Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/04/25/if-you-have-an-instant-pot-ge.html
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The jars are excellent regardless of the instant pot. I have 2 of them and would like to get more. Definitely the wide mouth is a must-have feature, i particularly got it because of the ease of cleaning but it also makes it less messy when getting food in it.
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If you have a 64-ounce wide-mouth Ball jar, get this wide-mouth pickle pipe to make pickles, kraut, and kimchi: https://www.masontops.com/products/pickle-pipe
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Friendly PSA that these are great for fermenting food and refrigerating food, but under no circumstances should you be using these things for canning. There are no accepted canning recipes out there for jars of this size.
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If you happen to have a vacuum sealer, get the wide mouth jar attachment for it. Stuff (especially herbs, etc) lasts forever when vacuum sealed.
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Will no one speak to the burning issue that everything I make in my Instant Pot comes out a gloppy unappetizing mess?
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You must be using it wrong? Granted i don’t know precisely what you’re making with it and what your process is, i don’t have much experience with it myself but i bought one for my mom and one for a cousin and they both make really great food with them on the regular. Easily the best gift purchases i’ve ever made.
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Are you sure that you bought an Instant Pot and not a blender?
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Are you cooking way too long?
It’s pretty much just a pressure cooker, so if you overshoot times you can massively over cook things.
I use a stove top pressure cooker, they hit higher pressures and I don’t see much use for the bonus functions on a multicooker (except maybe rice cooker). If I use the cook times for a lower pressure counter top pressure cooker I get dog food. So maybe that’s your issue.
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I’m still trying to figure out what makes this the “best” solution to that given problem. I use (and reuse and reuse ad infinitum) plastic (Glad?) containers holding 3 cups for my large-batch foods (chili, stews, beef goulash, chicken paprikash, veggie soup, bean soup, curry, etc) and, being sealed and plastic, I can freeze them easily for future use. At least every six months I make a point of using up the frozen stuff and then start a new cycle. I just finished up the last container of lima bean with ham soup yesterday and will make a full six quarts of chili tomorrow which will last us for at least three months. I don’t see any way this could be accomplished with a glass container unless you go full-up with the sterile canning process.
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Fermenting things in large batches, methinks.
The jars can’t go in the freezer for the most part.
There are glass storage containers similar to Tupperware that can though. But longevity is a matter of the lids.
At larger than a quart the jars also represent a food safety issue. Tall narrow containers won’t cool as fast as flat wide ones, often leaving the food in the danger zone too long. Health codes in most states require restaurants to use wide flat containers for anything larger than a quart.
So the jars are mostly a good solution for smaller amounts of food that are fridge bound. Not large amounts or anything you’ll freeze.
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I make my own cold brew coffee in these, yes it’s f’ing delicious & nutritious.
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I don’t have a instant pot, but I do have about half dozen of the 64 oz Ball jars. They come in very handy for many uses and I store soups in them.
As an aside: as a young boy, I heard my grandmother speak of ball jars often but had no idea what they were. Until I was about 14, my overactive libido had a very different idea of what a ball jar was. Just sayin’.
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I find the smaller jars ‘ball’ jars much better. They’ll store stock easily usable sizes for a bit of stock. And multipurpose as ice tea glasses. "salad in a jar’ lunches, basic leftover storage with lid.
If you need something larger without a tight lid. You should have been saving all your pickle jars, kraut jars, etc…etc. Without having to purchase a new one.
It’s also rather ironically endering. That the link is to AMAZON…to get a couple of glass jars shipped across the nation…packed in big cardboard box…filled with packing peanuts…and personally delivered to your door step.
Instead of walking into any fleamarket, thrift store, or even under the counter top at home to find the same thing. Or heck, even a walmart.
Well, that just saved the planet right there.
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I have actually specifically bought pickles at the store because of the particular kind of wide-mouth glass jar they came in 
The downside can be that the lid they use might be non-standard but one can fix that by buying more tasty pickles.
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Pyrex and Rubbermaid both make great glass containers that do well in the freezer. The lids last nearly forever, as long as you don’t take them out of the freezer and put them straight into the microwave.
Pro tip: the glass gets surprisingly hot, so set the container on a paper plate before nuking.
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The glass containers I’ve used from Rubbermaid with the press in lids, the lids stopped fitting after a while. They’re still useful bowls but inside of 6 months they just weren’t really storage containers anymore. Leak too much and the lids seem to like popping out. The Pyrex ones just didn’t work at all. The lids were either so loose they didn’t do the thing. Or so tight you couldn’t keep em on there. Depending on which set/piece.
You need the ones with the locking lids, little clicky levers and a silicon gasket. Seem to be the only thing that gets a really good seal on glass without being a complete pain to squeeze on there. I have absolutely no clue where our current set came from, some brand my sister in law swears by. And she was the one who gifted them to us.
But the hinges on the locks can wear and break through. And its possible for the gasket to fail. Neither of which has happened to any of ours. Replacement lids seem easy to find though, and interchangeable between brands. And trying to figure out which god damn ones we have I spotted a few brands that are straight up oven to freezer borosilicate in the way that modern Pyrex just isn’t.
That also tends to be what to look for in BPA free plastic containers. Since they don’t seal well without the BPA to make things soft and seal friendly like old Tupperware. Got a bunch of both running around.
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