hey everyone welcome to paint the kitchen red i'm neena and today i'm going to be telling
you all about the instant pot pro which is one of the newer models of instant pot
my previous favorite instant pot was the duo evo plus and i really like that model for a
lot of reasons and i was really disappointed to find out that it was being discontinued
but the pro is even better than the duo evo plus it has all the best features of the evo
and it also has a few more so i really like it if you have a new one that's still in the box
i urge you to take it out of the box and what we're going to do is we're going to do a water
test the water test is where you pressure cook something super simple that you can't
mess up which is water and that allows you to familiarize yourself with the instant pot
and also if there is something wrong with your model which can happen you can either
return it or you can contact the company within the warranty period so if you haven't taken it
out of the box go ahead and do that i'm going to meet you back here and we're going to get started
the instant pot pro comes with a guide that you can use to get instructions on how to use
the pro there's an extra sealing ring which you can keep on hand or you can use it for desserts
here's a trivet that is used to elevate food and finally we
have the condensation collector which i'll show you how to put on in just a little bit
and this is the base unit and also known as the outer pot and this is where the inner pot is going
to be placed it has a cord that's attached this is the inner pot with the two silicone handles
and you have these markings on the inside which tell you the quartz liters and cups and you
also have the max fill line and the half fill line and you'll need to observe these based on
what you're cooking your recipe should tell you so here we have the lid and a steam release assembly
which is made out of the steam release cover which kind of diffuses the steam that comes out
of the instant pot you have a steam release valve which can also be removed and cleaned periodically
and finally we have the steam release pipe which is where the steam comes out of this is the steam
release switch which goes from seal to vent and you'll notice when it's in the vent position the
latch goes up and when it's in the seal position that latch goes back down and that's what allows
you to do a quick release of pressure here we have the float valve which i can access from the inside
and it can go up and down it'll be in the up position when the instant pot is sealed
and it'll be in the down position once the pressure has been released this is the handle
now i'm going to turn the lid around you can remove this cover to reveal a little
slot where you would put a quick cool tray which is a separate accessory that you can buy
from the instant pot company you fill the quick cool tray with water and stick it in the freezer
and then you place it in this metal area and it allows the instant pot to cool down much faster
and then so your pressure release it takes less time it's really useful when you need to do a
natural pressure release but you're running out of time i'll put a link to it in the notes
and so you put the cover back in by pushing the lid in and the latch and let's replace the
steam release valve and the steam release cover i'm going to turn the lid over
and here you see the sealing ring rack which is where the sealing ring goes in and this is the
anti-block shield and the float valve the float valve can be removed by removing the silicone cap
and you can just put it right back on you can take the float valve out and you can wash it sometimes
you might need to do that and then you put it right back into the hole and put the cap back on
the anti-block shield is a little bit difficult to remove with your bare hands
so i like to use a silicone trivet now you can try it uh from the front i have a hard time i've been
having a hard time with this particular model of instant pot doing it from the front but from the
back it comes out really easily so you just push it inward and upward and it comes right off you
can wash it and then once it's clean you just push it right back in it's really easy to put back in
the final thing i want to show you is putting the sealing ring in you just kind of put it over the
sealing ring rack and push down and make sure it goes into the rack all the way around when
you first get your instant pot you might find that the sealing ring is really hard to push in
uh but just keep at it once you start cooking with it it kind of stretches out and it's much easier
to take out and put back in but just make sure it's pushed in all the way around because if you
don't do that you can have sealing issues with your instant pot and you want to try and avoid
that to remove the sealing ring you kind of grab it and pull up and once you get a little bit of
it up it's easy to pull on the rest of the sealing ring and remove the sealing ring just be careful
you don't tear it don't use too much force but it's pretty sturdy and then once you
take it out you can wash it by hand or you can wash it in the dishwasher i wash it in the top
rack of my dishwasher every time i use the instant pot the condensation collector goes on to the back
of the base unit and it slides into these notches on the back let me show it to you from a side view
as well for the most part the condensation collector is going to be clean but every so often
i find that there's liquid accumulated in there and it's usually when i cook messy foods like
pasta so just check it to make sure there's nothing in there because you could end up with
a science experiment if you don't check it every so often i wanted to show you how to prop the lid
open the lid has these two parts that stick out called the lid fin and each lid fin has a slot
that you can put it into to prop the lid open this is really useful when you're done with pressure
cooking and you need to have your hands free you can just prop the lid open in the lead thin slots
okay now let's do the water test here we have the base unit i'm gonna stick the inner pot into the
base unit make sure it sits properly and i'm gonna plug the instant pot into a wall outlet
and add about two cups of water now the instant pot manual tells you to use three cups of water
but i find that two cups of water works just fine you can use two or three with two it just takes
a little less time to come to pressure and so anything to save time to close the lid you want
the arrow on the lid which is like a triangle to line up with the notch on the base unit
and you put the lid on in such a way that the two line up and you'll feel it seat and
you can turn it clockwise and you'll hear a chime and the arrow on the lid
will line up with the notch in the middle of the display panel the steam release switch should be
in the seal position it should automatically be in that position but just double check it
now we're going to program the instant pot for the water test i'm going to give you very simple
directions and then later on i'll go over the display panel and all the features that it has
press the pressure cook button and you'll notice that the custom option will be blinking press the
knob to select custom and you'll notice that the high pressure option is blinking we're going to
press the knob and select high pressure and you'll see the time blinking turn the knob to change the
time to five minutes press the knob to confirm now just press start to start the pressure cooking and
eventually you'll see that the progress bar on the bottom of the display panel will say preheating
and it'll be at the third bar which means it's almost done preheating you'll notice that there'll
be some steam coming out of the top from the float valve and you may even hear some sounds
there's nothing to worry about and the float valve will soon come up to the up position the display
panel will continue to say on and it won't start counting down right away so don't worry about it
just sit tight and at some point the on will change to five and it'll start counting down to
zero i've sped up this video and you'll see that it's counting down from five minutes down to four
three two one and then it'll get to zero and it'll beep saying the pressure cooking is done at this
point it's going to go into keep warm mode and you can see that in the progress bar and it'll count
up from zero until you shut the instant pot off by pressing cancel so let's go ahead and press cancel
let's do a quick release by moving the switch to the vent position you'll see the steam coming out
of the steam release cover it's a diffused steam so unlike some other models of the instant pot
it's a little less scary so that's one of the things i really like about this
instant pot is the steam release so once all the steam has been released the float valve will drop
into the down position and now it's safe to open the instant pot lid so using the handle
i'm going to turn the lid counterclockwise and you might feel a little pulling because of some
of the suction from the steam just be careful and watch out for the steam because it's going
to be very hot put the lid fin into the slot of the base unit and that'll prop the lid open
and that's it for the water test so at this point you have enough information to get going
but if you wanted to learn more about the buttons and all the functions with the instant pot pro
i'm going to go over them briefly in the next few minutes when we did the water test we went
over the pressure cook button there are a couple of other options that i wanted to show you the
pressure cook function has the custom which we used for the water test but there are some
other options that are basically like presets on your microwave so they have a set pressure
level whether low or high and a set time that you would pressure cook at you can toggle through the
different presets in this case i'm going to pick chicken and press the button to select chicken
you'll see the pressure level is set to high you can change it from high to low i'm going to keep
it at high press the button to select high and then you'll see that the time is blinking you
can turn the knob to change the time i'm going to change it to six minutes press the knob to confirm
and then i'm going to press start to start the pressure cooking the display changes to on and
now i'm going to press cancel and if we go back to pressure cook again and turn the knob back to
chicken you'll see that the last thing i did has been saved so this is a great way to customize
the presets if you wanted to reset a button to factory settings you just press and hold it
and it'll beep and you'll see it light up and that means that it's been reset to the factory settings
so if i were to go back to pressure cook and go back to chicken you'll see that it's been reset
to 10 minutes which is the original factory setting for chicken you can do this for any of
the buttons just press and hold and it'll reset back to factory settings now let's go over some
of the other buttons we have rice and grain which has a custom function and presets for white rice
and brown rice and these settings are changed the same way you do the pressure cook button
the steam button is very similar to pressure cook the only difference between steam and pressure
cook is the steam button heats up the instant pot a little bit faster the saute function has to be
used with the lid off it allows you to saute foods before or after pressure cooking so you
can change the temperature level from low to high to custom the custom option has five levels five
bars and you can set it from level one all the way up to level five level one is the first bar
and you just turn the knob to increase the temperature all the way up to five
which is the same as high so i'm going to turn it down to three bars which is medium
and press the knob to confirm the temperature and the time will be blinking you can change the saute
time i'm going to change it to 20 minutes and then all you have to do is press start
next we have the slow cook function slow cook allows you to set the temperature you can set
it to low or high and then once you select that you can change the slow cooking time
to whatever number hours you want to slow cook for and then just press start
next we have the sous-vide setting sous-vide is a technique that allows you to cook
meat in particular really tender and i have a video on that you can set the temperature and
the cooking time for sous-vide yogurt turns out really well in the instant pot i have a couple
of recipes on my blog that you can check out you have two options when you select the yogurt button
one is low which is the fermentation and the other is high which is the boiling of the milk so what
you'll do is boil the milk on high and then let it cool down and add your starter and then you'll
ferment the yogurt on low i like to use nine hours for my fermentation the default is eight hours
check out my recipe for no boil yogurt it's so easy to make the bake function allows you to
pressure cook cakes and bread in the instant pot i'm not a big fan of baking or pressure cooking
cakes other than cheesecakes and puddings those come out really well in the instant pot the delay
start button can be used with many of the pressure cooking functions and basically it allows you to
program the instant pot to begin pressure cooking at a future time so what you do is you program the
instant pot as you normally would so i'm going to press pressure cook and i'll select custom
high pressure and 10 minutes and then press the delay start button and you'll see a time pop up
you can change it in 10 minute increments i'll select five hours and press start so
the instant pot will begin pressure cooking five hours from now for 10 minutes on high pressure
the keep warm button can be turned on at any point when you're programming the instant pot by
pressing the keep warm button and this allows the food to stay warm after pressure cooking is done
you can also turn it on and off after pressure cooking has begun you'll see that there's a light
that shows you if the keep warm function is on or not you may have noticed the reminder option
when you were programming the instant pot for the water test the reminder is something that's
really useful when your recipe calls for a 5 or 10 minute natural release of pressure you should
check out my video on all the different types of pressure release including natural release
quick release and natural release for 5 and 10 minutes and basically what the reminder does is
after pressure cooking is complete it will beep after 5 or 10 minutes whichever one you choose
and that reminds you to release the pressure at that time to turn on the reminder for a program
you select the program in this case pressure cook custom i'm going to select high pressure
and i'm going to select 10 minutes and you'll see that the reminder option is blinking right
now it's blinking on off if you turn the knob you can get to 5 minutes and turn it one more
time and you can get to 10 minutes and once you make your selection you press the knob
and just press start and that's all you need to do when pressure cooking is complete
the instant pot will beep after 10 minutes the favorite button is a new feature of the instant
pot that's available on the pro and what you would do is you would program your instant pot in this
case i'm going to do custom high and i'm going to set the cook time to 5 minutes and just for
the heck of it i'm going to set the reminder to be 5 minutes and now if i press fave 1 and hold
it this program will get saved to that button now if i press cancel and i press fave 1 again
you'll see that the setting was saved and this is a great one touch way to cook your favorite foods
if you wanted to change the temperature unit from fahrenheit to celsius you press and hold the knob
until you see the unit blinking and then you can turn the knob from
f to c and choose the one that you want and then you have the option to turn sound on or off
if you don't like the beeps you can turn the sound off and just press start to confirm your selection
well i hope i've given you enough information to get started with your new instant pot pro
be sure to check out some of my other videos including one on sous vide and also
i have one on the difference between natural and quick release and some other modes of pressure
release that you may run across in your recipes i also have a video on the reasons why your
instant pot may not be sealing and many others so thank you for watching and i'll see you next time