If you’re an Instant Pot newbie, start here. A soup is the easiest way to introduce yourself to what the cooker can do: The large amount of liquid ensures there’ll be plenty of steam; there are mostly no worries about delicate calibrations, so dinner is easy to accomplish; and you’re relatively free to play around with ingredients.
Since this chapter also includes homemade stocks (even Ramen Broth!), we’d be remiss if we didn’t talk a bit about stock and broth in general. We assume that you won’t first make homemade stock for most of these recipes. You’ll use the store-bought stuff, right? So here’s another question: Have you ever tasted the stuff? We’re amazed that so many people cook with this pantry staple yet have little understanding of what it tastes like.
If you want to take your cooking to the next level—and why not, since the Instant Pot makes it so easy?—invest 20 bucks and buy five or six brands of, say, chicken broth. Open them, put a little of each in separate cups, and barely warm them in the microwave before doing a side-by-side taste test. You’ll discover one is too onion-y; another, too salty. One tastes like chicken; another, like a barnyard. One will be rich; another, watery. And since you’re going all out, taste them side-by-side at room temperature, too. You’ll soon know which suits your taste and which makes the best food for you and yours.
And since we’re on this jag, let’s add that you should do the same taste-testing with vegetable broths, which have an even wider range of acceptable (and unacceptable) flavors. You might be surprised that a less expensive brand tastes better. Price is not a guarantee of quality. It may be a function of a celebrity’s face.
And one last note on the matter of patience: Even in the Instant Pot, soup takes time—not as much as it takes on the stove, but enough that dinner isn’t a 5-minute job. It also shouldn’t be a 5-minute stint at the table. Pour a glass of wine or iced tea. Settle in. Soup’s on.
For most of these recipes, yes. Soaked beans cook more quickly, whether under pressure or in the SLOW COOK mode. But more importantly, they cook more evenly and don’t become as mushy since they’re under pressure for less time.
That said, if soaked beans have not almost doubled in size from their dried state and if almost all of their wrinkles are not smoothed out, they may never get tender, no matter how long they endure the pot’s pressure. Why? See the next answer.
Here’s some bad news: Dried beans do not move off store shelves quickly in our I-want-it-now world. The poor legumes hang out day after day, losing so much moisture through natural evaporation that they may not be tender in a recipe’s stated time. You’ll be able to tell if they’re old by how they plump when they’re soaked.
If, however, the dried beans did plump yet you find they’re still too tough for your taste when you open the pot, do not add any vinegar or salt as the recipe may require at this stage. Instead, lock the lid back onto the pot and give them another 4 minutes at MAX or 5 minutes at HIGH, followed again by whichever method of pressure release the recipe requires.
Yes, dried beans can get waterlogged, particularly dried beans that are relatively “fresh.” Figure on 12 hours as the longest soak.
We may have just cramped your style. Most people want to do the soak overnight, even though they could just put the beans in water in the morning before they head off to the day. However, if you’re an overnight fanatic, soak away, drain them in the morning, pour them into a large bowl, set a piece of plastic wrap right against their surface to protect them from moisture loss, and set them in the fridge for up to 12 hours.
Decent chicken broth is relatively easy to find; acceptable beef broth, next to impossible. In most cases, canned or packaged beef broth tastes like a bouillon cube soaked in murky water. Chicken broth usually has more oomph. (Beef trimmings, the sort to make stock, usually go to the dog-food industry, while chicken trimmings, not so much.) If you can find decent beef broth—or make your own (here)—you’ll be well on your way to a better soup.
It’s an old-fashioned cookbook writers’ trope that “stock” is the homemade stuff and “broth” is the store-bought variety. We’ve adhered to that difference in the ingredient lists in this book (if not always in the recipe titles).
There’s nothing like homemade stock, not only on its own but as part of a recipe: an intense, deep, and satisfying base for a stew or braise. Make stock and squirrel it away in the freezer, especially since the prep is so easy in an Instant Pot. Even if you substitute 1 cup of homemade stock and use purchased broth for the remainder of the amount called for, the results will be dramatically better.
A racist, culinary nightmare. Also, it’s the term for a conical sieve with a very fine mesh, so called in French (shee-NWAH) because it’s said to look like a Chinese guy’s hat. (See?) The gadget’s also called a “china cap” or a “bouillon strainer” (probably in a bid for a more PC kitchen). A good chinois runs about 20 bucks. It’s the best tool for straining out fine, particulate matter from any soup or stock. A decent substitute is a standard colander lined with a double thickness of cheesecloth. But given that cheesecloth costs ten dollars a package, it’s probably more economical to invest in the chinois.