I got the actual Instant Pot. This is my second actually, I got the one that also does air frying.
It's a great purchase. Get some cheap protein that needs to cook for long, get some vegetables, brown the protein a bit (can be done in the Instant Pot), add chopped vegetables, salt, spices, and a little water; pressure cook for 1 hour. Shorter version: add meat, add vegs, add water, turn on.
You can get fancier as you learn, but stews are my favourite food because they require cheap ingredients, and with the instant pot I don't even need to take care of it while it cooks. Toss everything together and turn the thing on. It has a timer and a keep warm function, so you can literally fill it in the morning, and come back from work to a warm pot of stew.
My favorite recipe is chilli con carne, which is little more than minced beef with onions peppers and beans in tomato sauce. Stews, chilli and random salads are 90% of my diet.
> You can get fancier as you learn, but stews are my favourite food because they require cheap ingredients, and with the instant pot I don't even need to take care of it while it cooks. Toss everything together and turn the thing on. It has a timer and a keep warm function, so you can literally fill it in the morning, and come back from work to a warm pot of stew.
This is the main issue I have with my model: it won't let you stew for more than 30 minutes at a time. It's a huge PITA to come back to it and start it again, since you can't just go out and about your business and leave it to do its thing.
I don't know what the limit is on pressure-cooking, the 30 minutes is for non-pressured "slow cook" mode. It won't engage the "pressure-cooking" mode if the lid is not secured in place. I never needed to pressure-cook for more than 30 minutes at a time, though. The longest recipe I had was, IIRC, 30 + 15 minutes. The recipe said to put dry beans in, pressure-cook for 30 minutes, release pressure, add sausage, cook for 15 more minutes.
Instant Pot is great while it lasts. I had one die on me (the electronics), and after asking for photo evidence they denied warranty coverage. A year later they went bankrupt.
There are traditional pressure cookers too. I got one as a Christmas present that I use now and then but I admit I probably don't use it as casually as I would an instant pot. (I also have an old slow cooker I use in the same non-casual way.)
It's a Moulinex Cookeo (French brand). They have multiple varieties, I'd skip the ones with a phone connection and pretending to do 500 recipes, and go for the basic one. It's a big bowl that gets hot. That's it. I'm not convinced this is fundamentally better than a random old-school pressure cooker, but in my case, the apartment I was renting at the time had a shitty electrical stove, so it helped a lot. The self-timer is also nice.
I usually save recipes on my phone, editing out the fluff and keeping the ingredients and directions, so I don't have links for them anymore.
The recipe says "serve over rice". In my case, the picadillo tends to have a lot of sauce. What I like doing is cooking the right amount of rice for the whole batch, then dumping it with the rest of the dish. It'll soak up most of the sauce. The rice may not end up what people typically call "well-cooked rice", but I don't care and actually prefer it this way. You can also replace the rice with a quinoa mix. Or do both rice + quinoa, but this is a pain because their cooking times are different. It goes great with pasta, too. Also, as filling for tortillas, but you have to manage the sauce, or it's annoying to eat. In all cases, adding some grated cheese is great, but not necessary.
I've initially found those randomly searching for "instant pot recipe" on google. Some general recommendations: don't be afraid to dump in a lot of vegetables. If the recipe calls for "half an onion" or "small onion" and you only have big ones and nothing to do with the remaining half, put it all in. Same for peppers and tomatos. If it asks for tomato sauce and you only have big containers (they tend to be cheaper), dump it all in and just cook for a bit longer with the top off. Also works if the recipe calls for tomato paste, it's sometimes cheaper to make your own from tomato sauce.
Generally speaking, you don't have to follow recipes to a T. What I like to say is that "given what you put in, it's hard to get something bad out". The worst that happened to me was when I dropped too many peppercorns in. The taste was still great, but it was a PITA to fish them out one by one.
It's a great purchase. Get some cheap protein that needs to cook for long, get some vegetables, brown the protein a bit (can be done in the Instant Pot), add chopped vegetables, salt, spices, and a little water; pressure cook for 1 hour. Shorter version: add meat, add vegs, add water, turn on.
You can get fancier as you learn, but stews are my favourite food because they require cheap ingredients, and with the instant pot I don't even need to take care of it while it cooks. Toss everything together and turn the thing on. It has a timer and a keep warm function, so you can literally fill it in the morning, and come back from work to a warm pot of stew.
My favorite recipe is chilli con carne, which is little more than minced beef with onions peppers and beans in tomato sauce. Stews, chilli and random salads are 90% of my diet.