What Is Your Opinion on Cooking With an Instant Pot?

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Chicago, IL what do you think about.

Cooking with an instant pot? This is JJ Virgin, four time New York Times bestselling author, celebrity nutrition expert, and Fitness hall of Famer. I've been on a lifelong quest for answers to the toughest health questions, and now I'm sharing what I found with you. Welcome to Ask the Health Expert. Ginger Carlson from Facebook asks, what do you think about cooking with an instant pot? Hey, it's JJ and I've got my pal, health coach and healthy chef Maru Davila here to answer this question. Maru was born in Mexico City and then immigrated to the US to go to Harvard. Not just undergrad, but B school too. A few of her many business ventures included co founding two banks in San Diego. And then she made a big career change when she realized that she needed to turn her health around and started competing in triathlons and learned to cook at age 40. Now she's known as the Healthy Mexican Food Chef and her Healthy Mexican Food Chef food recipes are so delicious you will feel like you're cheating.

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One of my favorites, her guacamole ice cream. Yep, that's a thing. Trust me, you want it. We'll be right back to answer this question. Stay with me.

Hey, it's J.J. here.

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Instapods have definitely become one of the hardest thing on kitchen appliances and books because there's so many books now written for instant pots. They're basically a pressure cooker with additional features and electrical controls. I think they have some good things and some bad things and I like to discuss this with you. I gotta tell you that I have never used a regular pressure cooker and they just seem intimidating to me. They seem complicated and with little predictability. At least that's how I see it. Whereas an instapot was something that was intriguing for me. It has controls and it is highly predictable, which is something that I tend to seek. I like structure and order, especially in the kitchen, and I also favor kitchen gadgets that require less of my attention so that I can do other things while the things I need are being cooked or processed. I don't know about you, but I'm definitely not someone who can stand and watch carefully something cooking or simmering for a long time. It's just not me. And because of this, it's unavoidable that when I try to do, you know, cook something that lasts a long time, I will do something else at the same time and then I'll forget what I was doing and end up doing a big mess. Big disasters like burning or I don't know. So I think for me, Nistapot could add some added benefits. But let's. Let's go over some of the key benefits that I think the instant pot provides. It's supposedly safer than the pressure cooker, you know, a big plus and less scary, at least to Me it can also do a lot of things. So with one equipment you can do a variety of things. Of course, some will be with better results than others. For example, it can do the pressure cooking, it can do slow cooking. This could come in handy when the time that you need to cook something is so long and you can't stay in the kitchen or home because it's just controllable timing. It's also very good for simmering and specifically for producing clear broth. So it would be a great item to use for bone broth, which I do quite often. It's also good for oil less cooking because it's very easy in this type of But I personally don't care for oiless cooking and they also like to recommend it for cooking frozen or dry foods, which is a must for nowadays when you're very busy. I know you, like me, have a variety of frozen items ready to go. So it's good that you can just start cooking it and have it ready when you need it. You can also use it to saute or fry things, but they are not going to be as good as if you do it straight on the stove on a cast iron pan. Some examples of the many dishes you can do with these functions I mentioned are you can cook beans, rice, variety of meat like roast beef and stew. You can do tender chicken, variety of soups and broths, definitely chili. You can even bake cakes. I haven't tried it for that, but people claim it's really good and easy. And then eggs is also supposed to be very good. And porridges like for example oatmeal or other grains that are cooked similarly, and yogurt. So a big variety of things you can do. The other benefit that I see in Instapants is it can be fast when cooking certain foods, like beans, for example, if you were to cook it normally in a stove, it would probably take between one and three hours. That's a long time. Whereas with an instant pot it's going to take somewhere around 30 minutes or even less. And then for things like meat, soups, vegetables, the recommended cooking time in an instant pot is one third of the time versus a regular oven or stove. Like I said, this is one of my favorite benefits. It does not require you constant attention because it can be programmed. In fact, did you know that you can program it 24 hours ahead of time? This will come in very handy in those super busy days when you're just running around and you need dinner on time. So I like this feature a lot. Now talking about the negatives, which, you know, there are a few. I guess the first thing is that despite its name, it's not always instant. Things do take time. In fact, it can require sometimes up to 15% more time than a traditional pressure cooker. Then the other thing that's not so cool is that cooking times can vary, which means you can't really rely on having a meal at a precise time. For me, this is really bad because I plan my days by the minute, so any random delay would affect many other things. And I don't like this in the oven or the stove. At least I know that how long it's going to take, you know, very close to the exact time. Another negative is that you can't check progress when you're doing these cooking. So if you're really trying to ensure a high quality finished dish, you will have to wait until the end and hope for the best because if it's not ready, you're going to have to do it again. Whereas in a traditional cooking you can always like, you know, check and adjust. Other negative is that it only works with dishes that have some amount of liquid in them, so dry recipes are not going to work as well. And the instant pot is not good for things like crispy dishes or stir fries or pressure canning. If these are things that are very important to you, you may look at some other better options. And last but not least, they are bulky and not easy to clean. I mean the bulky part nowadays with so much clutter, at least in my house, I think about it. But I do have an insta pot. I found a place. So I think my conclusion, jj, is that if you do have the space to store it, you don't need to use those precise things that are not very good for this type of pot, then I think it can be a great addition.

This is JJ with Ask the Health Expert. I do this five times a week, so make sure you never miss a show by going to subscribetojay.com.

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