Why Instant Pots Are The Best Cooking Tool For Doubled Recipes
Doubled recipes are lifesavers for when you're feeding a crowd or want to prep a meal in advance to enjoy later in the week — simply double the ingredients for double the deliciousness. An Instant Pot is the best cooking tool for doubling recipes because the cook time doesn't increase regardless of how many extra ingredients you add to the chamber.
This means that you can make a pair of fall-off-the-bone roasts, twice as much hearty casserole, or two batches of Bolognese sauce at lightning speed. But, given that you've doubled the ingredients, you may be wondering why the cook time doesn't increase too. If you were to make a double-sized cake in the oven, the bake time would rise, so why isn't it the same for an Instant Pot?
It helps to split the complete time an Instant Pot takes to cook a meal into three separate stages. There's the time it takes to pressurize, followed by the actual cook time, and then the final stretch where the pressure within the chamber is slowly released. The cook time refers solely to the middle stage, while the first stage will actually take a bit longer when doubling a recipe.
Why doubled recipes take longer to pressurize in Instant Pots
It takes longer for the Instant Pot to come up to pressure at the start of the cooking process to account for the extra ingredients. The liquid in the chamber is what creates the steam required for the Instant Pot to reach optimum pressure. Once the right pressure level has been reached, the food will then cook at the same rate, irrespective of whether you've used a single or double batch of ingredients. Therefore, the overall time it takes to double Instant Pot recipes, from putting the ingredients into the pot until opening the lid at the very end, will rise slightly even though the cooking stage itself remains the same length.
Be mindful that you may not need to double the liquid in your Instant Pot when you double the other ingredients. Pressure cookers have an extremely low evaporation rate, so adding more liquid isn't necessary. However, this may depend on how much broth or stock you'd like to be left with at the end of the cooking process. For example, you may prefer to add more liquid if you're making a double batch of soup or chowder. The good news is that once you master the nuances of your Instant Pot, you'll soon become an expert on doubling up every recipe, leaving you with lots of leftovers to share, freeze, or enjoy later.