20 Instant Pot Casserole Recipes - 365 Days of Slow Cooking and Pressure Cooking (2024)

FAQs

Can I pressure cook something that has been slow cooking? ›

Update the cooking time: Instant Pots are designed to cook much faster than slow cookers, so you'll need to adjust the cooking time accordingly. As a rule of thumb, you can cook most slow cooker recipes in an Instant Pot on high pressure for one quarter of the slow cooker time.

As for convenience, because a pressure cooker cooks so darn fast, you aren't sacrificing all that much on that front, either. Anything that takes eight hours to cook in a slow cooker can be cooked in about 45 minutes in a pressure cooker, and most things cook much, much faster even than that.

Generally, if your slow cooker meat, soup, or stew recipe calls for 8 hours on the low setting or about 4 hours on the high setting, it should be fully cooked in about 25 to 30 minutes in the Instant Pot. For chicken or turkey, use the 15-minute poultry button. While volume doesn't matter, density does.

Steam penetrates food easily under pressure. So connective tissues in cubes of beef for soups or stews soften in 15 minutes or less, and a pot roast will be medium-rare in 30 minutes. Be sure to follow instructions carefully; at this speed, it's easy to overcook things in mere minutes.

Traditionally cheaper cuts of meat always slow cook better. Slow cooking breaks down the connective collagen in meat, which turns into unctuous gelatine. This creates that soft and tender mouth feel we all crave.

Is cooking in a pressure cooker healthy? Yes, cooking in a pressure cooker is healthy. Unlike a slow cooker, which cooks foods for a long time at a lower temperature, pressure cookers do use high heat when cooking - but not for a long time. This means that most of the nutrients won't be lost.

Slow cooking the meat means it never has the chance to toughen up and will be extra silky and tender. Pressure cooking is faster, though you may lose a little bit of the tenderness. If you're going for the pressure cook method, be sure to get a pork shoulder or pork butt, as opposed to a pork loin.

There's no doubt a pressure cooker is the best tool for flavorful, gelatin-rich chicken stock that's ready in just about an hour.

If you are slow cooking in the Instant Pot, you should be able to leave your dish cooking overnight for as long as the recipe dictates.

They're actually multi-cookers, so you can sauté, pressure cook, and even slow cook all in the same pot. Using an Instant Pot delivers that all day simmered flavor in a fraction of the time, yielding tender meats and flavorful stews, and saves you from long cook times on the stove or in the oven.

How to use your Instant Pot as a crock pot? ›

If you are interested primarily in slow cooking, you should buy a dedicated slow cooker. They're more reliable with a range of slow-cooker recipes than an Instant Pot. We found Instant Pot multicookers specifically could not successfully slow-cook dense, high-volume recipes such as beef stew or pot roast.

Cooking meat in the slow cooker usually takes 6 to 8 hours, but it will only take about 30 minutes in the Instant Pot. If you include the time it takes to build pressure and release pressure, that means your meat will be cooked in about an hour.

First select 'slow cook' mode. Set your cooking time. Within 10 seconds of setting your cooking time, press the 'adjust' key to toggle between 'less' (keep warm mode on a CrockPot), 'regular' (low on a CrockPot), and 'more' (high on a CrockPot.)

But just because this versatile gadget can technically do it all, that doesn't mean it should. In fact, there are a handful of foods that just shouldn't be pressure-cooked. Among them are dairy and fried foods, as well as burgers and steaks.

According to the Crock-Pot website, Crock-Pot low temp to high conversion times are: Twelve hours on low equals eight hours on high. Ten hours on low equals six hours on high.

There is no difference in taste, provided the food is seasoned equally. The issue here is texture, and the time it takes to cook. A pressure cooker will cook very quickly, and depending on the cut of meat can take up to 1/2 the time or less. The food will come out very tender, also.