The Instant Pot has arrived!

Three days of waiting and my Instant Pot finally arrived yesterday.  After reading a myriad of “directions” and suggestions, I couldn’t wait to cook with it.  I finally opened the box to go through everything and had a moment of slight panic.  There were/are a lot of directions!  I had no idea what I was doing, and while I am fairly proficient at using a pressure cooker, this machine was a different story.  I began reading.

First up, I ran the beginner's water test.  Basically you run your machine through on high pressure for 2 minutes with 2 cups of water in the pan.  It is meant as a practice run.  Next, I had to figure out what to make.  Since I had wanted a rice cooker for so long, I decided I would start with wild rice.  While the Instant Pot manual came with a general rundown of instructions for cooking several types of foods, including rice, the instructions were very vague.  Scouring the internet, my confusion began mounting because there were so many different sets of instruction for making the rice.  The amounts of water and cooking time were all different…for the same kind of rice! 

I just decided to pick one.  Here is what I did:

1.5 cups wild rice

1.5 cups water

Pour the rice and water in the bottom of the Instant Pot insert.  Put the lid on in locking position.  Make sure the valve is on sealing.  Press the “Multigrain” button.  Sit back and wait. 

I must admit I was a bit disappointed in the amount of time it took to complete the cycle.  During the cooking process, it completes a soak for the rice before building up steam and finally releasing the pressure after 35 minutes.  The taste and texture, though, were perfect. 

Now for the good and the bad:

Good:

1.  I was able to set the rice to cook and walk away from it.  This was the best part!  When you make rice on the stove, you have to be close at hand the entire time from bringing the water to boil until it is done. 
2. This rice did not boil over and did not stick to the pan like stove top rice making tends to do.
3. It has a warming function so the rice was warm when we were ready to eat.

Bad:

1.  It took about 65 minutes to complete.  Normal time would be 30 minutes plus the time to get the water boiling.

So far, I just “like” the Instant Pot.  When I began reading about it, I thought it was a device that would allow me to get foods done more quickly, which was my biggest draw.  Unfortunately, I did not see the time-saving with rice cooking.  The 20 minute pressure build up seemed to take forever.  The convenience of being able to start things and walk away was a plus.  It was a bit stressful and there seems to be so much to learn, but I think with time I will learn to use it more proficiently and will enjoy using it.