If you are a fan of Food Network battle shows like our family, you may have heard of pressure cookers or pressure canners. You may have even heard of epic kitchen catastrophes involving said pressure devices. I love them all; Stories about kitchen disasters and nifty gadgets that use physics to make and preserve amazing food. The Instant pot is only the newest in a long line of appliances that use pressure and steam to cook food. Before I get to those though…let me tell you about my kitchen. There are a few workhorses in my kitchen:

• super beefy Excalibur dehydrator
• 3 huge stock pots and a water bath canner that thinks it’s a stock pot
• KitchenAid stand mixer
• normal crock pot

My Instant Pot electric pressure cooker currently outranks them all as far as versatility and therefore how many times a week I use it. You can see in the picture that it’s not very clean and the front rim is a bit melted. It’s got character! In this post are three things I did with it this past week. Not pictured was the tasty Thai pudding that the husband guy and I loved, but the kids hated (sigh) and 3 quarts of killer bone broth/stock. The pressure really causes the bones to let go of all the good stuff like gelatin and minerals, resulting in a broth/stock that is as good as (or better than) if you had simmered it for 12 hours. Sometimes the stock gets pressured canned in my other beloved pressure device, but that is best left for a later post.

Corra, Layna, and I love yogurt. The other three not so much unless it’s mostly sweetener with flavor and more mix-ins than milk. Oh well. 50% of us really love this feature. Pour milk in pot, blend in some yogurt, push the button and set the time.

We like it thick so I add the extra draining step to get the whey out of it. I usually save a pint or so of the whey to ferment veggies (explanation coming in a few weeks) or start a new batch of yogurt.

I tried baking in it for the very first time with an Almond Flour Carrot Cake. For Christmas I asked for The Keto Instant Pot Cookbook . Layna took care of me and got that cookbook and another one I’m excited about too. What can I say, she loves her mama. So far I’ve really enjoyed the book, even if the fritatta we tried didn’t cook right at all. I’ve got a lot of recipes bookmarked to experiment with (my poor family) and I can’t wait. But as for the cake…again, 50% of us loved it. The consistency was much wetter than a traditional cake, more like custard or flan, and the flavor was great. Next time I’ll play with dry ingredients to get it more cake-like.

This is in my top 5 “most amazing things I’ve ever made ever” list. A simple beef stew from a blog I really enjoy. The beauty of the Instant Pot is that you can sauté stuff before you pressure cook it, or you can sauté stuff and then slow cook it without having to use a frying pan and then a crock pot. Genius. This recipe was phenomenal with our beef stew meat and I’m pretty sure the remaining 10 packages of stew meat are turning into this stew.

Standing at my kitchen counter typing on my laptop, I have salsa chicken being pressurized behind me to change up Taco Salad Night. This thing makes epic pulled pork, chili, and chicken soup. Trader Joe’s makes these dried ravioli and the only way I could get ever them to cook right was in my Instant Pot. Its more mundane features include making perfect rice, beans and steel cut oats. It is my precious.

Next things on my list of things to try in it: cauliflower mac and cheese and dark chocolate cake (and probably peanut butter cheesecake for good measure).