Instant Pot Inspiration

New year, new appliances? Many of you may have recently received a handy Instant Pot or Electric Pressure Cooker during this recent gift giving season. Myself being one of those lucky folks, I’ve been looking through our library for cookbooks to try new recipes and other interesting things to try with this versatile device. 
 
One of the main reasons people get a multicooker is to try to save time while preparing complicated or time-consuming entrees such as brisket or soups. In Dinner in an Instant, Melissa Clark provides several tasty recipes that take advantage of the timesaving aspect of Instant Pot. Recipes for dishes such as baby back ribs and carnitas, which would take a full day to cook, are ready in only a couple of hours with most recipes are complete in about 30 minutes! The multicooker not only speeds up the cooking but it also often means you only have one pot to scrub.
 
If, along with your Instant Pot, you got a few extra pounds for the holidays, never fear! You may feel that you can’t enjoy rich and hearty meals like BBQ chicken and sloppy joes any longer but with Lose Weight with Your Instant Pot, Aubrey Johns has substituted healthier ingredients in her comfort food recipes that she has specially adapted for a pressure cooker to bring to you “Skinny Recipes”. 
 
If you’ve only thought about cooking with your Instant Pot, get ready for a new world of possibilities when you use your Instant Pot for craft projects! Our Maker Space Specialist, Kameco De Los Santos, stumbled across a great craft book for those enterprising and crafty folks. The book is DIY Crafts & Projects for your Instant Pot by David Murphy and has 50 awesome Do-it-Yourself projects to create in your pressure cooker, from beauty products to household hacks. It has a bit of everything for those who fancy themselves more artsy than gourmet. 
 
And if you are super nervous about getting started with the machine, I found The New Pressure Cooker Cookbook by Ellen Brown to be extremely helpful. It gives you a full run-down of the cooking methods, and times for different variations of the recipes in the book. The tables of cooking times and the variety of recipes alone are worth the check out for any multicooker novice.
 
Or if you really prefer getting to know the technology and seeing food demos in person, you can always attend a library event where the device or recipe is front and center. Some Harris County Public library branches, such as our Kingwood branch, host monthly cooking demos, which sometimes include the use of a pressure cooker. Click here to find a food event at one of our libraries.