Hey LSJ,
I use a pressure cooker on occasions, but I don't have the electric version.
I'll be watching for your usual keen analysis/Very good decision to move to the 8 quart size.
I've never owned a pressure cooker before, not a real one, nor a Instant Pot type. Funny is, one of the original reasons I was interested in a Instant Pot, or taking the 'risk' on giving one a try, was because I had some hopes of maybe some day doing small scale home canning, you know , the type that requires a pressure cooker to get things hot enough to kill stuff like botulinum spores. Well, as it turns out, apparently a Instant Pot won't actually get that hot, or is not capable of consistent enough pressure to insure that it would get hot enough to be totally safe. Even after coming to that realization, I did bite the bullet on one ( in part because I bought it at Costco and knew if I really wasn't happy I could return it.).
Making beans alone , from scratch , is so easy, it's almost worth the price of admission , just to be able to cook dry beans to a point where they are really good in not much more than an hour. I have done this several times now, and I'm really impressed with how well it works. In the past, I'd resorted to just buying caned beans, and then doctoring them up. Well, with the Instant Pot, i can make them taste, like truly amazing, right out of the cooker. I used my own home made chicken ( and even pork ) broth, instead of water... add a few cloves of garlic, some onion, a bay leaf, a tiny bit of salt... Turn it on, and walk away... I can eat the darn things right like that, and I'm generally not a huge fan of beans that aren't really jazzed up with stuff.
Broth is crazy easy too, especially with a pellet grill handy. I found these pork 'riblets' , which essentially were some pork rib trimmings that they sold off sepperatately for like $0.99/lb. I ate all the good meaty parts myself, but the parts that had too much cartilage or bone... after they were smoked, I dumped them in the Instant Pot, with a couple chopped up carrots, couple stalks of celery , a onion cut into 8ths ( skin on it still), a few smashed up cloves of garlic... a wee bit of salt, and of course a lot of water... turn it on, walk away... later drain off all the solids... Um, yum yum... ( Still probably cheaper to go buy bullion , but hey, you can make it taste anyway you want )
I've made Chicken and dumplings , using my own home made broth, etc... although one time I got this "BURN" indicator, that basically tells you, you've got burnt stuff on the bottom of the inner pot, and it's not heating up correctly and is in danger of making your whole pot of food taste all burnt. The other time I made it, I didn't get that... The BURN message , really is annoying, because your usually about 15 or 20 minutes into your attempt to make something, and then have to figure out how to deal with it... But , the whole "BURN" issue, could be a separate topic all by itself.
Anyway, I do have mixed feelings about this whole Instant Pot thing... Some people make them out to be , the perfect tool for anything you want to do in the kitchen. And often the times that people give on how long it takes to cook something, is really deceiving ( because they don't tell you about having to wait for the pressure to release, or how long it takes to build up pressure ) Some of the group discussions I've seen on Facebook, then to be REALLY lop sided... people with these , making them out to be the greatest kitchen tool ever... ( some making Rib in them, touting them to be the greatest ribs ever.
) I'm hoping I could find real people who aren't afraid to admit that these things aren't magic, and who are willing to discuss , how they overcome any problems that they encounter...
