How To Sauté In An Instant Pot
Anyone who is a veteran of slow cookers knows that many recipes start with “sauté in a skillet until brown and then add to slow cooker…” It does help the flavor of foods cooked in a slow cooker, but think about all of the delicious bits left behind! Even if the pan is deglazed before finishing, there is some loss of flavor. Thus in this article, we are going to help you with how to sauté in an Instant Pot – the best way to retain flavor and nutrients!
The makers of the Instant Pot are, fortunately, aware of this problem. Many come with a sauté feature added so that everything can, at last, be done in one pot. No more additional cleanup. No more loss of flavor. It can all be done standing in one place.
How does this work? To understand that it’s necessary to take a look at how it was made. Slow cookers tend to be made of pottery. A few have an inner liner like the Instant Pot, but the idea is to cook things at a low temperature for a long time.
The Instant Pot is made from metal. It has a metal burner inside it, and a metal inner pot sits on the said electric burner. That burner can get hotter than a gas stove can heat a cast-iron skillet. It is hot enough to bring food to a steady boil, so sautéing is going to be a cinch.
In order to sauté, the first thing you need to do is get the inner pot hot. The rule of sautéing anything is a hot pan and cold oil. That doesn’t mean the oil has to be refrigerated, just that there should be a wide separation of temperature.
After that, choose the oil you want to use. This choice depends on three things.
- The first is flavor. Most oil has one, and it is essential that the food is going to be otherwise mild.
- The second is the smoke point. Some oil starts giving off smoke at a lower temperature than others.
- The third is health. Cold-pressed oils are healthier than those that require heat. Olive oil, grapeseed oil, and avocado oil are all considered healthy choices.
Next, look at your recipe. Some recipes have more than one thing that needs to be sautéed. The instructions should tell you the order in which to do it, but that can be changed depending on the end results the cook wants. Unless it’s going to be dredged or breaded, the meat is usually sautéed first. This gives a base for any vegetables to be added.
When using an Instant Pot, sautéing is usually the first step in making the dish. However, there is often a neglected step between sautéing and pressure cooking. That’s called deglazing. Even with the inner liner of an Instant Pot, this is an important step.
Deglazing can be done with any liquid. However, broth or wine will bring a lot of flavor to the party. Cooked wine no longer has the alcohol content of the liquid still in the bottle. In fact, it has less than a slice of bread. After deglazing, then add the rest of the ingredients and seal it up.
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