After a long weekend of celebrations and eating delicious but high calorie food, I decided I wanted to make something hearty but healthy for Super Bowl Sunday. I ended up settling on a white bean chicken chili recipe for the Instant Pot I received over Christmas and we were not disappointed.
I got my hands on a Crock-Pot (slow cooker) before I had my first child. It was gifted to us by friends, so I did not have to decide at that time which one I liked better. I researched lots of recipes, made them, and came up with the curated list posted earlier as well as the meal planning post.
A few months ago, it seemed like the Crock-Pot had stopped working, so I took to the Facebook brain trust to do my research. It turns out people have very strong opinions about this topic! I ended up getting an Instant Pot for the holidays and the Crock-Pot continued to work well, so now I feel like I can have the best of both worlds.
Most people I’ve talked to seemed to prefer the Instant Pot (IP). It has more features and can definitely cook a bigger variety of things and a faster rate. It is more complicated to use and has more steps but it is a fast learning curve. I have not tried the slow cooker setting but this seemed to be the biggest complaint people had about using the IP. Apparently, the meat does not come out as tender as it does on the Crock-Pot when using that particular setting.
If you don’t know anything about these two appliances, let me explain them briefly. The Crock-Pot or slow cooker has two settings: high and low. You dump the food in it and then pick how long to cook it for. I only use the low setting and most meals are between 5-8 hours. When the time is up, it switches to just keeping the food warm. The IP has many settings and depending on what model you have, there are different options. I have not used all of them, but there is a soup/broth, meat/stew, bean/chili, poultry, rice, multigrain, porridge, steam and then you can choose to slow cook, pressure cook, sauté, or make yogurt.
I have only made two recipes in my IP so far and loved them both. They were also successful with friends and family. I was able to put uncooked pasta for one of them and for the other one I used frozen chicken thighs and dry beans that had not been soaked over night. This is huge as it allows for little planning (i.e. soaking things overnight or defrosting meat) and still cooking a meal in under 2 hours. I hope to have a similar list of recipes for IP in the future, but so far, I have not come up with frozen IP recipes that you can dump and cook quickly. There is a small but not negligible amount of preparation, including using the sauté mode, before cooking in the high pressure mode. Of course, you have to allow time for pressure to build if you are using the pressure cooking mode and you have to have enough liquid as part of your recipe.
I still use the Crock-Pot during the work week, so that my nanny can quickly dump a frozen meal in it during the day with minimal instructions that will be ready when my husband and I come home. I have been using the IP on Sunday nights, so the left overs can also be used during the week. This way, I don’t have to give extra instructions, like starting on sauté mode and then switching and how to set the time depending on what is being cooked.
If you can only pick one appliance, I do think the Instant Pot gives you more bang for your buck but do not discount your Crock-Pot if you have one! I will hopefully have some healthy IP recipes coming up soon as well as more insights on other settings once I play around with it more.