First time I see this post (thanks for sharing!). I bought one of these 2 years ago and it was life changing indeed. Stuffing it with vegetables and meat before going to the gym; come back and everything is done.

About boring food; it might not be crispy, but you can make amazing meats in it. Try slow cooking pork collar boneless[0] with honey and mustard.

Sous vide for all the hype has had similar benefits for me. Some recipes can take a long time, but same as on an electric pressure cooker things are completely automated and hands off. There's no need to monitor or stir, and the results are always great and always repeatable. Chicken breasts are always perfect, salmon, steak, etc... (also works on some veggie recipes)

If you get a Ninja Foodi, it has an air dryer mode that does make crispy things (like crispy chicken) in addition to the pressure cooking. There's even a model with Sous Vide.

12 functions: Pressure Cook, Air Fry/Air Crisp, Steam, Slow Cook, Yogurt, Sear/Sauté, Bake/Roast, Broil, Dehydrate, Sous Vide, Reheat, Keep Warm

https://m.ninjakitchen.com/exclusive-offer/FD402WBKT/ninja-f...

> If you see cooking primarily as a means of getting nutrients rather than a hobby, I very strongly recommend getting an electric pressure cooker.

Oh hi there!

Do you have any recipes that you recommend? I actually bought an Instant Pot a couple months ago, and so far have found one great one pot meal that I cook in bulk on the weekend - basically tomatoes + sweet potatoes + peppers + beans + quinoa. Toss it all in and press a button, magic.

I like to eat as healthily as possible, so I'm interested to hear if you have any go-to staple recipes for the instant pot that you'd suggest :)

When i'm cooking in this mode, i use a rice cooker to cook lentils, the Puy / French / lentilles vertes / speckled type. I like those because they retain a lot of texture when cooked, and have a decent flavour. Dry lentils, olive oil (apply to the dry lentils and stir to coat), water, fraction of a stock cube or some miso paste, garlic, herbs, spices, whatever else you like; cook on the white rice programme. Extremely easy, pretty tasty, and with loads of scope for variation.

As an addition, sliced chorizo is great, the spicy pork fat melts out and improves everything. Lardons are almost as good. You can float a chicken thigh on top, and it will cook nicely, but won't get crispy, but you can finish it up under the grill. Sliced onion is remarkably good, soaks up the stock and comes out juicy. I often add leafy brassicas like cabbage or kale, not very exciting but it's healthy.

I've used the same rice cooker on a slow cooking setting to cook beef ragout, something like cassoulet, and pork knuckle.

A pressure cooker can do all this, but can do the high-temperature bits faster!

Wow, thanks. That sounds very tasty. I've cooked lentils, but only indian-curry-style and on a stove, never in a rice cooker. Can I ask how long you cook them for in the rice cooker? I imagine dried lentils to be like beans in that they require pre-soaking and/or a long cooking time - is that right? Also, do you add the kale in near the end, or let it cook the whole way through?

>Do you have any recipes that you recommend?

Not sure of your dietary preferences, but one of the big advantages of the Instant Pot is being able to cook cheaper, less palatable cuts of meat. It can also cook an entire frozen chicken in under an hour...

I do eat chicken a few times a week, so this is good to know, especially the ability to cook from frozen. Could I just throw some frozen chicken breasts in there with whatever else I want to eat it with, and pressure cook it for say 30 mins?

I've been using my instant pot and your meal sounds great but I am unfortunately hopeless at cooking. Can you let me know what you do with those ingredients? Do you dice the potatoes/peppers? Do you have to cook the beans/quinoa first? How long?

Hey, I'm not the parent poster, but anyway...

You'll want to cut up the potatoes and peppers, but when you're cooking them like this, the size doesn't matter much, it's just what you prefer. I'd go a bit chunkier -- smaller will have all the flavors blend more, chunkier and you'll be able to taste the separate ingredients a bit better.

Quinoa definitely does not need to be pre-cooked -- it cooks very quickly. If you're putting in dry beans, you'll want to use the "multigrain" setting for... 60 minutes I think? And add plenty of water for the beans and quinoa to absorb.

If you're using canned beans or pre-cooked beans, you can drop that time down to 15 minutes or so, that should be plenty for the quinoa to cook.

I'd also probably add some spices. You just gotta experiment and see what you like. Make sure you add enough -- when making a big pot of food, don't just add a little spice. I think cumin and/or coriander would go nicely with this. Cinnamon is another that might be good here. Can't go wrong with black pepper.

But really, this is a dish that could go nicely with lots of different spice blends. So don't be afraid to experiment! Try stuff, fail, it's ok, and it's how you get a feel for cooking. If it doesn't come out great, spread some hot sauce on there and it might make it good enough to eat :)

Great comment, thank you! Feels like cooking is a skill a lot like programming where you can be stuck in tutorial hell without ever actually learning anything. I'd like to get out of that and your about just trying things out and seeing how they taste helped me shift my mindset about it

Hey! So this is the specific recipe I used - https://www.wellplated.com/instant-pot-vegetarian-chili/ .

The basic idea is: - Chop up the sweet potatoes, peppers, and onions. This takes me a while lol. - Start with saute mode, heat the oil, fry the onions, then add the garlic, spices, peppers. The saute part overall just takes me around 5-6 mins - Add broth, quinoa, chopped tomatoes, and cook on high pressure for 8 mins (the actual cooking time is longer because it takes some time to reach high pressure, and then to depressurise when done) - I use canned beans, so I just stir them in right here at the end and let them mix for 5-10 mins

(But this is all described in that recipe)

I can basically make 8 good sized portions of this if I fill my Instant Pot, and it's cheap and very healthy. So it's become almost my go-to meal. Oh, and it freezes well too!

Isn’t one of the benefits of presoaking is that it releases certain gases that can wreck havoc on your gastrointestinal system? Does the same thing happen if you use a pressure cooker?

If you're susceptible to that effect then presoaking will help, but susceptibility depends on your individual microbiome. Some vegans use the liquid that chickpeas were cooked in as an egg substitute ("aquafaba"). I personally drain the liquid off after cooking, and don't notice any problems.

one still throws away the soaking liquid when retrieving aquafaba, afaik. It's the cooking water that becomes aquafaba.

"cooking primarily as a means of getting nutrients rather than a hobby" is such a strange opposition to me.

Oligosaccharides rather than gases [1] - but your gut bacteria digest those to produce gases. Personally, i can eat unsoaked beans, but i think that varies from person to person.

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12489819/

> It also makes dried legumes far more practical, because you can skip the pre-soak phase.

What do you do about the indigestible sugars found in many beans? Traditionally, pre-soaking reduces the amount of sugars and the corresponding flatulence.

The pressure takes care of it. It basically forces the sugars out into the water like a pre-soak.

Pressure cooking is very common in some countries, but I'm only familiar with the simple mechanical pressure cookers (that work on gas or induction stoves). Can electric pressure cookers do things that a regular one can't?

It's not a matter of what it can do, but of safety/ease of use. I used a traditional pressure cooker for many years, but nowadays I see no reason to go back to babysitting the cooking process. Waiting for pressure to build? Deciding when it's done and lowering the stove to maintenance pressure? Setting an alarm, and then making the pot stop cooking? Nah, just set the timer at the very beginning and go for a walk.

You don't need to "babysit" them. They'll get to pressure and adjust the heat automatically. And then they'll stop at the appropriate time.

Being able to dump ingredients in and set the pressure for 20 minutes, and then go out for 2 hours and come back and eat warm food that hasn't gone bad is really, really nice.

Apart from that - as others pointed out, they're multifunctional. I make yogurt in mine. Also acts as a slow cooker but in my experience not very well.

Many electric pressure cookers double or triple as other similar devices, e.g. rice cookers. Also, you can fry stuff in them before you start the pressure cooking phase (maybe you can do that in other devices, too, I don't know).

In general I would say that the temperature control in an electric pressure cooker is going to be more precise, so you see functions like yogurt making in them, too.

Hey what do you mean you can skip the soaking time of beans? If I buy dried beans (black beans let's day) don't I still need soak them overnight to avoid being super gassy?

Take care with dried legumes, many contain poisonous lectins and they should be soaked overnight first, with the soaking water disposed of and thoroughly rinsed before cooking

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lectin#Dietary_lectin

Phytohaemagglutinin is destroyed by sufficient heating. It is a serious danger with slow cookers, but not with pressure cookers. The FDA publishes a book on food safety:

https://www.fda.gov/downloads/Food/FoodborneIllnessContamina...

"PHA is destroyed by adequate cooking. Some variation in toxin stability has been found at different temperatures. However, Bender and Readi found that boiling the beans for 10 minutes (100°C) completely destroyed the toxin. Consumers should boil the beans for at least 30 minutes to ensure that the product reaches sufficient temperature, for a sufficient amount of time, to completely destroy the toxin."

It's destroyed by high temperatures, like you find in a pressure cooker. Slow cookers are a danger but pressure cookers aren't.

> and you can't make crispy foods

Probably for the better, since baking/frying to crispiness is usually tied to "advanced glycation endproducts".

https://nutritionfacts.org/topics/advanced-glycation-end-pro...