Welcome to another episode of The Beyond Nourished Podcast. My name is Rachelle Girardin, I am the founder of Beyond Nourished, a personal chef service here in Vancouver, Canada, as well as the creator of the Holistic Chef Certification and Business Training Program
I have a lot of experience in the kitchen, being a private chef for over 10 years, and today's episode is talking about two pieces of equipment that I love so much that I know many of you are constantly trying to decide which to purchase and or which to use in which circumstance.
I’m going to get into my personal experience using the Instant Pot and also the slow cooker, so if you don't have either one of these, this is a great episode for you to decide maybe which one you want to buy out of the two, or maybe you decide you want to buy both! And if you do have them, you might come up with some new ways of using them by the end of this podcast. Let's dive into it.
First of all, I wanted to talk about what an Instant Pot is. This is very much a new piece of equipment that has been on the market for the last couple of years. I think that it came out over the Christmas season, and it was all the rage. Everybody was talking about it! What it is, is just an instant pressure cooker that happens to have many different settings to it, it's a multi-cooker. So you can do many, many different things with it, but essentially people buy it for the pressure cooking settings, and that range is usually from 240-244 degrees Fahrenheit, so really nice high heat in there to cook things really fast.
And on the other side, the slow cooker as the name basically entails, is something that cooks things at a very slow rate, usually at a lower temperature, somewhere between 175 and 200 degrees Fahrenheit. There are usually only two settings, it's very straightforward to use, and you just need more time than you would a pressure cooker, so you can see already when you're weighing out what makes the most sense for you, or how are you going to use this in your day-to-day cooking?
I would love to get into a few of the pros and cons that I found in using them, and I'll start off by saying that when the Instant Pot came out, I actually was very skeptical about using it, and I was actually a little bit intimidated because there are so many settings! You can make yogurt, you can cook rice, you can slow cook, you can pressure cook, there are many things and modes that you can do, and it all just was too much for me in the beginning.
And at that point, I loved my slow cooker - it was something that I could put on at night, I could look at it in the morning and it would be cooked perfectly. It didn't require a lot of thought. It was a really wonderful tool for many years, especially when I started to do more meal prep style cooking for myself, and then for my business, it was something that just cut time and efficiency in the kitchen because I could have other things going on.
At Beyond Nourished, we talk about recipe stacking a lot, and this is the perfect example of that - where you're having one piece of equipment do the work for you while you've got other things going on at the same time, cutting down your time in the kitchen. So this is something that you want to consider. Do you have time? Do you want to do this overnight? Is doing something fast better for you.
Eventually, my staff convinced me that we needed to use the Instant Pot. In fact, it was them learning how to use it every day and not having to think about their client's menus the night before that got me leaning into it and interested in it, and so I started really basic. I asked them for some pieces of advice, and a couple of the things that they said were number one, when you're looking for recipes online, be sure to find recipes that speak to that particular piece of equipment. And what I mean by that is, if you go online and you find a beef recipe, but it was made in the slow cooker and you use the same instructions for your Instant Pot, even if it's the slow cooking setting, the two pieces of equipment do not work exactly the same.
The pressure cooker essentially holds moisture much more than a slow cooker would, and I've tried doing them the same amount of time, same recipes, and they just don't turn out the same. So first of all, make sure that when you find a recipe, you're using a recipe that has made it in whatever piece of equipment that you're using.
The other thing is to just experiment, and that is something that sometimes I'm not willing to do because oftentimes I'm not cooking for myself - I'm cooking for other people. But it made me get out of my own way and practice on myself first, and after a few times, I realized, Wow, this piece of equipment saves me so much time and it's actually not as intimidating to use as I thought! Even though I haven't used a number of the settings, the number of times that I've used the pressure cooking setting is insane! And the fact that you don't have to think too far ahead of time if you're somebody who doesn't necessarily plan that far in advance, or you'd like to have things done in a very short amount of time - I definitely find that the Instant Pot is a lot more usable than the slow cooker.
Other things that I have learned in using both of these items, one thing is that the slow cooker is very forgiving, whereas the first time that I used the Instant Pot I was making some recipe that I had found online - it was like a sweet and sour chicken and rice dish - but I'm used to just improvising. I didn't really follow the recipe that much, and it burnt so my first experience in using the Instant Pot was actually one of complete failure. However, that allowed me to remind myself that when trying out new equipment that maybe following a recipe is not the worst idea in the world - I can't outsmart something that I actually don't know how to use!
Following the recipes is also really helpful in learning how to use the equipment and being able to experiment. Another thing that I love about the Instant Pot is the rice cooking function. I didn't think that I would even attempt this, and then I was put in a position of having to have rice cooked in 15 minutes when usually it would take 40 to an hour, and it came out perfectly.
The interesting thing too, is that you can cook large batches of rice, it is the same type of recipe, the same ratio, I should say, and it takes the same amount of time and right then and there, I was like, Okay, I'm sold.
I love having both of these pieces of equipment in my house, however, if I had decide on one piece of equipment, if I had to tell you which one I get the most bang for my buck out of it, at this point would 100% be the Instant Pot. I love being able to cook cuts of meat for obviously, way less time than it would take doing it in my slow-cooker. I love not having to think about things too far in advance. If I'm feeling spontaneous, I love that I can make multiple dishes at once in a day, that would normally take me a couple of days over eight hours in the slow cooker. So I love my Instant Pot now, and I have to say, if you guys are on the fence about it, I highly recommend that you start with something small. If you're not finding that it is suitable for your needs or you do find it too intimidating, you can always go to the slow cooker.
The Instant Pot does have a slow cooking function that my staff would say creates a better quality of meat, they find to be a little bit more tender, a little bit less chewy. I personally haven't had this experience. There are just some really minor things that I find are different, that's why I'm saying stick to the recipes that speak to each of the pieces of equipment individually.
But if I had to wrap this podcast up, I would say if you do not own one of these pieces of equipment and you are curious about them, if you're looking to save time in the kitchen, the Instant Pot is worth all of the hype, and it does stand up to everything that people are saying about it.
Remind yourself when you're starting to use it, that there is a little bit of a learning curve, so if you are intimidated, just take some deep breaths, find some recipes online, talk to people who have them and ask them for recipes that they find work really, really well.
As always, these are just quick little tips to help you in the kitchen. I hope that you enjoyed today's podcast!
A little piece of news as well! Next week we've got a wonderful free class happening online - March 22nd as well as March 24th. I am talking about my experience in becoming a holistic chef and how you can learn how to earn extra income if you have a passion for cooking. I would really love you to tune into this - you can register HERE.