I am absolutely in love with the Instant Pot! Great soups and stews using one of the pressure cooking settings, Perfect rice automatically. Slow cooker settings with a delayed start, timed cook, switches to warm then auto shut off in an intelligent way.

I’ll prepare the ingredients for a stew or soup in the pot, leave it in the refrigerator until work is over, then start it up and have a tender delicious stew that tastes like it was cooked all day in under an hour. Very strong recommendation!

Note that the Instant Pot is far from instant. It takes 10 or 15 minutes to heat up before the cycle starts. In the end, you need to vent either manually or by simply letting it sit for 10 or 15 minutes. Adjust your expectations of what instant means.

I did a beef and cherry tomatoes stew with garlic, onion, 1 lb of lean beef, beef bullion, a pint of cherry tomatoes, salt and pepper in about 45 minutes from beginning to end. It’s a dead simple recipe but very delicious when quality ingredients are used. After a 20 minute pressure cycle with all ingredients, I manually vented, then switched to saute for 10 minutes to cook off the excess water. This left a delicious sauce that’s wonderful over rice.

I also did a version Golden Lentil Soup in about 30 minutes with some turkey sausage added. It was quick and delicious, but as I said, nowhere near instant.