The Instant Pot is user-friendly in so much as it is a safe, self-contained, all-in-one multi-cooker, but its user interface is not exactly intuitive. There are a lot of buttons, and trying to intuit what they do exactly can make one feel a little...pressured.
What is an Instant Pot?
An Instant Pot is an electronic multi-tool, wonder-child kitchen appliance. It sautés, steams, and slow cooks. Most notably though, it's a pressure cooker. The Instant Pot brought pressure cooking back into the average home cook's skill set: What was once a separate bulky appliance infamous for being forgotten and then exploding on the stove, has now become electronic and notably safer. If you're looking for recipe ideas, here are the first things you should make with your Instant Pot, and a few surprising ones too.
Although there are now other brands that make similar "multi-cookers," the Instant brand popularized this appliance, so the term "instant pot" colloquially can refer to them all. The buttons referred to in this article are on an Instant brand Instant Pot.
The parts of an Instant Pot
Regardless of the model, all Instant Pots have the same basic components:
The base: This is the bulk of the machine. The navigation panel is here, along with the major electronics and heating element. A clear condensation collector is also located on the base, usually in the back where the lid hinges, which you can detach and empty after cooking.
The lid: It does what any lid is supposed to do with an important difference: the steam-release toggle. The steam release toggle, or valve, can be manually opened for a quicker, controlled steam release, or you can leave the pot to naturally depressurize, which takes a little longer. The release valve might also have a little plastic dot next to it. This is a float valve, a visual aid to remind you if the pot is currently pressurized. The float valve will push up when the pot is under pressure; it will go all the way down when it's not.
The inner pot: This is where all your fabulous ingredients go. It sits inside the cavity of the base.
Additional accessories: Many models come with measuring cups, utensils, trivets, and steam trays. While you can use your own measuring cups for recipes, the accessories are helpful because they fit the pot perfectly and are made with materials that don't scratch or damage the pot.
How to use an Instant Pot
I would say “read the manual,” but it’s honestly kind of confusing. (Also they just changed their manual as I was writing this, so I’m perturbed at the manual as a concept.) When you read about the “poultry” button, for example, the manual simply informs one that button is for “poultry dishes” and that you can adjust the cooking time depending on your “preference of texture and the amount of poultry you put into the pot.” This is a little vague for my taste—skin-on, bone-in thighs cook quite differently than skinless, boneless tenderloins—and I wanted some clarity, damn it. (Please note: There are many versions of the Instant Pot, with functionalities and your buttons may be slightly different than my buttons; consult your manual if there’s any confusion.)
The Basic Buttons
We’ll get to all those specific function buttons in a moment, but first let’s get cozy with the buttons you’ll be using most frequently: “manual,” “sauté,” “keep warm/cancel,” “pressure,” “+” and “-”, and “adjust”:
Manual: This is your basic pressure cooker setting with which you can cook most foods, save for yogurt or fermented glutinous rice. Once your food is situated in a sealed pot with the pressure release switched to “sealing,” you can use this function by pressing manual once, and then adjusting the time with the “+” and “-” buttons. Then you simply walk away, and let the Instant Pot do its thing. The default setting of the pressure cooker is “high” (with a pressure of 10.2-11.6 psi and a temperature of 239°F-244°F), but you can adjust it to a lower pressure and temperature (5.8-7.2 psi and 229-233°F) by pressing the “pressure” button (I have never used the low pressure setting, but I guess it’s nice to know it’s there.)
Sauté: This button keeps your meat from looking sad and pale, and is how you’re going to get those roasty, toasty, caramelized flavor into your food before you seal it up to be pressurized. It has three temperature ranges: “normal” (320-349°F), “more” (347-410°F), and “less” (275-302°F), which you can toggle between by pressing “adjust.” In addition to sautéing and searing, you can use the “sauté” function to simmer and thicken sauces after cooking; just be sure to stir frequently, as things get quite hot on the bottom of the insert. This should go without saying, but don’t sauté with the lid locked on.
Keep warm/cancel: This is button is for when you need to dramatically proclaim that “DINNER IS CANCELED” or simply stop the cooking program real quick because you just remembered you forgot to add thyme or some crap. Pressing this button puts the Instant Pot into “standby state,” which is a fancy way of saying “turned off.” Once it’s in the “standby state,” pressing it again puts the pot in “keep warm” mode, which keeps your food somewhere in the very broad temperature range of 145-172°F. Also, you don’t have to press “keep warm/cancel” to keep your food warm, as the Instant Pot will switch into that mode automatically at the end of your selected cooking program (for up to an insane 99 hours and 50 minutes).
Pressure: This button not only changes the pressure of the “manual” setting, but every single “function” besides “sauté,” “yogurt,” and “slow cook.”
+ and -: These babies change the cooking time in “manual” program, but do not work if you are using one of the pre-programmed function buttons, such as “beans,” because having one button to control cook times would be too easy, and home cooks need to be challenged.
Adjust: This is the button you want to use when changing cook times for pre-programmed such as “beans,” except for rice. Want to change the cook time for rice? You can’t, you fool. Rice is “fully automatic.” It also lets you pick a yogurt program, which I honestly have not attempted yet, so overwhelming do I find the Instant Pot yogurt-making process.
Now that we’ve covered the basic buttons, let’s move onto those pre-programmed dudes.
The Fancy Function Buttons
I don’t use these, but that’s mainly because I don’t trust the one-size-fits-all approach to pressure cooking. According to the Instant Pot website, a very smart microchip controls how your food is cooked through the manipulation of “four parameters”: heating intensity, temperature, pressure and duration.
If you press the “soup” button, for instance, the Instant Pot is like “gee, no one is going to be stirring this soup, so we better not heat the bottom of this pot too much,” but if you press “steam,” it’s all “there ain’t no food even touching the insert; let’s crank it to ‘11.’” When you’re using the “multigrain” function, the pot soaks the grains at 140°F for 50 minutes (with no pressure), then ramps up both to around 248°F and a little less than 11 psi, respectively.
Though the nerds at Instant Pot don’t give a detailed description of each function in words, they do provide graphs, which is great, seeing that I only passed my thermodynamics class by promising Dr. Brucat I would never work in, speak of, or think about the topic if he just let me out of P-chem 1 with a “C.”
Anyway, let’s take a look at those graphs:
Bean/Chili Function
This 39-minute program starts out strong by ramping up both temperature and pressure, and holding them both around 230°F and 11 psi (so a “low” temperature with “high” pressure), respectively.
Soup Function
Okay, so this graph has some issues. Our y-axis reads “.00" and “.20" where it should say “100" and “120,” but other than that the soup program seems pretty straightforward. We’re doing 47 minutes at a middling pressure of a little less than 9 psi (lower than our “high” manual setting and higher than the “low”), and a temperature of 23o°F.
Multigrain Function
As we mentioned earlier, this function starts off with a 140-degree, 50-minute soak (with no pressure), then ramps up to around 248°F and a little less than 11 psi (high pressure), respectively, and holds it for about nine more minutes.
Meat/Stew Function
This 28-minute program mostly hangs out at a temperature of 230°F with a pressure of around 8.7 psi (which is low, but still higher than the manual “low” setting).
Congee Function
The “congee” function is very similar to the “meat/stew” function with a temperature profile that hangs out around 230°F, and a pressure that hovers around 8 psi.
With some of the newer Instant Pots, all of these functions can be manipulated by pressing their respective function button to change it from “normal” to “more” or “less.” As one would expect, picking “more” cooks the food more, and picking “less” cooks the food less. There are no graphs for these settings, and there are also no graphs for “cake,” “eggs,” “poultry,” “steam” or “sterilize.”
From what I’ve gathered on Reddit, you want to use “more” for cheesecake, which is the only cake you should be cooking in this thing anyway. For eggs, I’ve found the adjustable “steam” function produces perfectly cooked, peelable eggs. I am frustrated over the lack of a poultry graph but, according to Pressure Cooking Today, it translates to a 15 minute cook time at “high” pressure, which I think would be overkill for something like a boneless skinless chicken breast.
There is also no graph for rice, because rice is fully automatic and adjusts itself perfectly no matter how much rice you put it in, as long as you have the water ratio right, or so I have been led to believe; the vibe is very “Please stop asking about our magical rice function, we don’t have time to explain it to you.”
Other Fancy Buttons
In addition to the pre-programmed buttons that involve pressure cooking, there are also non-pressurized functions such as “slow cook,” “yogurt,” and “sauté.” We’ve already covered that last one, but let’s address the other two.
Slow cook: “Normal” will give you a temp of 190-200°F, with “less” and “more” clocking in at 180-190°F , and 200-210°F, respectively. If you have a certain brand of slow cooker you’re used to using, check its manual to see how the temperatures compare.
Yogurt: The yogurt function is not a “throw it all in there and open it up later” kind of deal. There are many steps, including taking the insert out of the Instant Pot, and it would behoove you to consult the manual, or this post from Team Yogurt, which dares to ask “is it worth it?”
All of these graphs and numbers may seem a little overwhelming at first, but the best thing to do is start cooking, try some recipes, starting with recipes written for the “manual function.” You could also make a cheesecake or two. Cheesecake always soothes me.