What Many People Get Wrong About Instant Pots

The Instant Pot debuted in 2010 but became all the rage in 2016. That year, 215,000 of them were sold on Amazon Prime Day. Despite their popularity, there are still some things people get wrong about Instant Pots, especially those who are less familiar with them. One key thing to know about an Instant Pot before adding one to your own kitchen gadget repertoire is that they're not always as fast as you'd think.

Tasting Table spoke to Coco Morante, recipe developer and author of "The Instant Kitchen Meal Prep Cookbook," about how people sometimes mistake the Instant Pot for a kitchen time saver. "The 'Instant' in Instant Pot is a little bit misleading," she said. "When you cook something in the Instant Pot, it'll sometimes take less time than on the stove, but sometimes not." Still, that doesn't mean there isn't a benefit to using the Instant Pot in terms of time management. One you get used to what an Instant Pot is and how to use it, you'll learn how it can benefit you most.

"I think of it as a time-saving device in the sense that cooking is much more hands-off than with other methods," Morante clarified. "Once you've set it up, you can do something else while the food is cooking. And if you take a little while longer than expected to come back to your Instant Pot, it's fine — the 'Keep Warm' setting allows the food to hold for as long as you need it to." With so many tasty Instant Pot recipes available, you're never backed into a culinary corner.

Instant Pots are for more than just pressure cooking stews and soups. There are multiple different specialized settings on the pot, and you can find countless recipes online that make use of them. With all the different things an Instant Pot can do, there must be some time-saving applications. Tasting Table asked Coco Morante whether any of those functions are actually useful.

"If yours has a dedicated 'Yogurt' button, you can make delicious and economical batches of homemade yogurt so easily," she told us. "And back to the 'Keep Warm' setting I mentioned earlier — I love making a batch of spiced cider or mulled wine and leaving it in the Instant Pot for a girls' night or dinner party, so guests can ladle some into their mug whenever they like."

Once you get used to it, there are many Instant Pot hacks you could start using to make cooking easier and faster. The sauté function is a great one to use to get the cooking started and cut down on how long you'll need to wait for the pressure to build. As an added bonus, you can caramelize vegetables and brown meat this way to increase the flavor of the final dish.

Of all the mistakes you can make with an Instant Pot, not learning how to use the settings is one of the biggest. Aside from sautéing and making yogurt, you can use it to cook rice, chili, poultry, and more. It could replace several other gadgets or pots, saving time on both cooking and cleanup. That's worth factoring into how you manage your time.