Mastering the Instant Pot: Mediterranean Meals

While we love our crockpot (or slow cooker) for long-cooked dishes, especially when we have a day out of the house and want to come home to a hot meal, they’re pretty much a one-trick pony. Multicookers, on the other hand, are able to saute and sear, like you would on a stove top, as well as slow cook. In addition they can pressure cook, like you would with a stovetop pressure cooker, to cook hardy foods like dried beans and root vegetables in a fraction of the time. The bottom line: a multicooker, as its name suggests, has many functions, but the most important one is arguably pressure cooking.

If the time range given in a multicooker recipe seems off, it’s probably because the time you’re setting on the Instant Pot is actually the amount time it will be at full pressure; getting up to pressure, however, can take the better part of ten minutes, and the food is already cooking during that time. In general, a multicooker will cut cook time by two-thirds or even more.

Natural release is a slower, gentler release that happens automatically once the cook time is up; this is the preferred method when you want to gently finish cooking food through, since it will continue to cook as the pressure drops. The quick release option forces the steam out and releases pressure, well, quickly to prevent foods from overcooking or allow you to open the pot to add more ingredients.

We cooked more than 68 pounds of meat and 26 pounds of beans testing nearly 20 models of multicookers. Ultimately the Instant Pot came out on top for its superior pressure cooking abilities. Some of the other features we liked were the flat bottom of the interior pot, which allowed for better searing, the stay-cool handles, and a streamlined interface that made it user-friendly and easy to navigate even for multicooker newbies.