How to Use Your Instant Pot | A First Timer’s Guide | Well Done

I'll show you how to use the Instant Pot. If you're like thousands of people who received one of these for Christmas, it might still be in the box because you don't know what to do with it. I had a viewfinder. send me an email asking if you could show me how to use it because it's intimidating and a little scary to even take it out of the box. It's very easy, but I will say it's no joke, so you need to know how to handle it. properly so you don't burn

your

self badly because there is a powerful little motor here this is the

instant

pot duo this is the six quart one we also have the eight quart one I have found if you are using

your

instant

pot you are probably just trying to feed your family very quickly or something, so the court of six has been surprisingly big enough for everything I've made so far, it has all these fun features like rice and multi grain porridge, really who makes the porridge. to show you how to pressure cook because I promise that's all you're going to use it for, so you can really get rid of all these other functions.

The difference between it and a slow cooker is that it cooks it in a fraction of When you cook in a slow cooker, you always want to brown something

first

, usually if you're making a stew and then you put it in your crock pot and you set it up right, you can do everything in here so you can sear directly. here and then add the ingredients and cook it in minutes. What you do need to understand is that the amount of pressure building up here is really cool. I have a good friend who has major burns because she didn't know how to release the pressure.

I'll get to that in a minute, but this thing is powerful. I found the biggest use for Instant Pots: cooking inexpensive cuts of meat that usually require long cooking times if you get home like I do, you know, around five. o'clock and then you still want to put a good meal on the table but you didn't think beforehand that this will be your friend I'm going to make some beef stew, normally you could put this in the crock pot that morning, but If you're not with this like me, so you don't think about those things until later.

This is about a pound and a half of meat. It costs like eight dollars. This is part of a roast, so you know it requires a long cook. It's time to make it tender and you just want it to be crumbly. I'm going to show you the quick way. This is not a Sunday night or a Sunday off from cooking. This is just quick and you have to take shortcuts, so I'm just going to show you. You, what I would do on a typical weeknight, I take the meat out of the package, season it and I'm going to brown it

first

just because it gives it a better flavor, but if you don't want to, it's not necessary.

We have tons of Instant Pot recipes that are affordable for

well

-cooked food, so look us up, you'll find plenty of options. I like to put a little flour in here to help brown the meat. I'm not dirtying many pots. I'm just going to use a first step, heat it up through the sauté function, this is also the function you would use if you want to bring something to a simmer when it's ready to cook, you're going to press sauté, you can keep pressing sauté if you want low heat , medium heat or high heat, just keep pressing the button, the time here is not that important unless you know that you are going to use this function for 45 minutes, then you can increase the time and then you have to wait and listen. the little click that says it's turning on, there it goes, so now it's on sauté and it's going to heat up, you're going to wait like you would waiting for a pan to heat up on the stove, it only takes a couple of minutes.

So while that heats up, I'm just going to chop up the normal ingredients, carrot, onion, celery, but you'll have beef stew on your table in less than an hour, if you want to stir the oil, just pick this up, it's not that hot, TRUE? now or you can rotate everything, don't be scared, you don't want to overcrowd this, so you may have to do it in batches. The flour will help you get a nice crust and then it will also help. thicken the sauce a little at the end. I'll throw it all in there once because it's a quick family meal.

I'm also making a large pork shoulder, so this is another tough cut of meat but also relatively inexpensive. I'm making enough for probably four meals for my family under 20 for the main course, so it's good. This recipe I'm going to show you is super simple, so you can use it for barbecue sandwiches, pork tacos, Brunswick stew, whatever. my meat is browned, it's got some fat in there with my vegetables, so so far we're just cooking like we normally would on a stovetop, another shortcut, don't judge, so you just want to sauté them so the aromatic flavor is released. and then some beef broth, you have to have some liquid, I mean, of course, you'll use it for beef stew, but even when we cook just a big piece of meat, you have to have some kind of liquid in there, even If it's a quarter cup or it's just going to burn, everything will burn inside and I really don't know what else would happen.

I'm going to put the meat back in and now I'm going to make about two cups of liquid because this is a stew. It will release more liquid as it cooks, so now I'm ready for the pressure cooking part. Next is the cover. There's a little triangle on the lid that's supposed to match a little triangle here. If you line up the two, then it fits. Perfectly turned on, you'll hear some music, but it's not locked. You have to turn it to lock it in pressure cooking. You have to seal it, so there's a valve here that you have to aim to seal.

I'm going to seal it. and now we are ready to set up pressure cooking. The first thing you want to do is cancel the sauté function and then you're going to put pressure cooking on. They have all these pre-programmed buttons here, like meat and stew, those are just the timing. has already been set up, if you don't want to have to guess or search for a recipe, you can choose one of those. I always try to test the power of the instant pot and see how little time I can cook something so I'm going to pressure cook and I almost always use high pressure when you press it it will automatically go to one of these just push it again and it will moves at high pressure.

I'm on high pressure now I'm going to set the time. I think I can cook this meat in 25 minutes because they are not big pieces. That's unheard of. Normally you think about two or three hours at least for a slow cooked stew, but 25 minutes, I notice I set the time and it wasn't like that. Continue until you hear the power button click, like the saute function. What you need to know here is that it won't be 25 minutes from now, the pressure has to increase and then it will start counting down, while it just says on. that means the pressure is building, this is no joke, the amount of pressure is tremendous and it is building up inside here because this has a good amount of liquid, it will probably take 15 minutes for the pressure to build up before the pressure starts.

Countdown. Some people don't know they say, "Wait, I thought it would be on the table in 25 minutes, no, but having a four-hour dish on the table in an hour is pretty good, so we'll leave it anyway." Start while I prepare the following: Small pieces of meat cut up. I showed you how to do it. Now I'll show you that you can also make large cuts if you want some shredded pork. This is a good meat for meal prep. Super economical and a little goes a long way, so you know you can cook it once and get at least two meals, but you know this would take you all day if you were going to smoke it for a barbecue or something, obviously.

The smaller the meat, the less time it will cook, so this will cook longer than our 25 minute beef stew, so it will probably take about an hour or so in the pressure cooker, but it's a lot less than all day. smoker I make this super simple with just garlic, salt and pepper, although this is not going to be a stew or a soup, you still have to put a little liquid in the instant pot just because it is in the pressure cooker, it is not going to that tastes like boiled meat, you can start this recipe by just throwing it right in, but I'm going to brown it again to give it more flavor.

I'm going to use the large one, but this will work on the six quart size, saute again to get va, I'm going to go up to more, so it's going to be high again if you keep pushing it less normal, that's like medium to medium high and this one. It will be a higher heat and we are going to let the meat stew heat up. The countdown hasn't started yet, the pressure is still rising, but you can tell it's getting closer because it will start to let some steam escape from the hole, the plug just went up a little, so the pressure is almost built up and Will increase. start the countdown early, this is a good time to not let your kids near the instant pot, so once you start doing it you'll know you're getting close to the countdown, the less liquid you have in here, the more Quick will be the time for pressure to build up.

Steam is like the hottest form of water possible, hotter than boiling water. If you want to get serious burns, get close to the steam. I know from experience that if you have wallpaper or nice wood cabinets, you probably don't want to constantly release pressure because over time it will cause it to warp a little. These are also very easy to clean for the most part, even the things that get stuck here and this has been used a few times and looks like new so it cleans up pretty easily. part you need to know is this little ring that comes inside, don't forget to clean that maybe you are going to make a dessert here, it will taste like beef stew or it will smell like beef stew when you go to clean your Instant Pot or the top that you want to remove , it's really good if you get into the habit of soaking this in maybe a little bit of lye water or a little bit of vinegar.

I'll also run it through the dishwasher first and then let it soak. One thing for me is that the smell never goes away, but it's better. You can also order just the rings. I think they are pretty inexpensive and then to wash the lid I just use soapy water and keep it clean. You don't want to put this. the dishwasher, I actually don't know if you're allowed to put it in the dishwasher, but I wouldn't do it and then you just slide the little ring back, this has to be there or it won't seal properly, so they're all gold, I'm going to give it a try. one turn, you have to remember again that you have to have a little bit of liquid before you can pressure cook, so I'm just going to put half a cup of water in there. that's all we'll need okay so close the lid remember to turn the valve towards the ceiling that's important this plug will lift when the pressure has built up so we're locked the arrow is in the position of lock that we are going to push. cancel again you have to stop the sautéing process okay now we're going to pressure cook these are pretty big pieces and it's pork shoulder so I'm going to go for about 65 minutes just to make sure I really want it to separate and it crumbles.

It's going to be so good now that it's on, the pressure will start to build because this only has half a cup of water. It'll probably only take about five minutes for the pressure to build up, so we'll have our pork in an hour, a little more. one hour, okay, time's up, this is when you're going to manually release the pressure or let it release naturally, either way you have to release the pressure before you can open this, you have to press cancel, so basically, what is this doing? it's telling you when it has the l that means it's ready and now it's at a low level sitting there until you release the pressure to let the pressure release naturally you would just do nothing and it would probably take another half hour to release the pressure which no It doesn't, so we're going to release it manually and I hope 25 minutes was enough, so this is how you do it and look, you have to be careful not to hit it, you know, if you hit it even a little bit.

It will start to expel that steam and that can hurt you. This is the roof and this is the ventilation. We need to let it air out. I'm going to use a towel just to be a little more cautious and I'm going to knock him down. towards the vent side it's releasing, you don't want to put your face near that or your hands, that's kind of hot, so let it release, it'll just take a couple of minutes, it'll stay locked until the pressure is released and that button goes down . If you try to force it that's when you can hurt yourself, the silver plug has come down which shows you that it's unlocked so if you want to continue cooking something for a while, we've stopped it but we're coming back. on the sauté function and that brings it to a simmer, you can do it on medium heat and I'm going to add some frozen peas if you want to thicken your sauce, now is the time to do that if you want to add a little bit of roux or cornstarch or whatever.

Okay, I'm not going to bother with that today it's not about the recipe, it's just about how to use your Instant Pot, I mean, you know you can feel good about it, you made your family an unprocessed, healthy meal and affordable inless than an hour after work and it tastes good, okay we're

done

, we'll see if this big pork shoulder can be pulled apart, okay I'll turn it off, remember we have to release the pressure, my favorite way to eat this is in some soft rolls with barbecue sauce will be the snack of the day mom is getting impatient do as I say, not what I do finally you guys felt completely off the bone in an hour you can find this instant pork shoulder recipe on food

well

done

on facebook and youtube look it up now you're not afraid to try your instant pot already comment below and let me know if you have any more questions about how to use the instant pot or if you want to see me cook something else in the instant pot or if you have another device you want me to try first to buy thanks for watching, don't forget to follow me on Instagram and like, comment, share this post and click the bell to receive those notifications.