Three Ways to Flavor Your Instant Meals

As you may have heard, Instant Pot – or rather, the company that owns Instant Pot – filed for bankruptcy due to falling sales. I don’t have the brains for business, but my intuition is that sales are declining because everyone who wants an Instant Pot already has one, and some of those people have fallen out of love with this device. It could also be related to producing too many products under one brand, but then again, I’m not a business person. (Note that Instant Pot products are still available for purchase and another company may purchase the popular brand .)

One of the main disadvantages of the Instant Pot is that the food that comes out of it can be a little bland or “average” as kids say. As cookbook author Jules Sherred explained in his interview with Lifehacker, the most likely culprit is too much liquid. If the Instant Pot is good at one thing, it’s about squeezing water out of fruits, vegetables, and meats, which can be positive or negative, depending on your goal. (However, carbohydrates behave differently and absorb liquid, so the following does not apply to cereals and the like, or to soups and stews that are intentionally high in water.)

Here are a few ways to reduce excess liquid and improve the flavor of your Instant Pot recipes.

You need less liquid than you think

I have seen pork shoulder and pot roast recipes that call for a cup of broth or soy sauce and an extra cup of water. It is not necessary. Large cuts of meat release a lot of moisture during cooking, and adding more liquid than the minimum will dilute the flavor and leave your roast floating in a watery broth. The goal is to eliminate excess fluid, although you cannot get rid of it completely. According to the manufacturer, at least a cup of liquid should be added to the liner to help the device build up pressure and prevent burns.

Unofficially, I paid less, especially when there is enough food in the appliance. While working on a carnitas recipe the other day, I decided to play around with the amount of liquid and added 3/4 cup orange juice rather than the recommended full cup. The instant pot got normal pressure and I never got the terrible burn notification. Encouraged by this, I added even less liquid to my next recipe—just half a cup of liquid (1/4 cup soy sauce and 1/4 cup maple syrup) per serving of beef ribs. This also went well and without incident.

Get them while you can:

• Economy Classic: Instant Pot Duo 7-in-1 Electric Pressure Cooker
• Something with a pressure canning function: the Instant Pot Max multifunctional electric pressure cooker.
• Instant Pot brand fryer: 5.7 quart Instant Pot Vortex Air Fryer Oven

While I would never tell you to ignore the manufacturer’s instructions, I offer you these anecdotal data as inspiration. If you consider yourself a bit of a rebel, experiment with adding 1/2-3/4 cup liquid to Instant Pot recipes (or stovetop recipes you adapt for pressure cookers), but be sure to keep an eye on it when it comes to pressure. You can always open it up and add some liquid if you get an error. Once it comes down to pressure, you can go back to ignoring it until it’s time to eat.

Replace water with other, more flavorful liquids.

If you need to add liquids, it can be tasty too. Just as I recommend replacing the water in the cornstarch slurry with something more palatable, you can replace the water in Instant Pot recipes with broth (or Better Than Bouillon, which has more flavor than real broth), soy sauce, fish. sauce, wine, beer or juice. (Do not add alcohol, the fumes can ignite.) You can also use 50/50 mixtures of broth and liquid sweetener, but avoid all sweeteners as they can burn on the bottom of the pot.

Do not use vegetables as flavoring

As I briefly mentioned above, I’m currently developing an Instant Pot Carnitas recipe, part of which involves reading other already published recipes. In many of these recipes, you add a whole onion and fresh garlic to the pot along with pork and dry seasonings, but that’s a waste of onion and garlic. Not only do fresh ingredients add water, their already unconcentrated flavor is further diluted with the liquid in the pot. (Have you ever noticed how much water evaporates while you’re caramelizing onions? That’s a fair amount.)

Instead, I used onion powder and garlic powder, which have a more concentrated albeit slightly different flavor profile that doesn’t add extra moisture. The pork, which I cooked with 3/4 cup orange juice and dried seasonings, was very tasty, with hints of onion and garlic, without any soft vegetables. Onions and garlic aren’t the only fresh vegetables with dried counterparts; you can add paprika instead of bell peppers, chili powder instead of chili, and dried herbs instead of fresh.

Combine all three of these strategies and you’ll fall in love with the tabletop pressure cooker all over again. If not, well, okay. You might like the deep fryer.