Christopher Kimball - Milk Street Fast and Slow: Instant Pot Cooking at the Speed You Need

My favorite kitchen items are a stovetop terra cotta rice cooker from Japan, a nakiri knife with a gorgeous octagonal wood handle, and an inexpensive 8-inch carbon-steel skillet that I use for scrambled eggs.

So the notion of an Instant Pot does not come naturally. At various times, I have tried to like slow cookers (good for meal planning since the prep is done in the morning) and pressure cookers (love them in an off-and-on way, which means mine most of the time resides in the basement).

But as our kitchen started developing recipes for the Instant Pot, it became clear this wasnt just another device to consume counter real estate. The food was top notch. I expected stews and tough cuts of meat to be ideal, but we also started making pasta dishes (the puttanesca was wonderful and the pasta was, incredibly, al dente), lots of beans, vegetables, soups, etc.

And then, as I tested recipes at home, it also became clear that combining a pressure cooker with a slow cooker makes so much sense. Plus, you can saut in the same pot in which you pressure or slow cook, and the timer makes it easy to walk away without worry.

Most of all, however, I had to admit that this is serious cookware for serious cooking. This isnt a collection of second-class recipes shoehorned into a countertop appliance. It is Basque Leek and Potato Soup and Three-Cheese Pasta with Basil and Black Pepper. This is great food. So good, in fact, everyone in the kitchen kept taking home leftovers.

There are lots of tricks to using an Instant Potor any similar multicookerincluding how to keep long-cooked foods tasting fresh, how to cook more delicate items, how to cook dried beans without soaking, and how to stagger your cooking so each ingredient is cooked only as long as suits it. But one of the great things about the Instant Pot is that you dont need a lot of culinary tricks.