Product Testing: Instant Pot Take #1 – Black Beans

My first test run using the Instant Pot Pressure Cooker (Instant Pot in Canada) was a gong show! I warn you, when you watch the video, there will be lots of swearing.

I have been scared of pressure cookers all my life. My mom used to use this moss green one and it scared the crap out of her but she did it anyway. Which is saying a lot for my mom. Usually if something scared her she would avoid it like the plague. She powered through it but I inherited the same fear.

I wanted to get over this fear and thanks to my Auntie Laima, I got an Instant Pot for my birthday! Now it took a while for me to build up courage to try it and to think of what was the first thing I was going to cook in there.

There are a lot of bloopers because even though I read the instruction manual, working with an appliance that can basically do anything is intimidating and there will always be a lot of questions.

From trying to figure out how to put on the lid to making many mistakes along the way, it was very stressful but as my sister Shannon says, you only have to do something for the first time once! Now that I got through that initial trial by pressure and steam, I feel much more comfortable tackling my next foodie project with this product.

I ended up making cooked black beans in 40 minutes. The manual says they can be made in 10-15 minutes but they probably need extra cooking (???) so I was all ready to add more cooking time and was surprised that the default time was 30 minutes. Which confused the hell out of me. Figuring out how to add an additional 10 minutes? Not easy! The appliance just got to work right away and I was like, what the heck???

After all that, the positive end result can not be denied, it worked perfectly! I could make a black bean soup for dinner, no problem thanks to the Instant Pot. The beans were thoroughly cooked through, a lot of them bursting, which is how I like my beans.

Although I did find something amongst the beans that was quick shocking! Watch the video to find out what the hell that was in there. Shocked me!

So what should I cook next? Should I try out making rice in it? Make a pot roast? I was thinking of making chicken broth. Would love to hear your ideas and suggestions.