Sautéing is a method of cooking food with a small amount of oil or fat at relatively high heat. Food that is sautéed is browned while preserving its texture, moisture and flavor. A typical use of sautéing is to brown the meat before pressure cooking.
The new Instant Pot IP-LUX60 is equipped with an advanced sautéing/browning function key. 3 levels of temperature can be chosen with the “Adjust” key for best results.
“Normal”: ~160°C (320°F) for regular browning,
“More”: ~170°C (338°F) for darker browning, and
“Less”: ~105°C (221°F) for light browning.
The “Sauté” function can also be used to thicken the sauce after pressure cooking, by adding starch or simply evaporating liquid. In fact, it can be used for anything related with a sauce pan, e.g warming a canned soup, reheating porridge, etc.
During sautéing, the lid needs to be opened at all time to avoid pressure building up. If the lid is closed, the display will show a flashing “Lid”.
The procedure of using “Sauté”.
Press the “Sauté” function key.
Select a temperature with the “Adjust” key for “Normal”, “More” or “Less”.
When Instant Pot reaches the given working temperature, it displays “Hot” and you can start sautéing/browning meat.
One full “Sauté” session will run for 30 minutes. You can cancel it at any time by pressing the “Cancel/Keep Warm” key and continue with a pressure cooking function.
A brief video demo of Instant Pot IP-LUX60 for browning (sautéing) in action.
Eddoe is a small tropical root vegetable, a variety of Taro family originated from China and Japan. They offer an intensely flavorful alternative to potatoes and yams. It’s commonly known that eddoes contain carbohydrate and fiber which are excellent for people with digestive problems. Eddoe flour is used in infant formula and canned baby foods. Other benefits of eddoes may include lowering cholesterol levels, slowing absorption of glucose, reducing insulin requirements and reducing the likelihood of colorectal cancer.
To add eddoes to your daily diet, the following is probably the simplest desert recipe. Cooking eddoes with Instant Pot is easy and fast.
Prepare Time: 2 minutes
Cooking Time: Around 8 minutes with Instant Pot Programmable Pressure cooker
Ingredients: 6 servings
2 pounds of eddoes
White sugar, brown sugar or maple syrup
Cooking:
Wash the eddoes clean. Don’t need to peel them.
Add 2 cups of water in the Instant Pot inner pot. Put in the steaming rack that came with Instant Pot.
Put the eddoes in a ceramic/metal serving bowl. Place the bowl on top of the steaming rack.
Press the “Steam” key and select 8 minutes.
The semi-hard shell of eddoes will be very easy to peel off. Cut the peeled eddoes into bite-size and roll them in the sugar of your choice (white sugar, brown sugar or maple syrup
Instant Pot achieves the best cooking results with a set of smart cooking programs. The programs are stored in and executed by an advanced micro-processor chip inside the Instant Pot control panel. Those programs have been chosen after extensive testing in our lab with various food content.
The smart cooking programs control the cooking process with four parameters: heating intensity, temperature, pressure and duration.
Heating intensity refers to the amount of heat generated by the heating element. The main reason to control heating intensity is to manage the temperature at the bottom of the cooking pot, primarily to avoid burning food content at the bottom. For instance, heating is slower and gradually in “Soup” function whereas fast and steep in “Steam” (knowing there’s no food in contact to the cooking pot bottom). Heating intensity control is also used for soaking, such as in Multigrain function. Instant Pot IP-CSG60 has a heating element with 1000W power rating. The heat output of heating element is control by switching the power on and off for varying durations.
Temperature is the cooking temperature in the cooking pot throughout the cooking process. The peak working temperature of Instant Pot is 115°C~118°C or 239°F~244°F. However, the smart cooking programs don’t always maintain at the peak temperature. In the “Multigrain” program, to soften the grains, the food content is heated to 60oC for warm soaking for 50 minutes before cooking starts.
Pressure: whenthe liquid content in the cooking port reaches the natural boiling point, which varies depending on the altitude of your location, steam builds up in the cooking pot and pressure is generated. The thermodynamics of gas indicates that in ideal cases the product of the pressure and volume of a gas is directly proportional to the temperature. Since the volume in the cooking pot is a constant, we can consider the pressure being linearly related to the temperature of the gas, and to large extent (with delaying effect) to the temperature of the liquid content. The working pressure of Instant Pot is 10.15~11.6 psi (pound-force per square inch).
Cooking duration is the time the food content being cooked. The cooking duration changes depends on the volume of the food content. For example, to cook 2 cups of rice, it takes about 14 minutes (8 minute pressure keeping time). More than 2 cups, it takes about 28 minutes (10 minute pressure keeping time). Additional pressure keeping time ensures rice being cooked evenly in volume. The default timing has been tested in our lab which works well in most cases. However, in situations when food needs to be well-done or less-cooked, the cooking duration can be adjusted with the “Adjust” button.
The smart cooking programs can be better understood with the visual temperature/pressure charts in relation with cooking time. The following are the temperature/pressure charts of “Bean/Chili”, “Meat/Stew”, “Soup”, “Congee” and “Multigrain” cooking programs.
Bean/Chili Program
Congee Program
Meat/Stew Program
Multigrain Program
Soup Program
To cook 2 cups of rice, it takes about 14 minutes (8 minute pressure keeping time). More than 2 cups, it takes about 28 minutes (10 minute pressure keeping time). Additional pressure keeping time to ensure rice are cooked evenly in volume.
1 pound rack of lamb
1 pound of baby potatoes
2 carrots
1 large onion
2 stalks of celery
2 medium size tomatoes
2 cups of chicken stock
3-4 large cloves of garlic
1-2 teaspoons of salt depending on the salt content of the chicken stock
2 teaspoon of cumin powder
2 teaspoon of Paprika
A pinch of dried rosemary
A pinch of dried oregano leaves
2 table spoons of ketchup
3 table spoons of sherry or red wine
A splash of beer if you have one in hand
Wash all vegetables, and cut potatoes and carrots into 1 inch cubes. Dice the tomatoes, onion and garlic. Cut the rack of lamb to two halves. Put everything, I mean everything, in the cooking pot and mix well. Put the cooking pot in the Instant Pot base. Close the lid to Close position as you see flashes of “- – -“ on the LED display panel. Press the Stew/Meat button, and 35 (minutes cooking time) is shown on the LED. After about 10 seconds, you hear a beep and the LED display shows the running circle indicating the cooking process has started.
All you need to do from this point is to have a drink of your beer, sit back and relax, until you hear 3 beeps indicating the food is cooked. Wait for a few minutes until the Instant Pot cools down and you can safely or comfortably release the remaining pressure by turning the pressure release handle to the “Vent” position. Need to wait for a little longer if there is still jets of steam coming out when you try to turn the pressure release to the “Vent” position. You may open the lid once there is no pressure inside. Serve over rice or multigrain rice.
Comments (1) 
When Instant Pot reaches the given working temperature, it displays “Hot” and you can start sautéing/browning meat.
