When You Need Dinner to Practically Make Itself, Try These Instant Pot Recipes (2024)

FAQs

What foods should not be cooked in an Instant Pot? ›

In fact, there are a handful of foods that just shouldn't be pressure-cooked. Among them are dairy and fried foods, as well as burgers and steaks.

Cooking in an “instant pot” or pressure cooker is a great method for preparing your food on many levels — including the nutritional level, according to registered dietitian Beth Czerwony, RD. “Instant pot recipes are absolutely healthy as long as what you put in the recipe is healthy,” she says.

Instant Pot and other electric multi-cookers can make meal prepping and batch cooking faster and easier. If you're motivated to cook healthy whole foods for yourself and your family, this tool can really help support your efforts. Reason #1: Pressure cookers cook faster!

Although both can take the fuss out of cooking some meals, these two appliances have many differences. Air fryers help crisp up food that you may otherwise cook in a deep fryer, while Instant Pots cook meals that need a liquid element like stews, soups and rice.

Mostly we boil potatoes in a pressure cooker, but like rice, potatoes also contain a lot of starch. This is the reason why boiling or cooking in this pressure cooker is not considered good for health. If you still plan to use cooker for the same, add a lot of water and wash them thoroughly post cooking.

You can still pressure cook leaner pieces – like eye of round and top sirloin – but these work best if they've been stuffed, shredded or rolled (with other ingredients). Best cuts of beef to use: Chuck steak, Round Roast, Shoulder, Pot roast, Ribs, Brisket, Oxtail.

Advantages of pressure cooking include reduced cooking times and retention of nutrients, plus it's a great way to make energy-efficient, one-pot meals. The downsides include problems with foods that have different cook times and not being able to check the progress of the food cooking.

Researchers found that sautéing spinach or amaranth leaves in a pan for 30 minutes destroyed about 95 percent of the vitamin C, whereas ten minutes in a pressure cooker wiped out only about 90 percent.

A pressure cooker will save you batch time and get you 75% of the nutrition benefits of bone broth. That being said, it will lack the additional nutrients and minerals which require long and slow simmer times to harvest from the bones and animal parts.

The average lifespan of an Instant Pot ranges from 2-5 years, but it can last longer depending on how often it's used and how well-maintained it is. So it's safe to say Instant Pots aren't commonly being replaced, and may even be a one-time purchase.

What is the best long lasting meal prep? ›

Soups, stews, and chili are the ideal meal prep because they last a little longer than most meals (up to five or six days) AND they're extremely freezer-friendly. If you're new to meal prep and are nervous about how foods taste after a few days, I recommend starting with a soup, stew, or chili.

With stovetop cookers there's still a small risk of pushing the pressure too high and blowing the thing up, but the Instant Pot doesn't have that danger. And it also has different pressure modes, so you can set it at low pressure for things like soup and high pressure when you're in a hurry.

Since each appliance offers different benefits, this is an important metric when deciding between a pressure cooker and air fryer. With that in mind, here are the five biggest advantages of using an air fryer: Healthier food: With the reduction in oil, air fryers make healthier, more nutritious meals.

Straight to the Point. The Instant Pot Duo Crisp with Ultimate Lid Multi-Cooker + Air Fryer does a decent job air frying, but we disliked its exposed heating element and didn't find it to be as convenient as a basket-style air fryer. Instead, we recommend getting a standalone air fryer.

The Instant Pot® that air fries!

Yes, cooking in a pressure cooker is healthy as it uses steam to cook food, the insulated and sealed body does not allow the water to evaporate thus preserving the nutrients in the food. Pressure cookers do not require oil to cook making them even healthier.

Both slow cookers and pressure cookers do a good job of tenderizing tough meat, but each makes meat more edible in a different way. A pressure cooker is an enclosed pot with a lid that locks to form an airtight seal.