The London Review of Books (“LRB”) published “Too Specific and Too Vague“, a review by the English culinary writer Bee Wilson of two recent books that refer to the ways that Asian cooking encountered English tastes in England in the 20th century. One book is about the work of 7 women presenting immigrant dishes in British and American restaurants and cook books. The other was about the history of the English word curry. The article appears to be accessible, LRB has had a paywall. I am not sure if the paywall is taken off selected articles, or has been removed, or if a bypass plugin is necessary.
The story is complicated and nuanced. English adventurers encountered Indian cooking as early as the 16th century. Manufactured curry powders – blends of ground dry spices -became popular in the 19th century. The English labelled several other spicy dishes encountered in Asia as curry. In the 20th century, immigrants to Britain cooked and sold spicy food. The English liked the food. The English found it simpler to call anything made by immigrants from India, Pakistan, Bangla Desh and other parts of Southeast Asia “curry”. English lexicographers concluded that the English decided that anything like anything cooked with manufactured condiment curry powder was curry. As the history of the term involved English colonialism and empire, and the reaction of the English to South Asians immigrants, the lexicographers’ decision was controversial.
Ms. Wilson mentioned Madhur Jaffrey, an Asian immigrant writer:
As a teenager, I started cooking from Madhur Jaffrey’s books and saw with a jolt that, for Indian cooks, hearing British people declaring they loved curry could come across as a crass postcolonial misrepresentation. Jaffrey arrived in London from Delhi in 1955 to study at Rada, and taught herself to cook using her mother’s recipes because she disliked English food (except fish and chips). In England, Indian food was thought to be anything sprinkled with curry powder …
‘To me the word “curry” is as degrading to India’s great cuisine as the term “chop suey” was to China’s,’ Jaffrey wrote in An Invitation to Indian Cooking (1973). ‘“Curry” is just a vague, inaccurate word which the world has picked up from the British, who, in turn, got it mistakenly from us … If “curry” is an oversimplified name for an ancient cuisine, then “curry powder” attempts to oversimplify (and destroy) the cuisine itself.’
….
For all its flaws, we seem to be stuck with the word because there are many occasions when there is no satisfactory synonym in the English language. Look at what a hash the OED [Oxford English Dictionary] makes of trying to pin it down. Curry, it says, is ‘a preparation of meat, fish, fruit or vegetables, cooked with a quantity of bruised spices and turmeric, and used as a relish or flavouring, esp. for dishes composed of or served with rice. Hence, a curry = a dish or stew (of rice, meat, etc) flavoured with this preparation (or with curry powder).’ This definition is both far too specific and too vague.
….
Some of the curry deniers have softened their stance. … in the years since Jaffrey’s diatribe against curry in 1973, she has written a series of curry-themed books including Curry Easy, Curry Easy Vegetarian, 100 Essential Curries, 100 Weeknight Curries, Madhur Jaffrey’s Ultimate Curry Bible and Madhur Jaffrey’s Curry Nation. Presumably, this was partly a way of luring as many readers as possible by seeming to offer something familiar. In Madhur Jaffrey’s Curry Nation she wrote: ‘If Britain once colonised India, India has now returned the favour by watching spellbound as its food completely colonised Britain.’ That book was dedicated to Britain, ‘the Curry Nation that welcomed me all those many years ago’.
Last week I found a recipe in the American writer Anupy Singla’sIndian Slow Cooker for a dish titled “Chickpea Flour Yogurt Curry” which explained that this curry is a kadhi, a northern dish made with dairy and chickpea flour. I used the slow cooker recipe, (that book had options for full size crockpots and 3.5 quart pots), in a 6 quart Instant Pot, in a slow cooker program. I used buttermilk for the dairy, intead of yogurt. See Anupy Singla’s online Instant Pot recipe for a pressure cooker/multicooker method of cooking this dish. Ms. Singla also describes stir fried vegetable – e.g. Aloo Gobi – by the word sabji.
Most bread is made of grain that has been harvested and milled, to be hydrated, kneaded, and baked. Agricultural, industrial and culinary art have extended the usefulness of grain, but have not created a product to compare to the lembas bread of the elves in The Lord of the Rings. Bread is edible and palatable for a few days.
Bread is … an intermediate-moisture food product that is prone to mould spoilage. Normally bread is eaten fresh or preserved using additives or modified atmosphere packaging.
There are some breads that are baked hard and last longer – crackers and hardtack. Commercial bakers use additives and packaging – plastic – to extend the period of time that ordinary soft bread remains safe and palatable; there are some uses for stale bread.
Bread is porous and moist; it is vulnerable to mould (mold in the American spelling). Moulds reproduce by releasing microscopic spores. There are hundreds or thousands of spores in every cubic meter of household air. Most household filtration devices do not trap or control these spores. Mould spores will get on bread. Not all moulds thrive on bread, but several do. A mould, like a mushroom, has a mycelium of thread-like “roots”. Mould has health effects. Many moulds produce toxins. The antibiotic penicillin was derived from a common mould, that is popularly said to have been a bread mould. That is not a reason to eat mouldy bread.
Breadboxes are a convenient way of storing bread, and largely effective at protecting bread from most household animal and insect pests. Most people have a storage system for bread. Some kitchens have bread drawers in counters and cabinets. Modern breadboxes are often vented or have loose doors and lids or some mechanism to allow air flow that lets bread dry a bit – which delays mould, although it exposes the bread to some risks. Packaging can keep loaves from drying out for a few days. A consumer can combine a ventilated bread box with paper or bread bags or other wrapping. Many modern breadboxes use plastic or silicon seals to maintain the bread in an airtight chamber. This retains moisure and creates a humid storage space for bread. This delays bread drying out, and protects against some pests. This kind of box needs to be washed and disinfected regularly.
Refrigeration does not delay drying and staling. Some moulds grow in/on refrigerated foods. Some people use the refrigerator to store sandwich breads. Bread can be frozen and thawed. There is the practice, said to popular among the Dutch, of freezing and thawing bread.
Home bakers, bread machine bakers and internet advice sites have suggestions on inhibiting mould:
An article published at thespruceeats.com makes some sensible suggestions, unfortunately tending toward making over the kitchen.
I have tried storage options:
Vented breadboxes;
A Tupperware 23 cup (5.5 liter) plastic box with a hinged sealed lid. It is large enough to hold large (2 lb.) bread machine loaves. It seems to be airtight. Bread picks up mould spores which grow into mould on anything in the box, even crumbs. After a week or so it starts to become a petrie dish;
Metal tins with lids. Old cookie tins are too small, I have a manufacturer’s container for potato chips as sold in the 1950s and early 1960s. My mother had a few, used to store flour, rolled oats and sugar. This can hold a loaf or two. It may not do well with humid contents – I don’t want to see if the interior metal rusts, or find out what rust does for bread.
There are plastic food storage boxes on the market that will hold a loaf of bread. These keep a loaf from drying out, but are humid. These. like my Tupperware, have to be regularly washed to remove crumbs and prevent mould. I don’t want a new ceramic bread storage container, an accessory suggested on some sites, or another airtight container.
My answer is a ventilated bread box, with some packaging, in a clean kitchen. Housework, more housework.
This post was published in 2021, with some later editing and further thoughts after more experience.
Cooked or Canned
Cooked dry beans are a staple ingredient. Some recipes provide directions for cooking dry beans as a step in a recipe, or by reference to another recipe for cooked beans in the recipe source/collection. Some recipes call for canned beans, rinsed. This is common in slow cooker recipes. Canned bean are dry beans cooked in the canning process. Dry beans may take twice the cooking time as other ingredients, or may not cook properly. Canned beans have cooking fluid in the can. This may contain sodium and other residual ingredients. It may be unpalatable. The extra fluid may affect the recipe. Most recipes recommend rinsing the beans and discarding the fluid.
Cooked beans can be substituted for canned beans in any recipe. The benefits are not paying for factory cooking and other supplier and seller costs built into in the price of canned goods, and avoidance of salt and additives. The cooking fluid can be used in the recipe or set aside and used as a vegetarian stock – it depends on how it tastes.
1/2 cup of dry beans makes 1 1/2 cups of cooked beans, the amount in one 14 fluid ounce can of canned cooked beans. Precision is generally not necessary:
For recipes requiring precise proportions, you should always cook … the dried beans before you measure them, using the average equivalents as a rough guide to estimate the amount of dried beans you need to prepare. Many bean recipes are fairly forgiving and adjustable.
The Spruce Eats – How to Measure and Use Dried Beans
Soaking before cooking starts hydration. It reduces the cooking time and improves the result. This is true for every cooking method except the extremely slow simmering e.g. in a ceramic olla as Rick Bayliss describes in some of his books on Central American and Mexican cooking. Soaking for at least a few hours prepares dry beans. The common advice is to soak overnight. This may mean 12 hours but can mean over 20 hours. Cook’s Illustrated/American’s Test Kitchen explained its tests on soaking at pp. 256-258 of The Science of Good Cooking (2012).
Some phaseolus vulgaris (Central American beans) varietals take up more water than others. For instance cannellini (white kidney beans) absorb more than pinto peas or black turtle bean.
Cook’s Illustrated/American’s Test Kitchen discusses variations on soaking: soaking in water at ambient (room) temperature, quick-soaking cook dry beans for a short time in boiling water or in a pressure cooker. The “quick-soak” or parcooking methods use any appliance and vessel that can hold dry beans in boiling water. Anupy Singla’s slow cooker recipe (The Indian Slow Cooker) for red kidney beans says quick soak in boiling water, and 5 hours on high in an electric crock pot type slow cooker. Laura Pazzaglia discusses soaking methods and times in her article/lesson Long-soaking and Quick-soaking beans in the Pressure Cooker and soaking for pressure cookers (including Instant Pots) in her article/lesson Pressure Cooking DRY versus SOAKED Beans.
Cook’s Illustrated/American’s Test Kitchen also explains soaking in brine, and/or adding baking soda to the cooking water. These use sodium to some degree. I have not tried them, as I avoid sodium. Those publishing brands tend to aim at an audience of home cooks striving to cook like restaurants, most of which use salt heavily for the taste buds of modern consumers, sensitized to highly salted foods.
The claim that soaking dry beans removes “indigestable sugars” and helps to avoid intestinal gas is common but unverified. Beans contain sugars: stachyose, verbascose and raffinose which ferment in the digestive tract, producing gas. There is support for the claim that soaking removes some sugars in some medical and scientific literature. For instance see this Michigan State University extension publication. However, soaking cannot remove sugars without removing other nutrients and flavour ingredients, and probably does not remove much sugar.
Instant Pot options
The pressure cooker program can cook unsoaked dry beans. It can be used to “quick soak” dry beans.
The pressure cooker program or the slow cooker program can be used, of cousse to cook soaked beans.
Medium and Large Phaseolus & Chickpeas
Rick Bayless’s slow cooker recipes for black (turtle) beans and pinto beans in Mexican Everyday (2006) start with unsoaked dry beans, to emulate cooking in an olla, discussed in his Authentic Mexican (1987), and Mexico, One Plate at a Time (2000). In Mexico, One Plate at a Time (at p. 192) he reported cooking in an olla heated the beans and water to 205-210 degrees (F), with little evaporation. He says 6 hours on the high setting in a slow cooker. In an Instant Pot with the slow cooker program this is 6 hours on the high slow cooker using the the sealing lid, with the pressure valve set to vent. Other traditional slow cooker recipe propose 8-10 hours slow cooker low for unsoaked black, pinto, cranberry (i.e. medium Phaseolus). I cooked small recipes in a small round traditional slow cooker on low in lower times.
Chickpeas and the large dry beans such as red kidney, Borlotti, cannellini, cranberry can be slow cooked in an Instant Pot by a three stage process:
a few hours by the natural method of soaking in water at room temperature – the beans will take up some water and swell;
in the Instant Pot, with enough water to cover the beans by a centimeter, a pressure cooker program “quick soak” (two minutes at high pressure, and a manual release); and
top up the water to cover the beans, and 2-4 hours at slow cooker program, high. If I have time, I keep the beans simmering at slow cooker program medium (which is equivalent to traditional crock pot low) for 3-6 hours. The beans can be kept warm as slow cooker program low, or the warming program.
This works in a six quart Instant Pot with one or two cups of dry beans in the bottom of the Instant Pot in less than a quart of water.
The larger phaseolus varieties are not necessarily the hardest. This method worked with seda beans, with extra time, but the beans were old.
100% whole wheat loaves may be made with a bread machine in the whole wheat program. High WW flour formulas that aim for sandwich loaves with an moderately open crumb use a dough with enhanced visco-elastic properties; the dough is enhanced with vital wheat gluten or bread flour and enriched with fats – oil or butter – and sugar in the form of molasses, honey, milk, brown sugar or refined sugar.
Much “whole wheat” bread multigrain bread. Multigrain covers many blends made with 50-90% flour being high protein white flour and some whole wheat flour. Loaves with high white flour content may use, and carmelized sugar products (e.g. molasses) for sweet flavour and brown colour. These loaves deliver the energy part of nutrition – starch – like sandwich bread and other processed carbohydrates. A multigrain loaf high in white flour can be baked in a bread machine with the basic bake program.
Bread machine recipes have to be customized; each machine needs a different amount of yeast to ferment to produce enough carbon dioxide to inflate the dough and make the dough rise within the time limits of the program. The best way to find the right amount of yeast for a bread machine recipe is to understand the manufacturer’s recipe for basic bread. The amount of yeast depends on the type of yeast and amount of salt in the recipe. I use instant yeast, and I write recipes in tables.
The manufacturer’s recipe for the whole wheat program is a suggestion of how produce a goof loaf with whole wheat flour, water, salt, added gluten, sugar, fats, and dry yeast in 4 hour program. Zojirushi’s recipe for 100% Whole Wheat Bread provides medium (1.5 lb.) and large (2 lb.) loaf formulas for the Zojirushi machines with large pans such as the BB-PAC20. I used those recipes to find out how to leaven 100% whole wheat for that device, a precaution to avoid overflowing or collapsing loaves.
The Zojirushi medium (1.5 lb.) recipe says to use 3.5 cups/420 g. of whole wheat flour recipe. The manual recommends measuring by scooping flour into a measuring cup – i.e. lightly scooped and less dense. This is a 3 cup recipe by weight. The manual says 4.2 g. [1.5 tsp] active dry yeast. 3 cups of whole wheat flour can be leavened with 3.6 g. of any instant yeast [a little more than 1 ¼ teaspoons]. It used a teaspoon of salt which is much healthier than many whole wheat recipes, but can be reduced using the usual calculations. Because I try to use 33% or 50% of the sodium (salt), than a recipe prescribes, I have to make a corresponding adjustment to yeast. The rule of reducing salt and yeast in the same proportion by weight works with whole wheat.
The dough made with the Z. recipe is enhanced with vital wheat gluten at a ratio of 1 tbsp. to 1 cup flour (8 g. to 139 g.). This exceeds the often generous prescriptions of Beth Hensperger for a 100% whole wheat loaf in the Bread Lovers Bread Machine Cookbook. The Z. dough is enriched with sugar, >43 g. for 417 g. of flour in a medium loaf (35 g. refined sugar, 7.5 g sugar in 10 g. molasses, lactose in milk powder) i.e. about 9% of dry ingredient weight. The recipe bakes into a denser bread than I like, which is fixed by reducing the water by a few teaspoons to get a loaf that rises, crowns and holds a loaf shape. Bakers hydrate whole wheat flour more intensely that bread flour to get suitable dough. Some of the water comes out in the baking. Whole wheat loaves have to be left to cool and dry out a bit. I find that in a machine, I can just leave out a little water. I can happily bake and eat this bread. I haven’t tried to toast it.
I have baked Beth Henspergers “Tecate Ranch Whole Wheat”, BLBMC (p. 126), a 100% whole wheat flour loaf enriched with canola oil, honey, and molasses a few times. It gets sugar from honey, molasses and milk powder (lactose is milk and dry milk is a sugar) . It may have as much or more sugar than the Zojirushi formula. BLBMC named it for a spa in Baja California that served “Zarathustra” bread; the spa used Zoroastrianism as one its themes. Exotic naming was a staple of marketing several times, in different decades of the 19th and 20th centuries. For an SF reading of the name, consider watching 2001: a Space Odessey, listening to the fanfare of Thus Spake Zarathustra. This could inspire a vision of black monolith. With gluten and adequate yeast the loaf rises and crowns nicely. I adapted the BLBMC source – it uses too much yeast (and is not low sodium). I get a loaf that rises, crowns and holds a loaf shape with just a little less water.
Adding gluten offsets the tendency of whole wheat to produce dense loaves by providing enough additional elasticity to use the CO2 produced by fermentation to provide some crumb and lift. The sugar weakens the gluten slightly, which enhances pan flow.
Organic stone ground flour doesn’t require changes to recipes. It seems to lead to slightly more open and rustic crumb. I am not able to find a flavour difference.
I have a Flax seed multigrain loaf recipe with 2 cups of bread flour and 1 cup of whole wheat flour for a medium loaf. I am adapting my sister’s Flax Seed Whole Wheat bread with 2.5 cups of whole wheat flour, 1 cup of white flour, oatmeal, sunflower seeds, flax seeds, poppy seeds, flax meal, and 1.75 cups milk. It works in her machine, producing a loaf with an open crumb. I have adapted it for the Zojirushi BB-PAC20 for low sodium – this is a work in progress.
I am describing the small dry legumes, including lentils, as opposed to small phaseolus beans (including black turtle beans). T
These legumes are commonly sold as dry grain; some canned lentils are available. Some were sold in bulk food stores and as bulk foods in grocery stores. The availability of bulk products was affected in 2020 by the Covid-19 epidemic.
Lentils
Lentils (Lens culinaris and related species) have several varieties which look different and cook differently. Brown lentils cook (get soft in boiling or simmering temperature water) faster. Green lentils take longer and taste different. Some of the differences in cooking time are shortened or can be ignored with pressure cookers and slow cookers. Recipes may suggest soaking some small legumes, but soaking is often left out.
The interior parts of brown lentils are reddish pink and can be hulled and processed into red lentils. Some exporters, wholesalers and retailers refer to brown lentils as red lentils. Some Green and brown/crimson lentils grown in the US (Pacific Northwest, Eastern Washington, Northern Idaho) and Western Canada are larger than other lentils. Canadian growers mainly grow green culinaris lentils of the Laird, Richlea and Eston varieties, and a large crimson lentil (Lens esculanta).
Whole green and brown lentils and red/pink/salmon lentils grown in the US or Canada were widely available in grocery stores before Covid-19. Whole brown lentils were popular in stores in the US but not as common in Canada. The availability and presentation began to vary during the pandemic. Black lentils, small lentils that cook brown, were and are a specialized product, remained available in some channels.
Other
Other small dry legumes could be available in stores specializing in selling supplies for South Asian, Middle Eastern, North Afican, or regional European cuisines or health themed stores including vegetarian/vegan.
Legume, English/Euro name(s)
South Asian
Condition
Appearance
Dry
Cooked
dark chickpea
chana dal (duhli)
split, hulled
yellow
pigeon pea
toor dal (duhli)
split, hulled
yellow
moong bean, mung bean
(sabut) moong dal
whole
green
moong bean
moong dal (duhli)
split, hulled
yellow
yellow
urad bean black bean
(sabut) urad dal
whole
black
black
urad bean
urad dal (duhli)
split, hulled
white
brown (spanish or german) lentil
(sabut) masoor dal
whole
brown
brown
red, pink, salmon lentil
masoor dal (duhli)
hulled and split
red
yellow
crimson lentil
hulled and/or split
red, large
yellow
green lentil
whole
pale green
French green lentil Lentil de Puys
whole
dark green, speckled
black or beluga lentil
whole
black
brown
Cooking
Lentils and other small legumes are almost inedible to humans without cooking. The hulls are hard and have to be removed mechnically, or softened by cooking; the seeds are dry and hard and have to be softened by cooking. Many recipes reduce split and hulled legumes to a gruel. Recipes for whole legumes may specify a legume with a hull that softens rapidly such as a French lentil. Other recipes for whole small legumes require long cooking – e.g. the urad bean. The seeds have to be flavoured, often by an infusion of other plants including peppers. Meat and vegetables can be cooked with legumes for nutrition or flavour. Some recipes cook small legumes in a sauce. South Asian dal recipes may require a tarka – a sauce of spices friend in oil or ghee (clarified butter) be added to cooked legumes and other ingredients. Some recipes pre-cook small legumes, and cook the legumes with other ingredients in soup, sauce or stew.
The modern kitchen provides several options for cooking dry legumes. all involving cooking in water at a boil or simmer. There are recipes to simmer small legumes in ceramic tagines and other ceramic vessels. Few cooks have such tools. On a stove, in a metal vessel, sources favour bringing the water to a rolling boil and backing off to gentlly boiling, braising or steady simmering. Cooks judge simmer or gentle boil differently. Stove and pots perform differently. Beans may be old.
Traditional slow cooker recipes for usually start from dry (unsoaked) legumes. Traditional slow cooker recipes work in pressure multi-cookers such as Instant Pots in the slow cooker program, with adjustments. There are Instant Pot and pressure multi-cooker recipes for the slow cooker program. Electric pressure cooker and pressure multi-cooker pressure program recipes also usually start from dry (unsoaked legumes). The cooking times are at pressure, and do not estimate or count the time for the machine to preheat to pressure. The release of pressure has to be natural (i.e. about 15 – 20 minutes). Slow cookers, pressure cooker and pressure multi-cookers can pre-cook dry legumes, or cook a recipe using dry legumes in a sauce or stew.
Sources provide a range of cooking times (minutes unless other unit noted):
Legume/Dal
Source
Simmer
Slow cooker
Electric Pressure
Brown, Green, French Green or Black (beluga) lentil
How to Cook Everything and, How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, Mark Bittman
20-30 test and cook longer depending on tenderness
brown lentil
Italian Vegetarian Cookbook (1997), Jack Bishop
25-35
brown lentil
Pakistani & North Indian Cooking (2015), S. Abbas Razza
45
brown or green lentil
366 Delicious Ways to Cook Rice, Beans and Grains (1998), Andrea Chesman
25-40
brown or green lentil
Easy Beans (1994), Tish Ross and Jacqueline Trafford
30-40; 1-2 hrs for soups
green lentil
At Home with Madhur Jaffrey (1973), Madhur Jaffrey
40
brown lentil
The Indian Slow Cooker (2nd ed. 2018), Anupy Singla
Low; 3 hrs
brown or green lentil
Hip Pressure Cooking (2014), Laura Pazzaglia
High 12-14
brown or green lentil
Vegan Under Pressure (2016), Jill Nusinow
High 6
red lentil
366 Delicious Ways to Cook Rice, Beans and Grains (1998), Andrea Chesman
15
red lentil
At Home with Madhur Jaffrey (1973), Madhur Jaffrey
40-45
red lentil
Indian for Everyone (2014), Anupy Singla; The Indian Slow Cooker (2nd ed. 2018), Anupy Singla
12 + final boil
Low; 3-6 hrs
red lentil
The Complete Slow Cooker (2017), America’s Test Kitchen
High; 2-3 hrs Low; 3-4 hrs
red lentil
Hip Pressure Cooking (2014), Laura Pazzaglia
High 1
red lentil
Vegan Under Pressure (2016), Jill Nusinow
High 6 +
toor dal (duhli)
At Home with Madhur Jaffrey (1973), Madhur Jaffrey
1 hr +
chana dal, toor dal (duhli),
Indian for Everyone (2014), Anupy Singla; The Indian Slow Cooker (2nd ed. 2018), Anupy Singla
*soaked 2-4 hrs, 25-60
High; 6 hrs
sabut moong dal
Indian for Everyone (2014), Anupy Singla; The Indian Slow Cooker (2nd ed. 2018), Anupy Singla
25-30
Low; 2 ⅟₂ hrs
moong bean
Hip Pressure Cooking (2014), Laura Pazzaglia
High 7-8
sabat urad dal
Indian for Everyone (2014), Anupy Singla; The Indian Slow Cooker (2nd ed. 2018), Anupy Singla
1 ⅟₂ hrs
High; 8 hrs
moong dal duhli
At Home with Madhur Jaffrey (1973), Madhur Jaffrey
The Instant Pot was successfully brought to market but stumbled into the re organizational form of bankruptcy under modern private equity management in 2023 after a merger. The history is discussed in a Wikipedia entry.
During the bankruptcy several retail companies stopped carrying Instant Pots The company emerged from bankruptcy and liquidated stocks of accessories, maintenance items (pressure seals, for instance). Some retail firms have started to sell Instant Pots.
Pressure Cooker
The Instant Pot is as an electric pressure cooker, with settings that would allow the device to function as a slow cooker, as a saute pan (skillet), and to serve as a rice cooker for some kinds of rice. It was similar to other pressure multi-cooker devices.
It was a modern pressure cooker with some safety features that affected the way the device could be used. It would warn a user or even shut down if the temperature of the cooking surface rose too high. The device would display a “burn” warning. This prevented the use of the device for some skillet tasks such as slowly cooking bacon or other fatty products to render the fats to liquid.
An Instant Pot can be used in the pressure cooker program for simple cooked legumes, and some curries and prepared dal dishes. The pressure cooker program will be the better choice for some dishes. The pressure cooker program is also useful to cook or quick soak dry legumes for slow cooker dishes. Laura Pazzaglia has a chart of legumes and pressure cooking times, starting from dry, naturally soaked, and quick-soaked. It is comprehensive, with a few gaps and ambiguities:
Her “split chickpeas” means hulled split dark chickpeas (chana dal);
Split yellow and red lentils. The yellow split lentil may be a hulled split moong bean (moong dal duhli). The split red (or pink or salmon) lentil masoor dal duhli) is a hulled split brown lentil. Her moong dal and masoor dal recipes call for longer cooking times for these dry beans than her table.
She doesn’t include pigeon peas or split pigeon peas (toor dal); but her recipe for toor dal suggests soaking for a short time and about 10 minute high pressure – like borlotti, cannellini, and pinto beans;
The black bean in her chart is the (small-medium) Central American black turtle bean, a Phaseolus.
She doesn’t include whole urad beans (black gram), small hard black beans (technically Vigna, a pea). Her recipe for urad beans suggests cooking whole urad beans like black beans – 7 minutes on high, followed by natural release. Madhur Jaffrey would soak them overnight, cook 30 minutes on high, and natural release.
Slow Cooker
Recipes for (traditional) slow cookers assume:
heat is delivered by the element around the lower vertical sides of a ceramic crock to food totally or partly immersed in a cooking fluid;
fluid near the element may reach boiling temperature and bubble. The hot fluid circulates between and around the food at the micro and macro levels and transfers heat to ingredients further away from the hot sides. Food near the element may cook faster or even reach a sauté/fry/burn temperature;
the average temperature of the food in the pot will increase over time but circulation of fluid and heat depends on what’s cooking;
the device will not get hot enough to bake or steam the ingredients within normal cooking time;
two cooking settings: low and high
low gets the food to same temperature as high, more slowly.
The first couple of hours on either setting raise temperature to the lower end of the range when the food starts to cook;t
6 hours on low is equivalent to 4 hours on high.
Many traditional slow cooker recipes for 5 to 6 quart crocks or cooking vessels involve 2-3 quarts of food and fluid. Many traditional slow cooker recipes call for 4-6 hours on low or 2-4 hours on high. An Instant Pot can simmer food in fluid for long slow cooking, but recipes that work in traditional slow cookers will not necessarily work in an Instant Pot. Laura Pazzaglia says:
Readers have reported under-cooked food and less evaporation when slow cooking with all Instant Pot models, … The under-cooking is … a side-effect of all new generation thermostat-regulated slow cookers versus the traditional wattage-regulated cookers and the uneven heat distribution between a stainless steel insert compared to ceramic inserts.
A traditional slow cooker “warm” setting and Instant Pot slow cooker program Less (Low) are not cooking settings! The Instant Pot slow cooker program cooking settings involve a preheat period to get to the set temperature, as read by the sensor, and a timed period, in half hour increments. The preheat is short and relatively cool. Instant Pot identifies three temperature settings for the slow cooker program in its pressure multi-cooker product lines in the 6 and 8 quart models. The Instant Pot manuals for the Duo and Ultra models (5, 6, and 8 quart) indicate the slow cooker program cooks in a range of 180-210 F. The ranges for each setting:
Traditional Slow Cooker≃
Duo
Ultra
Range
Set
Less
Low
180-190 ℉ (82-87.8)℃
185 (85)
low
Normal
Medium
190-200 (87.8 – 93)
194 (90)
high
More
High
200 – 210 (93 – 99)
208 (97.7)
Custom
≥ 104 – ≤ 208 (40-97.7)
The heat source in a pressure cooler is an element at the bottom of a tall narrow pot. There is a temperature variance between temperature read by a sensor at the bottom and temperature read 2 cm from the top surface. The Instant Pot slow cooker program on High/More gets 1 – 3 quarts of ingredients in fluid to a good simmering temperature and keeps the temperature at the set temperature – near the element – for the entire cooking period. 4 hours on Instant Pot slow cooker program at the High/More setting means 4 hours at the set cooking temperature. at 4 hours on high in a traditional slow cooker involves a lower average temperature for the first hour (subject to hot spots) and a higher average temperature during the last 2 or 3 hours.
Cookbooks
Instant Pot and other appliance manufacturers exaggerate the convenience of electric pressure cookers and multi-cookers as devices that can cook an entire main course in one pot at the same time. Slow cooker program recipes of Instant Pots and other pressure multi-cookers are rare. The Instant Pot genre is largely devoted to pressure cooking. Madhur Jaffrey has recipes for lamb (and goat) including a lamb pilaf using the slow cooker program of an Instant Pot (her Instantly Indian Cookbook refers to a 6 quart Duo v. 3)
A sub-genre of multi-cooker cookbooks and recipes provides recipes that have a common first stage, with alternative fast (pressure cooker) and slow (slow cooker) methods for finishing. The first stage includes prepping ingredients and may include using the sauté function to fry some ingredients. This approach fosters the impession that the should be a convenient 9 (i.e. less that 4-6 hour) slow cooker alternative for every fast recipe. The cookbooks in this genre:
Melissa Clark’s Dinner in an Instant (2017);
Cooks Illustrated/America’s Test Kitchen Multicooker Perfection (2018);
Milk Street Fast and Slow (2020).
Cooks Illustrated/ATK’s Multicooker Perfection (2018) reported that the Instant Pot slow cooker high setting will heat 4 quarts of water in an 8 quart model to to 206 ℉. – a simmer. The Multicooker Perfection Team warned that High/More did not reliably do what traditional slow cooker high was supposed to do. Cooks Illustrated/ATK asserted that the Instant Pot did not deliver enough heat, the right way, in its slow cooker program, to emulate a traditional slow cooker. Heating 4 quarts of water to a near boil temperature tests the capability of the device to heat that much water. Some cooks may want to make 4 quarts of soup or stock by a slow cooker recipe. The lesson in the CI/ATK test is that the Instant Pot slow cooker program will not get that amount of fluid hot enough.
CI/ATK suggests using Instant Pot slow cooker high setting where a Multicooker Perfection recipe says slow cooker low. This is useful advice. Christopher Kimball and his team at Milk Street Cooking provided what they found to be realistic slow cooking times for the slow option for recipes in Milk Street Fast and Slow (2020), and practical tips on using the Instant Pot to prepare ingredients for a slow cooker recipe.
An Instant Pot user can heat the fluid to boiling in another program (or boil it in another device and add it it to the Instant Pot) before using the slow cooker program to simmer. The slow cook high setting will maintain the contents of the pot at the simmer temperature. The Instant Pot slow cooker program works, with limitations. A few suggestions when experimenting with the slow cooker program:
Precook or parcook or prepare dry legumes, or other suitable ingredients in fluid on the pressure cooker or sauté setting. The pressure cook program can be used for a short pressure quick-soak of dry legume or to cook the dry legumes;
Consider other tools and methods to sauté or brown other ingredients;
Keep the quantity to 2 – 3 quarts of food and fluid in a 6 quart pot;
The optional tempered glass lid is not helpful in using the slow cooker program; it may be counterproductive. It is better to use the sealing lid with the pressure release valve open. (The glass lid can let some heat out while simmering on a higher heat settings);
Leave time to finish cooking by some faster method if a dish is not finished on time and consider using other tools and methods to finish.
A dish that does not cook in a reasonable time can be started or finished in a vessel that can be heated on a stovetop. This will involve watching and stirring to distribute heat. Or the the Instant Pot can be reset and started in another program ( the Ultra models’ slow cook custom settings and Ultra program are not useful for the extra heat parts of these tasks but can be used to carry out some low heat tasks):
boiled for a while and then simmered on a slow cooker program setting,or
simmered on a slow cooker setting, and then boiled for a short time – as long as it takes to make sure everything is cooked. Boiling at the end works when the pot contains ample watery fluid that is free to circulate but can set off the Hot warning with a some foods.
Higher heat settings may allow for simmering or boiling in the Instant Pot. This works with fluid in the pot and will not work if the food is thick – the burn warning will shut down the pot):
Sauté;
Steam setting – the no pressure steam setting can bring liquid to a rolling boil;
A short time on a pressure setting can speed up a dish that fails to cook on a slow cooker setting. The pressure settings require the sealing lid, locked in place. The release valve can be closed for pressure, or left open. If the valve is left open, it will vent; and some cooking fluid will evaporate.
The Instant Pot slow cooker program can do dried legumes. I use smaller amounts (under 3 cups of dry beans) in a 6 quart Instant Pot.
Lentils and small split and skinned legumes can be cooked dry. I use the slow cooker High setting for 2-4 hours. Larger dry legumes can be soaked and cooked on slow cooker High. I long-soak these legumes (i.e. dry beans in water at room temperature) in a bowl or in the Instant Pot, and add more water to cover the beans if the soaked beans have swelled above the surface. I follow with a quick soak – cooking the legumes on Pressure Cooker High for one or two minutes, and let the pressure drop naturally. Then, and while the legumes and cooking water are hot, I start the slow cooker program on High (More in some models), cooking with the pressure cooker lid with pressure release valve left open.
The delay function allows me to leave beans soaking, and start cooking and finish by the time I want to use cooked beans and the cooking fluid. It is necessary to adapt cooking times and settings from traditional slow cooker recipes.
For about 10-15 years (2006-2020) multi-cookers were electric pressure cookers with:
a heating element in a round plate below the cooking vessel,
stainless or non-stick metal pots,
sensors,
a control panel and
a programmed control responding to feedback from the sensors.
Midea of Guangdong Province, China patented a multi-cooker in 2006. Fagor America and its European parent company brought the Fagor Lux multi-cooker to market in 2015, and the Fagor Lux LCD in 2017. Fagor America ceased operations including honoring warranties and providing support for customers and dealers in 2018. The devices reemerged from the reorganization of the Fagor companies under the Zavor brand. The Instant Pot multi-cooker came to the market 2015-6. It was handicapped by poor manuals, a lack of information about how to use it and a lack of recipes. Users found technique and recipes in publications about stove-top pressure cookers, and began to experiment and circulate information on web sites and social media. Jarden Consumer Appliances, owner of the Crock-Pot name and brand, introduced a pressure multi-cooker with a non-stick metal insert called the “Express Crock Multi-Cooker”.
Blenders with heating elements that can make smoothies and cook soup or even chili. Moulinex has sold Thermomix blenders since 1961. There have been newer and less expensive variations on this idea. Philips makes a Soup Maker – an electric kettle mated with an immersion blender. In 2019, Instant Pot put is brand name on an appliance line including rice cookers, air fryers and the new Ace blender/soup maker. Multi-cookers without pressure cooking capabilities came into the market 2018-19: new iterations of rice cookers or slow cookers programmed for saute, steaming and other functions including “slow cooking”. Examples: Zojirushi Multicooker EL-CAC60; Philips HD3095/87; T-fal RK705851; Aroma Housewares ARC-6106 MultiCooker; Midea Mb-fs5017 10 Cup Smart Multi-cooker. Cuisinart introduced a 3-in-1 Cook Central slow cooker with a nonstick insert with a saute setting.
Appliance manufacturers exaggerate the convenience of electric pressure cookers and multi-cookers as devices that can cook an entire main course in one pot at the same time, and claim that their multi-cookers “replace” a rice cooker, a steamer, and a slow cooker. Cooking appliances presented challenges and opportunities for writers and publishers. Back in 2000, slow cookers were supported by a few books -some not particularly good. Cooks Illustrated/America’s Test Kitchen wrote and published the Slow Cooker Revolution books for ceramic crock slow cookers. Those books were good and apparently successful at the time.
Some multi-cooker cookbooks and recipes provides recipes that have a common first stage, with alternative fast (pressure cooker) and slow (slow cooker) methods for finishing. The first stage includes prepping ingredients and may include using the sauté function to fry some ingredients. This approach fosters the imptession that there should be a convenient (i.e. less that 4-6 hour) slow cooker alternative for every fast recipe. The cookbooks in this genre:
Melissa Clark’s Dinner in an Instant (2017);
Cooks Illustrated/America’s Test Kitchen Multicooker Perfection(2018);
Milk Street Fast and Slow</em> (2020).
Cooks Illustrated/ATK’s Multicooker Perfection (2018) tried to rate the best pressure-multicooker. It favored the Fagor Lux LCD and Lux devices in 2018, and then nearly identical Zavor device. Zavor models are more expensive than Instant Pots, and not widely available. Zavor does not honor Fagor warranties or provide support for Fagor models. Parts and accessories are rare.
Cooks Illustrated/ATK supported its recommendations with its test results. CI/ATK tested the low and high slow cooker settings by heating 5 lbs (i.e. 2.7 liters or 2.8 quarts) of water for 5 hours. It reported that the Instant Pot slow cooker high setting will heat 4 quarts of water in an 8 quart model, to 206 ℉. (a simmer). The test seems to clear and simple. Heating 4 quarts of water to a near boil temperature tests the capability of the device to heat that much water. Some cooks may want to make 4 quarts of soup or stock by a slow cooker recipe. The lesson in the CI/ATK test is that the Instant Pot slow cooker program will not get that amount of fluid hot enough, fast enough to make that a useful way to spend time and resources.
CI/ATK say that its slow cooker recipes in Multicooker Perfection work well if a device gets the food to 195-210 F and maintains that temperature. Cooks Illustrated/ATK :
warned that the slow cooker settings on some devices are too cold, and on others too hot;
warned that High/More slow cooker settings in some pressure multi-cookers did not reliably do what traditional slow cooker high was supposed to do; and
asserted that the Instant Pot did not deliver enough heat, the right way, in its slow cooker program.
No electric pressure cooker or pressure multi-cooker will be capable or cooking all recipes taken from a slow cooker recipe source. A slow cooker heats the food into the range where the food simmers slowly. The slow cookers sold in America in the 20th century used constant low heat. While in principle the food was not boiled, most of these device eventually cooked the dish at a temperature above the boiling point of water. Electric pressure cookers or pressure multi-cookers switch the power off when the device decides the pot is hot enough, and then turns the power on to bring the temperature up. It isn’t the same as controlling the flow of power to an element on a stove, and it is not the constant low heat of the traditional low cooker. Slow cooker settings in electric pressure cookers and pressure multi-cooker put out enough heat to warm the base of the pot to a set temperature, monitored by a sensor.
Instant Pots have three settings in the slow cooker program Low, Normal or Medium, and High. Slow cookers often have a warm setting and low and high slow cooking settings. Instant Pot slow cooker program Low setting provides the function of a slow cooker Warm setting in a slow cooker; it is not equivalent to a slow cooker Low cooking setting. A rule of thumb for following a slow cooker recipe with a pressure multi-cooker: cook at medium (“normal”) where the slow cooker recipe says low.
Pressure cookers can cook the same soups, stews etc. that can be cooked in a slow cooker or in a pot on a stove or in an oven. Pressure multi-cookers, including Instant Pots, can perform many slow cooker recipes in slow cooker programs. Madhur Jaffrey has recipes for lamb (and goat) including a lamb pilaf using Instant Pot slow cooker progam setting in her Instantly Indian Cookbook. Melissa Clark has Instant Pot slow cooker versions of every recipe Dinner in an Instant. Cooks Illustrated/ATK’s Multicooker Perfection did too.
A limitations on pressure multi-cookers: size and working space. An 8 quart model is as bulky as a 6 quart ceramic slow cook. Pressure cookers are bigger than other cooking vessels because the user has to leave them partly unfilled for dishes that expand as they absorb water. Another limitation is that the engineers have not allowed users to use these devices manually. There are preset temperatures and times, and programmed cooking programs. A pressure multi-cooker as a simple cookpot when a cook wants to cook a thin broth or sauce down, or cook for a few more minute when the dish is not cooked enough. The multi-cooker has to be set again to a setting that will boil or simmer. The sauté setting will bring the pot to a boil but may burn the food and fire the heat warning, which will turn off the device. Can the cooking pot can removed and put on the stove; is there an element available? This is not hard, if you know what to do when the time comes!
It is vulnerable to animal pests and microorganisms including mould. Animal pests may contaminate the bread with body parts, eggs, larva, bodily fluids and micro-organisms. Mould is a colony of microorganisms that chemically alters the bread – it can effectively poison the bread.
Constraints
Pan Size
Bread machines identity the size (volume) of the pans by reference to the capacity of the pan to hold a baked loave. 1.5 lb. machines were common. Large is a common size; XL machines are 2.5 or 3 lb. The size of the pan is an upper limit on the size of the loaf. Pans are expected to hold the dough and allow the dough to expand outward and upward as the dough flows and rises and to expand upward when the loaf “springs” when the dough is heated. Dough can be cut and shaped for a normal baking pan, but differently for a longer narrow pan to bake a Pullman loaf. Oven pans walls may be lower than the top of the loaf. Pan size sets a limit on baking – a minimum amount of dough is required to fill the pan and expand. The pan influences the loaf – some shapes are hard to handle, store and slice.
There are 1 lb. bread machines, including Zojirushi and Panasonic models. These not necessarily available in USA or Canada, or reasonably priced. They are not really practical, in my opinion.
Bread machine loaves, comparing to the baking pans manufactured and marketed to home bakers for baking loaves in ovens:
Flour
Bread Machine Size
e.g.
Area, space/ volume
Oven Pan
Oven Pan Area, space US (Imperial)/Metric Volume (Metric)
The size of the bread machine pan, in the sense of capacity, does not necessarily determine the shape of the loaf:
A large horizontal bread machine pan is nearly as long as large oven pan, and slightly wider. It can bake a loaf that closely resembles a loaf baked in a large pan in an oven. Large loaves in other machines will shape up differently.
Some large and extra large machines have control settings (programs or “courses”) and/or recipes for medium loaves.
A medium loaf baked in a horizontal pan resembles a loaf baked in a 2 pound oven pan- but not as “tall”. In another bread machine pan that loaf will be shorter, wider and higher.
Dough Ball
The ingredients, mixed and kneaded, form a ball. Dough has to be elastic to hold up as the dough ferments and rises. Bread machine bake programs can’t produce the shapes and crust of country/artisan loaves. The dough for a loaf is shaped into a dough ball shorter and narrower than the pan. In a bread machine, the dough ball must remain in contact with the paddle or paddles, and the bottom and sides of the pan to be kneaded, in the same way that the dough in a stand mixer contacts the kneading hook or arm and the mixing bowl.
A bread machine needs a minimum amount of flour, and the proportionate amount of water to mix and form a dough ball that will be kneaded in that machine. The dough ball kneaded by a bread machine is usuallyattached to the paddle (a paddle if the machine has two) at the end of kneading.
The dough flows as it rises; the dough ball slumps horizontally. The dough for medium and small loaves will reach the side walls, but not necessarily the ends by the end of the rise. The loaf will flow and rise or spring for the first 20 – 30 minutes of baking. Workable bread machine recipes should make the dough viscous and extensible enough to flow in the bottom of the pan and rise and spring reasonably uniformly. The size and weight of the dough ball is a factor. A medium dough ball weights over 650 grams, about 75% of the size and weight of a “large” (800 gram) ball usually can flow and rise in a large pan and bake into a reasonable medium loaf. The surface area of the bottom of the dough ball will adhere to the bottom of the pan; the side of the ball will touch and adhere to the sides most of the time. The kneading motion stretches the dough. The machine applies force to the paddle. The force on the paddle stretchs the dough ball adhering to the pan. The motion develops gluten, which will trap carbon dioxide when the yeast ferment starch or the leavening agent reacts to the wet dough, and inflate or “rise” the dough.
The dough for a medium loaf will only overflow a large pan by expanding upward too much. This happens if dough ball is too large or the dough is overleavened. (Too much yeast for the dough, which depends on the machine, salt, and the amounts of flour and water, or too much chemical leavening agent.)
When a dough ball at one end of the pan fails to flow enough, the loaf rises more at that end and bakes into a sloping loaf in a bake program in a bread machine. It leads to loaves that slope along the top in a medium loaf. This effect occurs in machines with rectangular and horizontal pans.
Medium loaves
Baking
A large or 2.5 lb. XL machine will mix, knead, and bake a medium (1.5 lb.) loaf in the normal baking programs.
A medium loaf baked in a machine with a large pan may slope when the dough ball was located at one end of the pan after the kneading phases, or the knockdowns during the rise/fermentation phase. A long horizontal pan with two paddles (e.g. Zojirushi) may bake a medium loaf that slopes or has one regular end and one end with with irregular corners. But, a small dough may not flow into all corners of a large or extra-large pan
Scaling
Adjusting a recipe for a large loaf to a medium loaf is mathematically simple. Use ¾ of each ingredient. There are some qualifications. This works if the source recipe lists the ingredients needed for bread machine loaf and is clear about ingredient amounts, kneading and time. A recipe for a hand kneaded loaf or a stand mixer loaf may need some extra water or flour, and will be affected by how fast the flour has been hydrated and how long the dough is kneaded.
Flour, water, yeast and salt have to be reduced in same proportion; other ingredients should be reduced proportionately too. There is rule of thumb to balance salt and yeast. It is necessary also to adjust yeast for the brand and model of bread machine.
A simple way is to scale by reference to total flour; by recipe size (volume). The ingredients for a 1.5 lb. loaf produce 75% of the dough in a 2 lb. recipe. A large (2 lb.) loaf recipe can be scaled to medium (1.5 lb.) and baked in 2 lb. machine. I have done this with two machines with large pans:
Doughs that flow across the bottom of the pan and rise will bake into loaves as long and wide as the pan – a large pan is made to bake shapely large loaves. The medium doughs that flowed best were hydrated at over 65%, enriched with sugar and fat, and had gluten. Bread flour has enough gluten, but a lean loaf will be compact. Adding vital wheat gluten to whole wheat flour helps to give the loaf structure, but makes the dough elastic. In a multigrain loaf, moderate amounts of gluten are effective.
Some doughs produce symmetrical but short loaves that do reach one or both ends of the pan. These doughs are too small or dry to flow the length of the pan, or the dough ball settles but will not flow into all corners of the pan.
Where a medium recipe produces funny loaves in a large pan, it is possible to alter the medium recipe to get a dough that will flow to fill the pan. I considered increasing flour, but concentrated on adding tiny amounts of yeast, water and sugar to relax the dough and increase fermentation.
My Machines
This are my large machines:
Panasonic SD-YD250:
owned and used 2016-2020
2.5 lb. “extra” large pan
tall vertical rectangle pan, single paddle dead centre, bottom of pan;
550 watt motor that runs for 50-60% of the time in a 25 minute +/- mixing phase on a medium loaf setting;
550 watt element, about 1 cm below the bottom of the pan. A small loaf develops hot spots around the base of the pan but is not burned;
266 square cm. pan: 19 cm (7.5 inches) by 14 cm (5.5 inches);
1 paddle, central:
6 cm long, radially;
2.6 cm high, rising to a fin 5 cm tall;
The paddle is deep in the loaf, but a small loaf rises and springs to a height of 7.5 cm or more, and clears the paddle;
Control settings (programs), and recipes for medium, large and extra-large
No custom programs;
No Pause button; Power interrupt by unplugging – 10 minutes to resume cycle.
Zojirushi BB-PAC20 Virtuoso:
Owned and used 2020>
2 lb. large pan (similar to other Zojirushi 2 lb. machines – Virtuoso Plus, Home Bakery Supreme)
horizontal pan, dual paddles on the long axis,
100 watt motor;
286 square cm. pan: 22 cm (9 inches) by 13 cm (5 inches);
2 paddles 11 cm apart. Each is 5.5 cm off centre along the long axis, down the centre. Each paddle is:
6 cm. long,
1.2 cm high – 2.9 cm high at a fin;
Two elements:
600 watt main element, about 1 cm below the bottom of the pan;
40 watt lid heater;
No control settings (programs) for medium or small loaves. The manuals have a few recipes for medium loaves to be baked using the programs for large loaves;
No Pause button. Pause knead by raising lid.
In both machines, it was better to try for a medium recipe. The medium loaf baked in the Panasonic could not be stored in a 10″ x 14″ plastic storage bag. It was too fat. The longer Zojirushi loaf fits into such a bag without jamming and tearing the bag.
Smaller Loaves
For the large (i.e. 2 pound loaf) horizontal pan in the Zojirushi, I find that a medium (1.5 lb.) recipe produces a loaf that fills the pan from side to side. In that machine with the horizontal pan, the simple goal is a medium loaf. Scaling to smaller loaves involves some calculation and experiments with salt, yeast and water.
Conversion
Almost all home baking recipes list all ingredients by volume. Many bread machine recipes do too.
The most precise way to scale is by weight. I weigh flour and water in a bowl or measuring cup; I reset the scale to zero after putting the empty measuring vessel on the scale. A scale that goes to 1 gram is precise enough for flour and water. The volume measurements of salt and yeast for small loaves are fractions of a teaspoon. I use a scale that reliably goes to 0.1 grams. Converting a recipe from volume to weight and scaling from volume is possible, with careful calculation.
For yeast, I refer to my own conversion chart, which compares the volume of active dry yeast and instant yeast and converts either to weight in grams:
Some medium loaves begin to look funny. These problems increase when a user attempts to make loaves smaller than medium in large or extra large pan machines. Scaling down to a 1 lb. does not work well with large pan machines. A 1 lb. dough ball is too small to fill the base of a large or extra large pan. A true “small” loaf recipe (half of a 4 cup/2 lb./large loaf recipe or 2/3 of a 3 cup/1.5 lb. medium recipe) baked in large pan will be edible and palatable, but it will bake in odd shapes.
I have been writing recipes with 50%. Salt affects the strength, rise and flow of the dough, the texture of the bread, and flavour. A 50% reduction is noticeable but the bread is still bread; it is workable and palatable.
Recipes almost always refer to ordinary table salt, which is 5.7 grams per teaspoon. I refer to my own conversions or use a calculator.
Seeds and herbs should be adjusted in proportion to the flour. I don’t measured down to the gram. Oils, sugar and and sweet fluids should be adjusted too, without trying to weigh them. It is worth being aware of water in milk, eggs, honey, maple syrup, molasses, and other syrup of sugar and other ingredients dissolved or suspended in water. Conversion factors are not always easy to find; and sources may disagree or only apply to some varieties of an ingredient, or to a brand of a commodity. I have a list, as discussed in the post Measuring & Conversion.
The principals of Double Insight developed the Instant Pot pressure multi-cooker in 2008-9. It was on the market by 2012, and took off in 2015-6 with social media and presence in Amazon Market Place. “Instant Pot” is not a trade mark like Vacuum Cleaner or Bandaid. Instant Pot launched a sous-vide heater in 2018, and a blender early in 2019. It merged with Corelle Brand LLC in March 2019, and launched new rice cooker and air fryer appliances in time for Black Friday. Instant Pot markets its pressure multi-cooker as a replacement for other appliances by providing “Smart Programs” that control the cooker to work in a way equivalent to other appliances.
Almost all other pressure multi-cookers, and many devices with a bottom element have a program or setting to brown or sauté. The electric skillet was a common appliance in last few decades of the 20th century. I recall devices with a dial contol marked with temperatures – like a dimmer switch. Some electric skillets had thermostat controls. Instant Pots have a programmed sauté which uses feedback from a “digital temperature sensor”.
The Lux, Duo and Ultra models have three temperature settings for the sauté program, set at target points. The manuals correlate the settings to ranges of temperatures. The Ultra models also allow a user to select or specify a custom temperature:
Duo
Ultra
Range F(C)
Setting F(C)
Less
Low
275-302 (135- 150)
221 (105)
Normal
Medium
320-349 (160-176)
336
More
High
347-410 (175-210)
345
Custom
≥ 104 – ≤ 338 (40-170)
The sensor is outside the cooking vessel at the bottom, below the cooking surface. The device signals “Hot” in the LCD display when the cooking surface is hotter than the set temperature. The Hot signal is an overheat/burn protection system. The transfer of heat to the food lowers the temperature of the cooking surface; the display turns to “On” when food is heated. When the display goes from “On” to “Hot” during cooking, all the moisture has evaporated, and there is a risk of overheating the dried out food.
Instant Pot limits the cooking time on a sauté program to 30 minutes, and automates the time function. For instance, setting a period of less than 5 minutes does not mean that the device will cook at the set level for the programmed time. I have had it reach go from preheat to on to off in a few seconds. I couldn’t find an explanation in the web literature about the device or in Instant Pot’s official web literature. It seems to subtract a few minutes, apparently to adjust for the period of cooking that occurred while the device was reaching operating temperature. The time can be set at 20-30 minutes, and the device treated like a skillet – watch, stir, deglaze – and shut off by stopping the program. (Or keep oven mitts handy and lift the vessel and use it as stovetop pot to simmer or boil or reduce the liquid – whatever).
Using an Instant Pot to sauté is like cooking in a narrow, tall Dutch Oven on a moderately hot stove. The steel pot is preferable – it withstands stirring with various implements, and is easier to clean. The optional tempered glass lid is useful in cooking in sauté program. I find it better to use a skillet when a recipe suggests using the sauté setting to brown an ingredient that has to be removed and set aside.
The Instant Pot’s key program is Pressure Cook, an electric pressure cooker function with high and low pressure/temperature settings, and cooking time programable in one minute increments. Preheating is automated. The device will cook for the programmed time at the operating pressure programmed. It may show a hot or burn setting – some foods are a greater risk for such misadventure. The Duo and Ultra models have two settings for the pressure cooker program. The cooking temperature, when the device has reached that pressure is related to pressure:
Pressure Setting
Pressure (kPa)
Pressure (bars)
Pressure (psi)
Temperature F. (C)
Boiling point
0
212 (100)
Low
40-50
5.8-7.2
229-233 (110-11)
High
70-80
10.2-11.6
240-242 (116-117)
Normal stovetop cooker
15
250 (121)
Cooks Illustrated/America’s Test Kitchen’s Multicooker Perfection (2018) reported that the Instant Pot Duo (8 quart) heats to 247 F. but takes several minutes longer to reach operating pressure than other pressure multi-cookers and electric pressure cookers. Instant Pot models introduced before 2018 peak at over 13 psi but operate with operating high pressure of 10.2-11.6 psi, in the same operating pressure range as other electric pressure cookers. Electric pressure cooker recipes work in Instant Pots, with few adjustments.
Many “Instant Pot” recipe sources concentrate heavily on the pressure cooker function. Laura Pazzaglia, Barbara Schieving and other pressure cooker writers concentrate on the pressure cooker functions of electric pressure multi-cookers. Laura Pazzaglia suggests recipes should be adapted for pressure unless a recipe uses ingredients that fail under pressure or create functional complications. Her books and web site provide tables for cooking specific items in most pressure cookers at different operating pressures.
Laura Pazzaglia, Barbara Schieving and other writers have several recipes for rice and suggestions for cooking rice on pressure settings. These writers have little to say about the Instant Pot Rice program. The Rice program uses low pressure with automated functions to cook long grain white rice and some short grain white rice. It provides a basic steamed rice function, and may support a few other preparations. It has been a work in progress in the manuals, recipe booklets, independently sourced recipes and support documentation.
Instant Pot identifies three temperature settings for the slow cooker function across the pressure multi-cooker product lines in the 6 and 8 quart models, called by different names for the Duo and Ultra models (5, 6, and 8 quart). Normal (Medium) and More (High) are simmer settings, and supposed to “replace” low and high, the cooking functions in a traditional slow cooker. Less (Low) is supposed to replace the warming setting in a traditional slow cooker. It is not a cooking setting!
Cooks Illustrated/ATK’s Multicooker Perfection (2018) reported that the Instant Pot Duo (8 quart) did not perform well as a slow cooker on that publisher’s repertoire of slow cooker recipes. Some sources provides recipes that can be done using either in pressure cooker program or slow cooker program in an Instant Pot, or another pressure multi-cooker. Cooks Illustrated/ATK doesn’t like Instant Pot for large recipes. Christopher Kimball has tips on how to use an Instant Pot:
Christopher Kimball, Milk Street Fast and Slow, (2020) [update]
A few other Instant Pot or pressure multi-cooker sources provide recipes for slow cooker programs. For instance, Madhur Jaffrey has recipes for lamb (and goat), including a lamb pilaf, using the Instant Pot slow cooker program (her Instantly Indian Cookbook refers to a 6 quart Duo v. 3).
The slow cooker program provides a capability for timed and partially automated slow cooking, but recipes that work in traditional slow cookers will not necessarily work in an Instant Pot or other pressure multi-cooker. The slow cooker program is worth learning.
The Instant Pot product sheet for the Ultra model says the Ultra program “provides complete custom programming for pressure and non-pressure cooking”. Laura Pazzaglia explains the program this way:
…the ability to pre-program the cooker with any cooking time, any temperature or one of two pressures.
…the Ultra feature will let you set the right temperature to, for example, scald milk (180°F/82°C) and melt chocolate (104°F/40°C).
The Ultra function temperature range is ≥ 104 – ≤ 208 F (40-97.7 C). People experiment using the Ultra function for Sous-vide. It would be wise to use a thermometer to verify the temperature of the water.
This post was published in August 2019 but has been updated as I have given more thought to it or had interesting experiences. It is easier for me to edit the post than to write new posts.
Devices
A pressure cooker reaches cooking temperatures above the boiling point of water (212 F. or 100 C.). Pressure cooking involves time to bring water to a boil, reach cooking temperature, and a period at the operating pressure and temperature. Pressure cookers use high heat to build pressure and get food to a cooking temperature; low heat to maintain heat and pressure. Pressure cookers have sealing lids and valves. The lids are metal with locking rims. The cook cannot see what is going on an monitors the events in the pot by watching valves pot shut and by readouts in electronic models.
Most devices have low and high pressure settings. The American standard for high pressure limit is 15 psi; the European standard is 1 bar, or 14.6 psi. Stovetop pots tended to go to those limits, although many did not. Stovetop pots were the standard for most recipes until electric pressure cookers became more common in the last decade of the 20th century. Electric pressure cookers cook at lower pressure and temperature than the upper limit(s); but above the boiling point.
Laura Pazzaglia observes on her Hip Pressure Cooking site FAQ that:
To facilitate the writing of pressure cooker cookbooks and sharing recipes, there is an un-official standard. This standard includes the maximum operating pressure for American Pressure Cookers (15 psi) and the maximum operating pressure for most modern European Cookers (which is about 13 psi for spring-valve type cookers).
At the time of the writing of this article, most electric pressure cookers reach 15 psi but they do not cook at 15 psi. … electric pressure cookers reach 15 psi briefly during the warming process. Electric pressure cookers build pressure up to 15 psi but then maintain a lower pressure during the cooking. … the “operating pressure” is 11.6 even though the cooker reaches 15 psi while it’s building pressure. “Operating Pressure” is the true pressure at which an electric pressure cooker cooks.
Electric pressure cookers and multicookers cook at lower pressure and temperature that standard devices. There are exceptions; e.g. – Instant Pot Max, marketed in 2018, is said to operate at the standard pressure.
Laura Pazzaglia’s Hip Pressure Cooking site FAQ has a pressure/temperature graph. The lower pressures of electric pressure cookers require an adjustment to cooking times from standard recipes.
An electric pressure cooker has an outer shell, a heating element, an inner pot, a sealing lid and a control set. A modern machine has a microprocessor and an electronic control panel. The device turns the heating element on to sauté or build pressure. When operating temperature and pressure are reached, it cycles off and on to maintain pressure and temperature. The device will turn the heat off at the end of the period entered as the cooking time (at the operating pressure), and sound an alarm.
Pressure Release
Recipe sources and manual use terms for the two main options for when to use the pressure release valve – the end of the period of operating pressure, or after waiting for pressure to come down. Examples:
Sources
End of OP
Wait
Instant Pot Recipe Booklet
Quick Release
Natural
Sass, Cooking under Pressure
Quick Release
Naturally
ATK, Multicooker Perfection
Quick
Natural
Pazzaglia, hip Pressure Cooking
Normal
Natural
Schieving, Electric Pressure Cooker Cookbook
Quick
Natural
Clark, Dinner in an Instant
Manual
Natural
There are variations on each release method including modified or slow (i.e. incremental, pulsed) quick release and a timed wait with a manual release to be able to open the pot.
Cooking Times
Recipe sources are consistent in describing cooking times in for pressure cookers and pressure cooker programs by time at high or low pressure; pressures vary between standard (stovetop) and electric devices. This is worth checking before cooking.
Laura Pazzaglia has charts on a cooking times page at her Hip Pressure Cooking site. Her charts recognize that there are differences between stovetop and electric machines and different brands and machines by leaving some parameters within ranges. Some writers provide notes about performance on some recipes in specific devices.
The charts will reduce cooking times for beans (and other legumes) that have been soaked. There are differences between botanically related beans. Cannellini beans (also called white kidney beans) take up more water when soaked than other phaseolus vulgaris beans. Soaked phaseolus beans can be cooked completely in 8-10 minutes at high pressure. Some recipes call for parcooking the beans and adding more ingredients. It is important to not overcook the beans in the parcooking phase – the beans may start to release their contents, which thickens the cooking broth. An Instant Pot or electric pressure cooker will detect that the pot is overheating, and shut down with a “burn” condition report.
An electric pressure cooker provides the option of cooking without the pressure sealing lid using a sauté setting (or any hot setting that can be activated without locking the lid). Some have multiple saute (the device serves as an electric skillet) settings, some have only one saute setting. This is a way to use the device to cook some ingredients (e.g. softening onions and “blooming” spices and garlic and ginger) before filling the cooking pot and starting the pressure cooker. Using these settings to cook ingredients that have to be removed and added later is less convenient – it may be better to use the pressure cooker pot for other prep steps and pressure cooking, and manage the saute item in a skillet or wok on the stove. An electric pressure cooker is narrow and tall, and not easily handled and used like skillet. A user may needs to able to continuing cooking after the pressure cooking has ended – some final simmering to reduce a dish or cook ingredients added after the pressure cooking. The sauté setting may be too hot for anything less than a full rolling boil. Most electric pressure cookers have a simmer setting or an equivalent (the slow cooker setting will simmer warm contents below the boiling point).
Laura Pazzaglia in her book hip Pressure Cooking (2014) and on her web site provides times for both standard and electric pressure cookers. She doesn’t have a formula. The addtional cooking time may be zero or may as much as 50%. Her tables are available online at her hippressurecooking site. Her tables are consistent with the view that necessary adjustments are variable depending on ingredient and release method (and release time).
Jill Nussinow (below), writing mainly about vegetables, thought that standard pot recipe cooking time did not have be lengthened for an electric pot where the release is slow or natural – the device provided enough cooking time because electric pressure cookers provide a little extra cooking time coming to pressure and while the pressure drops.
Many electric pressure cookers and multi-cookers have sauté functions; some call it “brown” or “browning”. They vary in temperature; usually hot enough to melt fats but not always warm enough to carmelize the food. Some have a button or setting to engage a “simmer” function. Simmer is a setting in Fagor/Zavor Lux devices that to heat the food at 200 F for up to 30 minutes. Instant Pots can simmer at a slow cooker setting; the slow cooker “high” setting should match the Fagor/Zavor simmer setting. The temperature is an indirect reading – it is what the manufacturer says in the manual and is calibrated to what a sensor outside the pot is reading.
Resources
Recipe books and web sites for pressure cookers, electric pressure cookers, and multi-cookers:
An “Instant Pot” pressure recipe should work in any electric pressure cooker or pressure capable multi-cooker; but variations may be needed; with adjustments of time, an “Instant Pot” pressure recipe should work in a stovetop or standard pressure cooker. Books since 2010 have generally provided standard and electric times. Laura Pazzaglia’s hip Pressure Cooking takes this approach. Other books have specifically electric pressure cooker recipes. The Instant Pot and multi-cooker books are useful. These books suggest foods that work well in a pressure cooker and provide recipes that can be cooked for company. Melissa Clark’s Dinner in an Instant (2017);Cooks Illustrated/America’s Test Kitchen Multicooker Perfection (2018); Milk Street Fast and Slow (2020).
Instant Pot has used different terms for preset sauté temperatures in its pressure multi-cookers; and a recipe source may use the term for one model. Other electric pressure cookers and multi-cookers will be different in some ways. A stovetop user has to use the heat setting of the the stove or cooktop.
A user will have to see what the food is doing when using any pressure cooker as a skillet. Using an Instant Pot, or any other elecrtric presssure coouer to sauté is like cooking in a narrow, tall Dutch Oven on a moderately hot stove. I find it better to use a skillet when a recipe suggests using the sauté setting to brown an ingredient that has to be removed and set aside. If sauté in the Instant Pot, the steel pot is preferable – it withstands stirring with various implements, and is easier to clean. The optional tempered glass lid is useful in cooking in sauté program.
