seen so many posts about why it is a miracle cooking device and have had friends rave about it. But I really wondered if it was for me since I’m a pretty lazy cook. But right before I got sick I decided to get one and see if it lived up to the hype.
Because I ordered it right before being sick, it spent about a week living in the box it came in and then about another week out of the box stored in my kitchen. But I set a goal that I wanted to try to use it at least once this week. I’m not always good about using new tools and appliances as soon as I get them and I wasn’t going to allow myself to do that this time.
While it did come with a little recipe book, I also know that there are hundreds of cookbooks that are specifically for the Instant Pot. I get cookbooks from the library so I can look at them for free and then scan the recipes that I love. But I was looking at cookbooks late at night and realized that I could get the e-books and make things even easier for me. I got the e-books and instead of loading them on my Kindle I put them on my iPad. Then I could read the cookbooks and take screenshots of any recipes I liked! I don’t know how exactly I will be organizing them or if I will be printing them out, but at least they are available to me now and they look much cleaner as a screenshot than they do when I scan them.
There were a bunch of recipes that I saved and some of them look amazing. But for my first meal in my Instant Pot I wanted something that seemed simple and didn’t have a ton of ingredients. I was a bit nervous about using it and I didn’t need a weird recipe to add to the stress. But in my saved ones I found a recipe for sausage and peppers that didn’t have a ton of things in it. And it pretty much was a recipe that said to put everything in and turn it on. I know you can brown food in the Instant Pot, but I didn’t need to do that so it seemed easy enough to me. So I got all the ingredients and made it the other day.
I knew that the time on the recipes wasn’t always accurate since it didn’t take into account the time it takes to get to pressure and whatever time it took to release the pressure, so I started making it a bit earlier than I thought I might need to. But it was still awesome to start making dinner at 5:30 and know it would totally be done by 6:30 (unlike my slow cooker which I need to start in the morning to have food at dinner time).
All I had to do to for the recipe was to dump a few cans of diced tomatoes and tomato sauce into the pot along with some water and spices. Then I put the Italian sausage on top and sliced a bunch of peppers and put that on the very top. It looked really pretty before I was put the lid on.
I was a bit nervous putting the lid on because I wasn’t totally sure I was doing everything right. And even though I knew it could take a lot of time to come to pressure I was worried that I did something wrong because it wasn’t switching over to the timer (which is what happens when there is enough pressure to start cooking). But after about 15 minutes it did switch to the timer and I started to relax a bit more.
This had to cook for 25 minutes and while I didn’t watch it the entire time I kept glancing over to it to make sure nothing crazy was happening. I don’t know what I thought would happen, but because there are so many different warnings I figured I should keep a bit of a watchful eye on it. But everything was fine and when the timer was up I was ready to release the steam.
So many of the warnings in the instruction booklet were about steam burns. I had asked a friend about releasing the steam and she said she protected her hand with a towel and used a spatula to turn the dial to release the steam. I did just that and while I jumped at first because the noise scared me, I was fine and everything was working just the way it should.
I was so excited about everything working that I totally forgot to take an after picture. But it looked amazing and like I had it cooking for hours instead of 25 minutes. The only thing I will do differently next time I make it will be to brown the sausages before cooking it. They weren’t bad, but they just didn’t look pretty and they could have used a bit more of a snap to them. But considering this is the first time making this recipe and the first time I used the Instant Pot, I think I did pretty great!
And this was pretty easy to clean too. It is nice with my slow cooker that I can use the liners so there is almost no clean up. I just have to clean the lid. But this has the insert that was really the only thing that needed to be cleaned and it wasn’t that tough to do it. I also wiped down the inside of the lid, but I didn’t scrub it (it doesn’t seem like people do that, unless I’m wrong). There are ways to use silicone liners inside an Instant Pot, but I don’t think I’ll be getting them because it wasn’t that bad.
I’m so glad I got my Instant Pot and I used it pretty soon after getting it. I know that I’ll be using this on a somewhat regular basis and it will totally help me with cooking. I know I’ve said that several times, but I think the convenience factor of not having to start cooking until almost time to eat will help me a lot too. With my slow cooker, if I think about it once I’ve already started work it’s too late to do it. Now, I can go to the store after work to get ingredients and still have time to make it and eat at a decent hour!
