Frozen chicken breasts from frozen to cooked in 15 minutes?

I'm thinking about getting a pressure cooker. The "Instant Pot" cooker looks interesting but I could get a really nice stove-top pressure cooker for possibly less money. Anybody got any thoughts on getting one or the other? Or, if the electric version, a different one from the "Instant Pot"? Seems the Instant Pot has an almost "Rocky Mountain Horror Show" cult following!!!!

Currently I'm thinking of possibly going with a 6-quart Instant Pot, though I'm not sure which model (they seem to have several to choose from). Hoping for some Black Friday, etc., sales.

Thanks for the feedback!!!
Ed

40 some odd years ago I had a little pressure cooker. Sat on the stove, jiggler kept it doing its thing and I LOVED it. Only reason I had to give it up was because the seal finally wore out and there were no replacements. I grumbled and whined for a long time, finally threw it out maybe 15 yrs ago. It made the best pot of pinto beans ever made.
My son in law bought an Instant Pot- brand Crock Pot. Has electronic function buttons, can make yogurt, has as many functions now as the microwaves now have. The recipes they suggest using it for I think need adjusted...it spends 97% of its time up on the fridge. When it gets used, I am the one to break it down and clean the jiggler, steam escape port, seal, etc. LOTS of parts. It is handy to have, it can cook dinner quickly, depending on what you are cooking. Soups and beans are great, but I do Not see anyone making yogurt in this house- that recipe is huge and there are faster ways to do that. I also don't care for searing my beef in an aluminum pan. We do have a slow cooker, occasionally gets used as well. Only 3 adults in the house, food is made in small bits because of different health issues and diets. The Instant Pot has a following because the kids weren't raised with pressure cookers and need recipes for that pot.
Advice? Sit down and figure out how many foods you are going to actually be using it for. A lot of the recipes come out with a ton of fluids so the pressurization will work right, so, you will have lots of fluids with your food as it is cooked.

Hi Ed 😀
I kind of consider myself a kind of pressure cooker expert.
I'd be leery of the instant pot, because it could be a passing fad.
They go out of business, and Pow, you can't get replacement parts.
Get a long time brand name, like my 30+ year old presto. I still get replacement parts for it at local ace true value Fresno Ag hardware.

Not all recipes are juicy. You can make say meatloaf in them. Yep !
Put meatloaf in stainless steel bowl, that fits in cooker. Put needed water in cooker, then bowl with meatloaf, and process. Presto ! You have meatloaf without turning oven on. Real handy in summer, when you don't want to heat your kitchen up.👍👍

Kat. Looking for appliance parts you can't find locally ? There's a place hear in California you can order from. It's called : the gourmet deposit company. They have parts and accessories for all kinds of appliances. There number is : 800-424-6783 I imagine they have a website.
There's my two cents worth.
😎😎😎

Reading about these Instant Pot cookers on another web site, filled with a lot of old coots, 65 is young, the main attraction seems to be to do as little work as possible.
Now some of those gents are in a sad state of health but the amount of whining they spew when complaining, well, if you are the type who wants to sit in a chair and get old, the Instant Pot is a God-send, other wise, choose wisely.

Thanks for the feedback, ya'll. Seems like from three folks I get three different opinions. I gotta love it!!!!!

What I am looking for is something that will indeed speed up cooking and be good for some one-pot meals and maybe some side or entree items for a larger meal. It is just me and my wife mostly here at the house...so I *think* it will be handy. And maybe even get me to be a little healthier in what we eat.

I thought I had come up with something...and old Mirror-Matic of my grandmother's. Back when I was researching buying a pressure canner I found that our glass-top stove requires some extra thought. One thing that you have to be careful about is not to use a pot/pan on it that has a concave bottom to it that creates a small air-space beneath the vessel. The problem is that with possible water/liquid being present, a flat glass top, and a concave bottom to the cooker/canner you could actually end up with a pot tightly stuck by suction to the smooth surface. I like gas...my wife likes easy clean-up...what could I say, she had put up with gas stoves for 25 years I figured it was time she got what she wanted. Anyhow, I ended up with a small 16qt Presto canner (had to consider weight on the glass top), but it'd still be kind of big for cooking a small meal...but, might could put two small dishes in it...

So anyhow, after checking the Mirror-Matic out, back in the cupboard it went. Amazingly the gasket is still soft and pliable! <sigh>

I'm still pondering over it all and still open for suggestions.

I am not an appliance user. Give me a pot, a skillet, a wooden spoon, a spatula, and a sharp knife and I am happy. But when I use one, I like that it has multiple uses. The Instant Pot, which I haven't learned to use much does a LOT! It will brown your meat before you cook it, all in one pot. I used it as a slow cooker cuz I am Old School. It is smaller than my Crockpot. It can't hold a whole large chicken. But if you want to cook fast in smaller amounts I think it would work fine.

Ours will brown the meat, simmer, hold a warming temp for ages, it is simply very large. I just want my beef seared away from contact with the nonstick stuff. Like in my 50 yr old cast iron skillet. Another thing with glass cooktops- anything not flat to the surface cooks strange. I do like our instapot is electric. 16 qts Ed, would cook so much food, I would never be out of leftovers, chuckl. (I can have beef, but not ground anything meat. NO meatloaf. )

I'll come down on the side of the InstaPot. I bought it 5 years ago as a Christmas present to myself. It was purchased because my slow cooker died. At first I used it just as a slow cooker but gradually warmed up to it.

You can sautee (brown) the meat in it and then switch to slow cooker or pressure cooker. One meal I like is pork chops with mushroom gravy. Last time I fixed that, I found some (already cooked but tough) chops in the freezer that I was going to share with the dogs. I thought why not? and added them to the rest. I couldn't tell the tough ones from the freshly cooked they were all equally tender. It works well on tougher cuts of meat.

I hosted Thanksgiving last year and used the InstaPot for the mashed potatoes. After cooking them, the pot kept them warm till serving time and freed up the stove and oven for other foods. I have also used it to carry a dish to a friends house. I can plug it in and maintain warmth without getting in that cooks way.

Mine also steams rice although I don't use that feature much as I am cooking for one.

A home cooked meal can be on the table quickly after a grueling day at work.

The stainless inside container is easily removeable for quick cleaning.

It does not heat up the house like the oven or stove will.

There are some things that I didn't prefer cooked in it but for the most part, many recipes have been repeated. If I have a meat or produce I want to fix, I will search for recipes via InstaPot and the specific ingredients. I have stumbled on some good meals in that manner.

One of my favorite meats has been ribs which are so fall off the bone tender.

I will say the InstaPot sees more use at my house but I will never give up my stovetop canning pressure cooker. I do use it for canning both meat and vegetables. On the other hand, the InstaPot sees more service.

Ed, your stove top looks like an induction, right ? I don't like them, personally, for the way they cook, the way they cycle on and off.
I only used one ownce to pressure cook some chile beans. The dang thing burnt the beans on bottom before they were cooked, and scorched my stainless steel cooker, on top of that !😭.
Oops ! My first point was, I bet you could stand on that stove top and it wouldn't break. Sumo wrestling an exception. LOL.

You already have a pressure cooker in your pressure canner !😮!!!
Actually, the canners are easier to use than the regular cooker's that you need to keep an eye on.
Let the canner come to pressure, turn fire off, wait desired time and let pressure out.
I ownce used a pressure canner to cook chile beans. I like my chile beans nice and soft, 45 minutes under pressure. I let the canner come up to 15 pounds pressure, and turned fire off. 45 minutes later, the pressure was still at 15 pounds. Humm, interesting 🤔!!! So I waited 15 more minutes, cooker had only dropped a few pounds. Well, I was hungry. So I released pressure so I could eat. CHOMP CHOMP 😋.

Im not putting down instant pots. In fact, now, hearing everybody talking about how versatile they are, I'm going to check in to them.😀
Humm ?🤔??? Like I can really fit something else in my kitchen. 😟

Good Day Y'all
😎😎😎

Quick note... Target has the 6-quart Instant Pot Duo60 on sale for $70 and you get a $10 gift coupon with it. Free shipping, but plus sales tax. Black Friday is coming up but will the Duo60 be this cheap? Cheaper? Target's sale ends *today*. FWIW.

https://www.target.com/p/insta...

I have an Instant Pot, but so far I haven't used it for much. I am much faster to grab my old 40 year old Presto pressure cooker. The seals are all still readily available, and it's never failed me.

I also use 2 different slow cookers. One is smaller and one is large. I keep thinking I could get rid of a number of appliances and just use the instant pot, but I haven't done it. For me the old familiar is easier than trying to figure out the newer appliance. Every time I use it I have to go to the manual or the internet.

All good feedback from ya'll. Thanks!!!

Cheryl, I hear you on cooking with the traditional utensils. I've mostly grilled out and cooked a *few* things on the stove. I'm not much of a multi-course cook. I get to thinking about it and I start wondering if I'd use a pressure cooker enough to warrant getting one...then I get my interest up again and start looking at recipes. One pot, quick meals (relatively speaking) , and easy cleanup are appealing. With the IP the ability to sear the meat before cooking means a lot!

Kat, the 16-quart Presto is aluminum so I'd have to cook inside of a different pot inside of it...which would work. But, I'd had to drag it around and leaving sitting around the kitchen...well, it does take up a good bit of room. But, it mike be interesting to cook a hen in it or something of that sort to see how it does. I keep seeing these big geese here and there...one of these days I'm gonna bushwack one of those fat birds...I've never ate one. Who knows?<grin>

Kristi, thanks for all that info! I'm mostly interested in chicken and other lean-meat dishes. My wife doesn't handle pork to well, but I seem to have no problem. Maybe cooking it under pressure might make it more tender and digestible...??? The ability to cook not-so-tender cuts of meat is appealing to me in a $$$ kind of way.

Philip, you old... Nope, not an induction stove, just an electric element, glass-top stove. It works pretty good and I have used it with my 16-quart canner. The complaint about these are that the elements go on-and-off while you're canning and some places say that is a problem for pressure canning. I haven't see a problem with it. The steam is steady once you get it to pressure. Using the stove for none-pressurized cooking it keeps a large pot boiling or simmering steadily. I guess the glass top stores enough heat in it to keep things going when the electric element cycles off. My biggest fear is dropping a big pot (canner?) on it...not sure what the outcome would be and I don't want to think about it. Yeah, I can use the Presto canner for a cooker, but it's a pretty big pot...not the biggest, but still big to be using several times a week. I think I will try a chicken/hen in it, though. Might be a nice project! That last sentence of yours about having room for it is another consideration...we've been here right at 30 years and have acquired this and that...my wife is about "less is more" but I just hate to get rid of something that I *might* need. As time goes by, though, I'm seeing that I had better be using things pretty soon if I'm going to use them...not that I'm going anywhere anytime soon, but as the rear-view mirror says..."OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR". So, another aspect of this is having yet another oject, utensil, appliance, tool, place-holder, to store.

Just wondering...anybody cook fish in their pressure cooker. I've seen different fish recipes, but I'm wondering whether I'd like fish cooked in a pressure cooker. I like fish broiled, grilled, baked, fried, etc., and I like sardines. But, I'm not sure how I'd like fish cooked under pressure. Also, anybody ever cooked catfish in a PC....we don't catch many salmon in the swamp.

plantmanager said:I have an Instant Pot, but so far I haven't used it for much. I am much faster to grab my old 40 year old Presto pressure cooker. The seals are all still readily available, and it's never failed me.

I also use 2 different slow cookers. One is smaller and one is large. I keep thinking I could get rid of a number of appliances and just use the instant pot, but I haven't done it. For me the old familiar is easier than trying to figure out the newer appliance. Every time I use it I have to go to the manual or the internet.

I understand completely...seems the IP would have a learning curve to it but anything new we have to learn. The old familiar, though, is hard to beat. I really wish the old Mirror-Matic would've worked on our flat-top stove...that would have been nice, especially since it belonged to my grandmother and I probably ain't some good things that got cooked in it. I'm handing onto it and maybe I'll set up a propane camp stove outside and try a small chicken or something in it.

Ed, if you decide on an InstaPot, I would not get the large one. A friend did and is wishing she had gotten the smaller one. I have cooked a 4# chicken in mine. It is edible but I haven't hit on the right seasonings to suit me yet.

It always amazes me that you can take a frozen piece of meat and have it cooked and edible in such a short time.

I agree on the learning curve. It did take me a while to get past using it only for a slow cooker. What inspired me was a friend in her 80s and a young male customer in his 30s who kept talking about the different foods they cooked in their pots. I thought if they could master it, surely I could too.

as time goes by, though, I'm seeing that I had better be using things pretty soon if I'm going to use them...not that I'm going anywhere anytime soon, but as the rear-view mirror says..."OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR".

I love that thought. I am striving for less is more here also and when I don't use something it needs to leave so I'll agree with your better half. You better make yourself useful.... just saying!

Hate the glass top stoves- I can't get water to boil if there is more than a gal and a half in the pan without waiting all day. I have beef shanks to fix tomorro- had to look for a simple recipe and debated the insta pot or the stove- haven't decided- will let ya know. I do like what Philip said about the pot inside the pot on the meatloaf- that might solve a problem...now, a Keto recipe for this...

@plantmanager Karen : I'm one hundred and one percent with you last post hear. After checking out instant pots, I've decided that I need one like I need another hole in my head.
I'm like Ed, need to get rid of stuff, not add more to my danged-old collection of, ?🤔??? Crap. Excuse me. 😌😇
I can do everything the IP does already.
Ed : There's one thing that made me raise an eyebrow about those IPs. Why did they have to make so many different kinds. Round, rectangle, six in one, nine in one, ten in one ?🤔???
Humm ? Do they all use the same replacement parts ?
Based on what you have said thus far. If I were you, I'd get an electronic pressure cooker, made by a long standing company that doesn't make all kinds of different models. Just one model of each size.

Fish in pressure cooker. Yes.
Although, anymore, if I want steamed/poached fish. I use the microwave. Five minutes, no oil, no water, turn it ownce half way through. That's for one inch steaks.

I'm not afraid of using aluminum for cooking or baking. If I'm going to get anytimers, it's to late. As a kid, even the schools used aluminum for cooking everything. At my age, I'm not worried about something that MIGHT kill me in thirty years.

Cooker's usually come with recipe booklets.

Y'all take care, and garden ON.
Or as I like to say : GARDEN HOE !
😎😎😎

Kristi, the first thing is......"You better make yourself useful.... just saying! " Whawhahha...WHAT!!!??? Well, maybe she'll let me hang around a while yet... :lol:

After reading about the different sizes it seems that the 6-quart would work the best for us. More room inside would be nice at times, but for the purpose I'm looking at it for the 6-quart should work well. The 3-quart...too many negatives spoken about it. With the 6-quart models I could cook a gallon of stew/soup/meat/etc...plenty for me and the wife and a dinner guest or two with some leftovers remaining.

My reading amounts to mostly technical manuals on how to do things. I figure I ought to be able to figure out how to use one of these Instant Pots...the learning curve for me would be actually following the recipes and making it taste good!!! Now, about making myself useful......

Kat, I do prefer a gas stove...I can adjust that flame to where I want it. Electrics in general are somewhat harder for me to use, but the exposed, coil-burner-type truly seemed easier to adjust than the glass-top (even though it has coils below the surface). But, I've adjusted to it pretty much and cleanup is easy...and my (much) better half is happy!!! Let me know what you do with the beef shanks!!!!

I use Instant Pot often. Not just for its pressure cooker function. I like that I can saute right on it just do not use the cover when doing saute, then change the function to pressure cooking. Yes, you can pressure cook from frozen, but do factor in the venting out time, it takes either from 30 minutes to 40 minutes. So even if actual cooking period is short, that vent out portion takes awhile. You can force it if you want, but it is not recommended if you were doing porridge.

I like that I can just set it and leave it, unlike in stove top cooking where I have to keep coming back to make sure the food has not spilled over or dried out.

I got mine in July 2016, thru Amazon, originally priced at $119 but they had a sale and it was sold for $69.

Prices have pretty much settled now. I have looked at 6 or 7 recipes. Settling on a combo. Also combo with pans. SIL brought thing home last Christmas. Here is what I work with.




Rainfrogs are almost full volume in the sun now, chuckl.



I will put recipe and results back on the Newbie thread for ya

Tarev, thanks for the feedback. The vent out time sounds understandable...I guess it's like venting out a canner before putting the pressure-weight on...? By "forcing" the vent out, are you talking about turning the heat up that might cause the porridge to boil too much and maybe clog the steam emitter up...thus the reason for it not being recommended?

Well I snoozed through the deal on the 6-quart Duo. I kept debating between the Duo and the Duo Plus. The Plus has a few perks to it, but the price has to be closer to warrant the added cost. It seems the Low and High pressure is desirable(?) but that most cooking is done on the "high" setting. The price on the regular Duo kicked back to regular price now. I think there will be more deals to come...seems Black Friday and Prime Day are regular times of deep discounts...I hope the Plus ends up having a deal on it.

In the meantime I think I'm going to use a pot inside my canner to experiment with some chicken. I won't be able to sear the chicken, though, in the aluminum canner...maybe I can find a "just the right size" stainless still pot...sear the chicken/meat in the SS pot on the stove, then move it over into the canner to pressure cook. Hmmm....I haven't played in the laboratory since I created the monster with the bolt through it's neck. :greengrin:

Now to find a chicken recipe...