How To Convert Any Recipe To The Instant Pot Pressure Cooker

Welcome to how to convert any recipe to the Instant Pot Pressure Cooker. Learn how easy it is to take all your favourite classic recipes and make them into an Instant Pot pressure cooker style recipe. Free graphic to save for later.

When you get started with the Instant Pot Pressure Cooker you’re often told that it is like going back to school and learning to cook all over again. A bit like if you’re a driver and you’re going from manual to automatic or vice versa.

You kind of have to learn the basics again, get to grips with the basic details of doing so and to learn everything again. You’re still cooking the same dishes as you did before but speeding them up.

That beef stew that has been a family favourite is all of a sudden, a lot quicker to make. You are then freaked out because you overcooked it and now your stew has turned to mush.

What you really need is an Instant Pot Converter that will do all the work for you, so that you can stop serving up baby slop and enjoy the speed that an Instant Pot Pressure Cooker brings you.

That is why I have collected all of my notes together to bring you an easy to use guide that you can use as you cook.

How To Convert ANY Recipe To The Instant Pot Pressure Cooker

Of course, we all like our food differently. Some of us prefer to cook their mashed potatoes in the Instant Pot so that they are super soft and then the job of mashing them is super easy. Others prefer to do them so that they are just soft and then use a hand mixer to finish them. Neither of them is wrong, they are just different ways of going about to do the same thing. So use the information below as a general guide for your own style of cooking.

I would say that you should start with these principles:

#1 – Instant Pot Pressure Cooking Is Just Like Baked BUT Much Quicker

If you imagine that you would normally cook a stew in the oven. You might start it on the hob and then transfer the cooking into the oven with something similar to what we use. The hob cooking is the same as cooking on the sauté setting in the Instant Pot. It will take the same amount of time, though is like the highest setting on the hob, so if you leave it then it will burn.

But what would spend an hour afterwards in the oven can be done in the Instant Pot (or any other pressure cooker) for about a quarter of the time.

If you think of anything you cook in the oven, on the hob, microwave, steam, rice machine, soup machine, pasta machine, then it can be done in the Instant Pot.

I am sure at such a thought, that your mind is going crazy with ideas of what you can cook in your Instant Pot!

#2 – Instant Pot Pressure Cooking Can Be As Healthy Or Unhealthy As You Like

With a lot of kitchen gadgets (well minus the ice cream maker) the reason for getting them is the opportunity to eat healthier. You buy the spiralizer to cut carbs, the bread machine to avoid processed foods and the airfryer to reduce fats. Well with the Instant Pot this is not the case as there are a lot of unhealthy recipes that do the rounds. Our cheesecake recipes are a lot more popular than our healthy recipes as people love to make our cheesecakes in the Instant Pot with a spring form pan.

But our Instant Pot Broccoli, Instant Pot Pork Roast and our stews are just as popular.

To me the Instant Pot is all about speeding up the cooking process. To cook a stew a lot quicker and as a mum to get a meal quickly on the dinner table.

You just choose what kind of cooking you want to do in the Instant Pot Pressure Cooker and start by learning how to cook those dishes. Don’t get into a situation when you want to learn to cook 20 new dishes a week. Instead slow it down, crack one of your favourite dishes in the Instant Pot and go from there.

#3 – The Instant Pot Pressure Cooker Doesn’t Have To Be Full

You can cook with your Instant Pot full or not full and the great thing is that the cooking time doesn’t change. All that changes are the amount of liquid you need, to pull off a lot of cooking. You need to increase it as you cook more so that it doesn’t take forever to cook. You also need to adjust the seasoning as think of it like a watered down soup the more liquid you add.

#4 – Instant Pot Pressure Cooking Up To The Line

Another rule of the thumb is to make sure that you check and make sure that you don’t go over the max mark on the Instant Pot. The lid needs to fit on, the Instant Pot needs to seal and it needs to come to pressure. All of which require space so don’t take it over these lines.

But even the 6 litre one is huge and unless you are cooking something super sized there is no reason why you should go over this limit. In which case maybe an upgrade to the 8 litre is in order???

#5 – Instant Pot Pressure Cooking From Frozen

I often get asked if I can cook from frozen in the Instant Pot Pressure Cooker. The answer is YES you can. BUT when you do it can result in rubbery food. The food just doesn’t taste as good and of course when you are cooking with chicken there is a food safety issue.

What we do in the Milners household is get our meat out the night before. We have a huge chest freezer that we store all our meat and freezer meals and then we get out what we want to eat. Sometimes we will not have made a firm decision in which case we will get out a chicken and then decide the next day what we plan to eat.

#6 – Instant Pot Pressure Cookers Needs Accessories

You need a few things in order to make Instant Pot Pressure Cooking work for you. I can’t live without my Instant Pot Steamer Basket, Spring Form Pans and of course my Ramekins.

When you invest in them once (just like the Instant Pot) they will last you years and save you a huge amount of time and make pressure cooking so easy.

Quick Instant Pot Conversion Chart

I have also put together a quick Instant Pot Pressure Cooker conversion chart. That way if you want something quick for dinner and you want to pressure cook it then you can quickly turn to this list.

It features a lot of my favourite foods and it is great for referencing later.

It includes meat, fish, vegetables, desserts (I cook plenty of those) and so much more:

So as you can see most Instant Pot Pressure Cooker recipes will cook on manual. It’s an easy pressure cooker setting to remember. Plus if you don’t have the actual Instant Pot and hardly any buttons it’s an easy way to get your head around the cooking settings.

Best of luck with your Instant Pot cooking and if you have not yet done so, pick up my Instant Pot Beginners recipe book on Amazon with a HUGE collection of starter recipes and advice to get you started.

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