3-quart Instant Pot on sale today for $56

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/04/25/3-quart-instant-pot-on-sale-to.html

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We really get a lot of use out of our pressure cooker - old school 8 quart one - much more than I thought we would when my mother in law gave us one. She had two for some reason…
My favorite thing to make in it is chili verde. I still brown the chunks of pork and I fire the jalapeños, tomatillos and white onions on my grill first. But other than that, after blending the vegetables in the food processor, everything in the cooker and in 40 minutes you have awesome chili verde.

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That the Instant Pot also does a decent saute is what won me over. Browned onions (etc.) in stew are delicious.

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Good choice. We have the same model.
Late start to dinner but you still want some beans? Yeah, it has you covered.

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Beans AND grains. You don’t even have to soak them beforehand. Definitely required if you’re thinking of increasing the amount of vegetable based meals in your life.

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A’ight bb, you got me, I’m finally onboard the pressure cooker craze. The 3 oz. seems fine for me, I’m a single guy, and $56 bucks seems like a pretty darn good deal. I’m looking forward to giving it a whirl!

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I bought my wife a Fagor pressure cooker about 15 years ago. She was dubious, but gradually developed a set of recipes she’ll use it for. But most frequently it comes out to pressure steam beets quickly! I’d get this if we had a place to store it, particularly for the rice cooker function. I hate crunchy underdone brown rice!

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I like it much better than a stove top pressure cooker.

With a stove top you have to pay attention to it for when it comes to pressure, and start timing, and then remove from heat for ‘natural release’ and start timing again.
I’ve burned some things being distracted with my fagor…with not taking it off heat quickly enough.

With the programs, the Ipot knows when it’s at pressure and stops pressure to shut off via it’s programing…and switching to a ‘keep warm’ setting. So it’s one less thing to have to monitor in the kitchen.

Although the BB blurb mentions the ‘sautee’ function…that works semi okay in the 3qt mini…but there really isn’t enough room to do a decent browning on things like chicken thighs or beef cubes etc. But it’s easy to do that in a pan to get some brown on them and put them in the instant pot.
I’d suspect a larger IPot would work better for the sautee function.

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Instant pot - just add bong.

But you don’t need them. You can use the same recipes you use now, just change the timing. You may have a slow-cooker recipe bookmark collection - use those for the pressure cooker. Instead of cooking your stew or bbq chicken for 6 hours, you cook for 25 minutes.

The gift of a microwave pressure cooker 2 holiday seasons back changed the way I make some dishes. I like to think I’m like Alton Brown in the “no specialized appliances! you can make everything stovetop/oven/microwave!” department but a look at my shelves of well-used small appliances disabuses that notion.

The sautee feature of Instant Pot does make it something I’d recommend for someone looking to easily and quickly make in one pot what are usually long-cooking dishes with multiple dishes to wash.

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Love my Instant Pot. It gets lots of use as a ricemaker and for cooking dried beans without pre-soaking, or for making full dinners (beans + veggies + chicken chunks + some kind of sauce + a little chicken broth, cook for 20 minutes, serve on rice).

The thing I use it for most is super easy hard boiled eggs that the shells just pop off of. Put a bunch of eggs in there, add 1/2 cup water, high pressure for 4 minutes, let it sit for a couple of minutes, release pressure, soak in cold water, done.

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I never considered doing eggs in a pressure cooker! Thanks for the tip, because we love deviled eggs around.

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