13 of the Best Paleo Instapot Recipes for Your Pressure Cooker (2024)

FAQs

What cooks better in a pressure cooker? ›

While they are invaluable when it comes to braising, stewing and transforming tough cuts of meat, and cooking ingredients like dried pulses from scratch, pressure cookers are less successful with delicate foods like fish or green veg, as they use such a high heat.

Your Instant Pot needs liquid to work. If there's not enough, your pot won't be able to create enough steam to build pressure. About 1 cup is the minimum amount of liquid, so if you're cooking a recipe that will absorb water, like rice or beans, you'll need even more.

Foods containing dairy, like milk, cream, or yogurt, should not be pressure-cooked. The high heat and pressure can cause dairy products to curdle or separate, ruining the texture, taste and flavour of the dish. Cooking fried foods is a strict no no, when it comes to pressure cookers.

Versatility is the name of the pressure cooker game. You can cook any cut in a multi-cooker, but we recommend those from the chuck and round.

An instant pot and a pressure cooker are both cookers that use pressure to cook food. They are similar because they have a sealed jar with a valve that releases the tension. The main difference is that an instant pot has an added feature that allows it to be used as a slow cooker, rice cooker, and steamer.

Make sure your vent in set to "sealing"

When starting your cook, you want this lever pointing toward "sealing" and not "venting." Sealing means the Instant Pot is going to hold all the pressure created inside the pot, while venting is what you'll likely do to release the pressure when the food is finished cooking.

Not adding any liquid to the Instant Pot.

It's necessary for steam to build up, ultimately creating a high-pressure environment used for faster cooking. Without sufficient liquid, pressure won't build — and you'll likely get the dreaded “burn” error.

Follow this tip: While at least 1/2 to 1 cup of liquid is essential to well-cooked food in the pressure cooker, too much liquid will pull the flavor out of foods. Unless otherwise specified in the recipe, use just enough liquid to bring the cooker to pressure.

Some of the things that can happen when your pressure cooker runs out of water include: A burn message. Automatic shutoff. The pressure valve or plug can melt.

It's normal for a small amount of steam to leak from the valve while the pot is heating up, but if it continues to leak steam during the pressure-cooking cycle, you may have a problem. This issue could be a sign that you need to clean out and reposition the valve.

What is a pressure cooker best for? ›

Pressure cooking means traditionally slow-cooked meals, like velvety casseroles, homely stews, and warming goulashes, don't have to be reserved for the weekend. You can easily prepare a high-flavour meal under 30 minutes that tastes like it's been gently bubbling away on an Aga stovetop for the entire day.

However, starchy foods may form acrylamide, a harmful chemical, when pressure cooked. Consumption of this chemical on a regular basis may lead to health issues like cancer, infertility, and neurological disorders.

The temperature in a pressure cooker is higher than that in a normal pot. This can be used to reduce cooking time, and also can result in some tough foods (e.g. meats) becoming more tender. Pressure cookers provide boiling, braising, and steaming in a way that uses far less water and takes far less time.

But another good thing about a pressure cooker is it doesn't just cook long things like short ribs and roasts, it also makes food taste better! The flavor is more concentrated since the pot is sealed. There's no escaping steam.