| #1,547 |
I recently bought an Instant Pot (with an air fryer function) and finally got my hands on it yesterday afternoon. I've wanted one for ages and there was a good Black Friday deal (actually the cheapest ever price, unlike lots of the non-deals out there) so I went for it.
I think it's going to take quite a bit of experimenting to really get the hang of, but this afternoon I roasted a quarter of my Galeaux D'Eysines squash (peeled and cubed) and it came out great. It should have cost a fraction of the energy to do the same in an oven (not that I have an oven at the moment!) so I'm hoping it will pay for itself over the coming year. I've also used it to pressure cook some beans, but I'm a pressure cooking novice and rather overcooked them so that needs more experimenting!
Drawbacks so far: it is a bigger bit of kit than I expected. Not a million miles off the size of a Henry Hoover, so a rather chunky piece to sit on a kitchen worktop if you don't have a huge kitchen (mine is tiny). It also kicks out quite a lot of steam. I've had to put mine in my living room (turns out I should have tested whether the kitchen socket I was going to use for it worked before I bought it!) and 35 minutes of squash roasting has completely steamed up my windows and door panels. I've had a window open for about six hours but it's not helped a great deal. If using daily/more than once a day in winter, it could be an issue. Especially if you are a stingy Northerner like me who is refusing to put the heating on as long as I can manage wearing six jumpers at once! Finally, the instructions it comes with aren't great and it doesn't come with any recipes at all. There are some on its website, but the majority are for a standard Instant Pot rather than one with the air fryer lid as well. It would have been nice to follow a few basic recipes first, and then moved onto experimenting, rather than feeling thrown in at the deep-end from the get go.
I think it's going to take quite a bit of experimenting to really get the hang of, but this afternoon I roasted a quarter of my Galeaux D'Eysines squash (peeled and cubed) and it came out great. It should have cost a fraction of the energy to do the same in an oven (not that I have an oven at the moment!) so I'm hoping it will pay for itself over the coming year. I've also used it to pressure cook some beans, but I'm a pressure cooking novice and rather overcooked them so that needs more experimenting!
Drawbacks so far: it is a bigger bit of kit than I expected. Not a million miles off the size of a Henry Hoover, so a rather chunky piece to sit on a kitchen worktop if you don't have a huge kitchen (mine is tiny). It also kicks out quite a lot of steam. I've had to put mine in my living room (turns out I should have tested whether the kitchen socket I was going to use for it worked before I bought it!) and 35 minutes of squash roasting has completely steamed up my windows and door panels. I've had a window open for about six hours but it's not helped a great deal. If using daily/more than once a day in winter, it could be an issue. Especially if you are a stingy Northerner like me who is refusing to put the heating on as long as I can manage wearing six jumpers at once! Finally, the instructions it comes with aren't great and it doesn't come with any recipes at all. There are some on its website, but the majority are for a standard Instant Pot rather than one with the air fryer lid as well. It would have been nice to follow a few basic recipes first, and then moved onto experimenting, rather than feeling thrown in at the deep-end from the get go.
Formerly self-contained, but expanding my gardening horizons beyond pots!
![[-]](https://gardenandgossip.org/images/zen/collapse.png)