8 of the BEST things to make in an Instant Pot

today I'm going to be sharing eight of the best things to make in the instant pot hi I'm Karen Peterson and I own the website 365 days of slow and pressure cooking here on YouTube I share instant path stuff with you every single week today I'm going to sharing eight of my favorite things to make in the instant pot and why I like making them in then sip on why it's better than making them perhaps in the traditional way number one hard-boiled eggs my favorite thing to do is make hard-boiled eggs like a huge batch at the beginning of the week in my instant pot the reason I love it so much is not necessarily because it's a faster method but because the peels almost slide off they're so easy to peel even farm-fresh eggs peel a lot easier using your instant pot then using the stovetop method and here's how I make instant pot hard-boiled eggs the first thing that I want to mention is that I live at about 4,500 feet above sea level and that will probably affect the cooking time a little bit so if you're at sea level whatever results I get today your eggs might be a little bit more cooked than when I show you so you may want to adjust your cooking time depending where you are where you're at in the world I'm going to be using large eggs if you use extra-large eggs or medium eggs instead that might affect the cooking time as well another thing that might affect the cooking time is the temperature of the water that you put into your instant pot I just got it straight out of the tap and it was like not hot it wasn't cold it was just kind of in between and I put it straight into the pot if you're using boiling water that's gonna affect the cooking time if you're using ice-cold water that that would affect the cooking time also and another thing that may affect cooking time just a little bit is the amount of eggs that you have in there let's say you fill the pot full to the brim which I don't really recommend filling it to the brim but with eggs that might take your pot longer to reach pressure then if you're just putting one single in there today I'm going to be putting about six eggs in each pot alright let's get started so I'm going to add the eggs into the pot I have the trivet that came with my pot in the bottom with one cup of water 6 eggs on top of that trivet it doesn't matter if they're touching or not touching just add them into there alright so we have our eggs in our pot place the lid on the pot and make sure the valve steps sealing and for this one I'm going to use the manual button and it's on high pressure I'm going to adjust the time to only two minutes this one I'm gonna set the manual button and I'm gonna set it to 5 minutes alright this one has reached 5 minutes this is gonna be a 5 5 5 experiment so release the pressure use some tongs to move the eggs into a bowl full of ice and water 10 this one was the 2 minute and then the 10 minute NPR so it's reached 10 minutes so we can just move the valve to Aventine there's not any pressure left so we can take the lid off and then take those eggs and put them in the ice bath - alright so both of the eggs cooled in the icebox for about 5 minutes just until they're cold to the touch and now we have the moment of truth so 5 5 5 method right here let's go ahead and cut into it looks pretty perfect to me alright let's go for this one see if there's a difference they look pretty much exactly the same I'm gonna eat them and then I'll let you know if there's a difference in case I tasted each of them and they're so so similar but I think there's a slight difference with the five five five method they're just a little bit not as creamy um these ones were more of a creamy consistency and this was more not grainy because it was pretty creamy but it wasn't as creamy as these ones I'm gonna keep doing my eggs with the two-minute 10-minute NPR five five five is a great method and it is easier to remember because it five minutes cooking time five minutes NPR five minutes ice and it's just an easy way to remember it number two Greek yogurt now you can easily go to the store and buy some Greek yogurt but the reason that I like to make my own Greek yogurt is because I know exactly what's going in and it is a lot cheaper I can buy a gallon of milk at my grocery store for about two bucks I can make eight cups of yogurt for two dollars now that is a seal here's how I make instant pot Greek yogurt first things first make sure that your instant pot actually has the yogurt button some models of instant pot do not have it so I'm gonna be showing you how to make it in the instant pot as long as that has the yogurt button I know there are ways to make it in the instant pot when you don't have a yogurt button but I I'm just doing the the way that I know how which is in the instant pot that has that function so first things first go ahead import in a gallon of milk today I have 1% but many many times I use whole milk because I love the full fat yogurt my ideal would probably be 2% just because it's kind of a happy meeting between the lower fat and the higher fat so whatever kind of milk that you have you can use now you can use a half gallon if you don't want to use a full gallon and that's just fine but I'm gonna be pouring in the whole gallon of milk today and that will make about eight or nine cups of Greek yogurt and more if you're not making it into Greek yogurt all right you're gonna go ahead and put the lid on but before that and to change out my ceiling rings this is just something that I prefer to do one time I made yogurt where the night before I'd made curry in the instant pot and my yogurt tasted like curry it was really weird so I like to keep this green ceiling ring just for yogurt so you can buy an extra ceiling ring on Amazon and I will link to where I got this one from it I don't know it was probably less than 10 bucks for a pack of 3 very inexpensive ok so go ahead and put the lid on and then you're gonna hit the yogurt button and you're gonna push adjust until you get to where it says boil once it turns on to boil you're gonna go ahead and walk away and it will take about 45 minutes for this to get to the proper temperature once that cycle is over you can go ahead and remove the lid and I like to use this digital thermometer I bought it on Amazon I'll link to it in the notes but it makes it handy because what you need you need this milk to be at a hundred and eighty degrees or warmer 180 180 to is fine and it should be really close if it's not already there there now if it's not there you don't need to go ahead and do the yogurt cycle again all you need to do is push saute and let it and whisk it really good until it gets to 180 degrees mine is at 180 degrees so I'm gonna go ahead and remove you may want to use hot pads mine's not too hot remove it from the pot so what I'm doing is I put a stopper in the sink and then I'm just filling it up with cold water just show the cool water could surround the pot and cool down the yogurt quicker this will take about 10 minutes to get the look to get the the milk to the temperature that it needs to be at I like to whisk it several times just kind of get the air flowing and it seems to work faster when I do that once this is cooled down to between 90 100 degrees you're good to go I like to just test it right in the middle of the pot so that I towards the edges is gonna be a different temperature than the middle so you kind of want to just whisk it up really good and then test it in the middle and make sure that it it reads between 90 and 100 at this point you'll stir in your starter so what you need for a starter the very first time you make it is just some plain yogurt this one's Greek yogurt but it can be just normal yogurt it just needs to make sure that it has live active cultures in it and it's not flavored or anything like that so this is plain Greek yogurt and it's got live cultures so I just eyeball it but you're supposed to do about two tablespoons of yogurt and you just go ahead and put in a little separate bowl and then you're gonna add in about the same amount of milk and you'll just stir that up until it's creamy and smooth I've whisked the starter into the milk in the pot now I'm gonna put the lid on you can have it on sealing or venting it really doesn't matter because it doesn't come to pressure I always just put it on sealing out of habit and then I'm gonna go ahead and push the yogurt button here and then I'm gonna push the adjust button until it gets to eight hours I like my yogurt a little bit less tart so I go for eight hours if you like your yogurt more tart then go higher towards about ten hours it's up to you so between 8 and 10 hours now you're gonna notice something different than the normal pressure cooking mode when this switch is over it's gonna start counting up instead of counting down so usually it's if it said it would say eight hours and then it would go to 759 7:58 but this actually counts up so don't worry about that that's normal and once it gets to the eight hours it will do another little beeping sound and you'll know your yogurt is is done after your yogurt has chilled for several hours you can go ahead and strain it you can also just happy Oh Gert like it is now if you want Greek yogurt this is the way that I make it I get a bowl and then my colander yep put the colander on top of the bowl and then I use just one of these flour sacks you can buy these in a 10 pack for a very inexpensive at the store on Amazon wherever and I used it instead of cheesecloth just because that's what I had at my house and it works really good and I go ahead and put it on top of the strainer and then I'm going to go ahead and put the yogurt into this strainer all right and then I kind of just bring up the edges and kind of just either tie them up or just kind of go like that twist them and put them like that and then I put this in the fridge until plenty of weight has come off by this you can see right here you see it dripping down so the way it's gonna get up I don't know about that high and then I go ahead and your Greek yogurt is ready to eat so I left my yogurt in my fridge for several hours I kind of forgot about it and look how much whey is in there it's a ton so that's okay though if if it's really thick your yogurts really thick you can always add your way back into it but you can't take it out so it's better to have it too much whey in here then not enough does that make sense so I'm gonna go ahead and I have this big container that I like to it's a nine and a half cup container that I put my yogurt in and this was from a gallon of milk so we're head and just kind of dump that in as best as I can without making a mess so you can see here the consistency is almost like cream cheese that's how much how thick it is so I'm obviously gonna add some of this back in to make it more creamy and a little less thick so basically you just kind of pour in as much as you think you want go ahead and get a whisk and stir it up really well add in more way as you need it and then once it gets to your desired consistency you're good to go and you can just cover an airtight container keep it in your fridge mine last firm I don't know up to three three weeks then when you want to make your next batch of yogurt you just use two tablespoons of this to start your next batch or you can always use some of your way and that can be used as your starter number three roast now roast is one of those things that I always used to make it a slow cooker and that is awesome because the slow cooker is a great tool for that but sometimes I would forget to put the meal and in the beginning of the day or I wouldn't I would I would try to start cooking but it would be kind of later in the morning and it wouldn't be enough time to cook the roast in time in the slow cooker and that is why the instant pot is so awesome because it only takes probably two hours from start to finish to make a melt in your mouth falling apart tender roast here's how I make instant pot rump roast just using three ingredients the first thing that I did was add in my rump roast into the instant pot it's about 2 and 1/2 pounds of rump roast I turned off the excess fat that was on the sides but it didn't have a ton of fat to begin with now I'm gonna add in 2 cups of water and then I picked up this as you gravy mix packet at my grocery store I'm gonna add that in and then I'm gonna add in a onion soup mix packet looks like that alright so that's basically it we're gonna go ahead and put the little lid on all right we're gonna make sure the valve is set to sealing which it is then we're gonna go ahead and set the timer so we're gonna push the manual button or if you have a pressure cook button push that manual and this recipe is gonna take a lot longer than most recipes that we need we're gonna set this all the way up to 90 minutes that's going to ensure that the roast gets nice and tender and then the the instant pot will beep and we'll turn to the pressure building mode once your pot has finished the time that we set the 90 minutes you can go ahead and move the valve from ceiling to venting once all the pressure has been released go ahead and open the pot and at this point you can add in your vegetables I'm gonna add in baby carrots and fairly big chunks of potatoes go ahead and replace the lid make sure valve is set to ceiling and we're gonna set it for manual oops forgot to turn the off button first and then manual and we'll go down to five minutes just enough time to cook those carrots and potatoes once the pot starts beeping you can go ahead and do a release of the pressure move the doll from venting or from ceiling to venting once you can go ahead and remove the lid looks fantastic I'm gonna go ahead and scoop the vegetables and meat onto this platter and then I'm going to make a gravy with the drippings that remain okay now that I have everything on my platter I'm gonna go ahead and switch this over to the saute mode you have to turn it to the off first right there and then turn it to saute right there and that's just gonna turn it on so that it kind of heats up the pot just like if this is on a stove burning that's kind of what it is doing right now in the saute mode so while that's heating up I'm gonna go ahead and mix together equal parts cold water with cornstarch this is just gonna go ahead and thicken the gravy very nicely I did about two tablespoons of water and two tablespoons of cornstarch so I'm gonna get my whisk I'm gonna go ahead and whisk this cornstarch into the Roth and drippings that remain in the pot just whisk that up until it thickens it should only take a couple of minutes to thicken once it starts bubbling up you know it's pretty much have a nice thick gravy go ahead and turn off the pot and then I'm gonna go ahead and serve my roast potatoes carrots and gravy number four rice it's so easy in the instant pot because all you have to do is put the water and the rice in and push a button and walk away and come back and you don't even have to worry about it getting crunchy in the bottom of that pan or boiling over or not being done enough in the case of brown rice that was always my issue is that the brown rice would would not cook evenly and the instant pot that comes out perfect every time here's how I make brown rice in the instant pot to make brown rice in the instant pot you're going to use a one cup of rice to 1.25 cups of water ratio so today in my 6 quart pot I'm just gonna add in one cup of brown rice and then one cup of water and then 1/4 a cup of water then put the lid on I kind of shook it up just so that it makes sure all the rice is covered put the lid on make sure the valve set to sealing and then push the manual button or pressure cook button depending on which model you own and then use the plus or minus buttons to get it to twenty two minutes now after the 22 minutes is up you're just going to let that pot so there for ten more minutes and then you can release the pressure and the rice will be perfectly cooked number five mashed potatoes potato salad all the potatoes I love making potatoes in my instant they cook so quickly and again I don't have to worry about them boiling over on the stove I don't even know how to make regular mashed potatoes anymore because I've made them in the instant pot so many times now I just love making mashed potatoes in the instant pot me whenever I make mashed potatoes I always put about two of this size of potato in per person and how many I want to feed so let's say I'm feeding four people I want to put in about eight medium to smallish potatoes I've already got some in there I put two cups of liquid in the bottom of the pot and then I'm gonna cut up all my potatoes into about this size of pieces you can peel if you want sometimes I do sometimes I don't just depending on how much time I have and who I'm serving today I'm just going to not peel the potatoes but it's totally up to you once you have all the potatoes cut up go ahead and add them into the pot with the water and then didn't add an teaspoon of kosher salt or table salt whatever you have on hand cover the pot make sure the valve is set steeling not too eventing and then you can push the manual button or the pressure cook button whatever model of instant pot you're using and then set the timer for about 10 minutes for this specific size of potato once the time is up you can just do a quick release add in some butter and just start mashing once they're mashed well you didn't add in some milk or I'm using half-and-half just for more creamy experience I just add in I don't know to two or three tablespoons is all and then I add in fresh ground pepper and salt to taste there you have it creamy delicious super fast and easy instant pot mashed potatoes number six using your instant pot as a double boiler I learned this over the Christmas season when I was dipping pretzels and other things into chocolate using your instant pot as a double boiler is perfect because you can put it on your counter and you can melt and it keeps the temperature of the chocolate perfect the whole time that you're melting up until you use it all instead of having to reheat it in the microwave or reheat it on the stove or whatever that your tip doing when you melt chocolate instant pot works so good for this here's how I made instant pot chocolate pretzels here are the items that you will need for your chocolate dipped pretzels you'll need some wax paper or some parchment paper or a sip silicone baking mat something that enables the pretzels not to stick you'll need some pretzels I use the twisty kind a bowl a glass bowl or a metal bowl works and then some melting chocolate I use this dark chocolate from Ghirardelli brand it's really good but you can also use milk chocolate or white chocolate you can use chocolate chips but you'll have to add in a tablespoon of shortening with the chocolate chips so that they can be glossy and nice and smooth for this recipe we're going to use the instant pot like a double boiler so add in two cups of water into the bottom of the instant pot and turn your instant pot to the saute setting and adjust it to more then find a glass bowl or a metal bowl that will fit nicely right on top of the instant pot you see how it doesn't fall in it just kind of sits right there the water's going to heat up and we'll pour the chocolate into the bowl and the water will steam up and the bowl and get the chocolate all melty and delicious but it won't burn the chocolate which is the major problem when you're microwaving in chocolate or trying to cook it in a pan on the stove it just scorches so easy and burns and it just does not taste good still one of those chocolates for good measure eat it right now I dare you and then just wait a couple minutes until the chocolate starts melting every couple minutes come back with a spoon and just stir it as those chocolate disks melts the water is really heating up so I turned to the saute from the more bun and i justed it down to the last button and I'm just going to keep stirring it until it's totally melted and smooth once the chocolate is totally melted turn off your instant pot and then click it over to the keep warm setting this will ensure that the chocolate stays melted and doesn't harden up while you're trying to dip your pretzels but it's not going to be boiling away in there get a long sheet of your wax paper or parchment paper out and then get those pretzels ready we're going to need pretzels and then a fork to dip the pretzels with take one pretzel at a time and place it on your fork and then just kind of dip it into the chocolate get it nice and dipped and then tap tap tap tap the sides of the bowl so that all the excess chocolate comes off and then you can place it on top of the parchment paper and then you're going to repeat this process over and over until all the chocolate is used up if you'd like you can add sprinkles to the chocolate dip pretzels make sure to put them on the pretzels when the pretzels are still wet or they won't stick very well here we are at the very end of the chocolate just trying to use all of it as much as possible you might need to get some sort of rubber scraper and kind of scrape all the chocolate into the middle just so that there's enough to be able to dip those last pretzels into the pretzels only take about ten minutes to dry and then you can put them in an airtight container number seven macaroni and cheese I love making mac and cheese in my instant pot you just add a few ingredients in and you press Start and you walk away and then you come back stir in some cheese and it is creamy and delicious and perfect my favorite mac and cheese recipe is this three cheese mac and cheese recipe I know you're gonna love it too here's how I make it to make our mac and cheese we're going to add 3 and 3/4 cups of water into the instant pot and then a 16-ounce box or bag of elbow macaroni I use these big ones because that's what I like but you could always use the little ones too 3 tablespoons of butter 2 teaspoons of kosher salt 2 teaspoons of ground mustard 1/2 teaspoon of pepper you can also use red pepper if you want a little more heat in your mac and cheese I'm just using black pepper and that is all we need to get started this is what its gonna look like it's gonna be mostly covered with water but not totally put your lid on lock it into place and make sure the valve is set to sealing and then use the manual button or the pressure cook button depending on your model of instant pot and adjust the time to three minutes for al dente pasta or four minutes for a little bit more cooked I'm gonna do the four minutes today because of the bigger noodles after the time is up I let it count up until about five minutes now I'm going to release the pressure by moving the valve from ceiling to venting once the pressure is released remove the lid a little hack for you sometimes when I'm stirring something in the instant pot I take one of these binder clips and just clip it clip the pot to the side so that it doesn't spin as much so that you can stir it easier now I am going to stir in some half-and-half you can also use whole milk I'm using about a cup and then slowly we're going to add in our cheese I grade it up eight ounces of sharp cheddar eight ounces of Monterey Jack and 8 ounces of Colby Jack so this is our 3 cheese mac and cheese lots and lots of cheese it's gonna be good so we'll do you know about a third of that at a time [Music] the longer it sits at the thicker it will get right now it's still a little bit runny but boy can't wait to dive into that now if you want to add breadcrumbs to the top you totally can do that to add in about a cup of the panko breadcrumbs and we're gonna toast these with our melty crisp lid so the first thing we need to do is unplug our instant pot then you take your crisp lid that we have here and plug that thing in as soon as you put this lid into place it's gonna turn on and then you can adjust the time and temperature I'm just gonna do I just want to broil up these breadcrumbs so they get nice and toasty so what I'm gonna do is just set the temperature for 500 and the time let's just start for two minutes to begin and we'll go from there and push this little triangle button you're done using your crisp lid said on the silicon mat that came with it that way it doesn't burn your counter oh just look at how delicious that looks and the last recipe that I want to share with you today is frozen chicken I am a procrastinator by Nature it is not something I'm proud of but I'm definitely always doing things last-minute so when you're like me and you forgot to thaw the chicken you have frozen chicken that you want to use for dinner that is where the instant pot comes into so handy you can use your instant pot to cook chicken from frozen and here is how I do that I usually buy a big bag of chicken breast at Costco another store and keep them in my freezer just for convenience sake now some of the chicken breasts are gonna be huge like these ones are pretty big right they're gonna take longer to cook than the smaller organic chicken breasts so decide how long to cook frozen chicken breasts this is the method you can use a scale I could show you where I got it on Amazon in the link below a zero doubt my scale and now I'm gonna weigh the chicken breasts so this individual chicken breast is 14 ounces that's pretty big so a good rule of thumb for frozen chicken breast is 1 perhaps so if I was to cooking chicken Bressler that were about this size I would cook them for 14 minutes and that's to get sliceable juicy chicken breasts now if you want a treadle chicken breast you're gonna add three minutes to that time so four shredded chicken breasts for like this one which is 14 ounces it would be 17 minutes pretty easy formula and that works really well if you have a digital scale if you don't have a digital scale you might want to get 1/3 not that expensive one thing that I really encourage you to do is find chicken breasts that are the same width that are they're about the same size that way they'll all cook evenly and you won't get one that is still pink in the middle and one that's totally overcooked that is a good rule to follow if possible find chicken breasts that are the same size all right now we know exactly how long to cook these frozen chicken breasts let me show you how so you can either use a trivet I had this one that came with my instant pot this one I bought which is like a sling at a trivet in one or you don't have to use any equipment at all it's up to you what you do need is a cup of water or broth pour that into your instant pot and if you want to steam your chicken then you would put the chicken on top of a trivet if you want it braising in the liquid that you have in your instant pot you could go ahead and put the chicken right into the bottom of the pot today I'm going to steam mine but it really is up to you on what you prefer they taste really similar actually so it doesn't matter too much I'm gonna use my sling and I would put these chicken breasts that are about 14 ounces each and if at all possible try to lay them in a single layer if not possible what you do is you layer them crosswise like this on top of each other so that's how I'm gonna do it because they're pretty big they take up a lot of surface area at the bottom of the instant pot so I'm lay them crosswise now I want to be able to shred these chicken breasts so I'm going to use their 14 ounces H so the average weight was 14 ounces that's 14 minutes plus 3 minutes so that's 17 minutes for shredded chicken breast I'm going to use that that formula for these chicken breasts so I like to use the manual button and then just go down to 17 minutes when the pressure cooking time is up I like to use a natural release for five minutes and then move the valve to venting and open up the pot and get that chicken out and shred it or do whatever you want to use it for it just took the chicken out of the pot and it is that internal temperature about 170 1 so it is cooked through these are ready to shred I hope you'll try these eight best things to make in the instant pot we'll see you next week buh-bye

Channel: 365 Days of Slow and Pressure Cooking

Views: 1,347,678

Rating: 4.8158951 out of 5

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Id: -n3ij7b5lec

Length: 33min 40sec (2020 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 14 2020