Did u add any water to it? I just got the 8qt and cant get it to pressurize, everything end up getting burned and caked on at the bottom. Was wondering if i have to add a cup of water to everything.
I think it depends on how much moisture is in whatever you're cooking to begin with. The instant pot builds pressure by boiling whatever liquid is in it, so you need at least a little water, regardless of where it comes from.
Ground beef probably needs a bit of water.
I've done chicken with no water before, though. Apparently chicken carries enough water on its own to cook fine.
Very watery vegetables like tomatoes don't really need much (if any) water either, though sometimes I add a little to be safe.
On a side note, you're not supposed to put anything that can potentially stick to the bottom and burn during cooking. So adding things like cheese in a pot is bad.
I was thinking of picking up one during Amazon prime day but then I read a recipe for chicken. In the recipe it said cook the chicken for 25 minutes and I thought "Great, that'll be so easy to do for a meal one evening." However, I then looked through the comments and the writer admitted that it takes up to 40 minutes to get to pressure and then the natural release at the end takes another 15, so basically it takes nearly an hour and a half to cook a small chicken!
Surely she's doing something wrong?!
Pressurizing/depressurizing time does need to be added in. It does sometimes take 10-15 minutes to build up pressure (40 sounds way too long to me), and if you do a natural release (letting the pot sit and cool down enough to depressurize on its own), that can take 15-20 minutes after the pot is done cooking to depressurize. If you add these times, sometimes using the instant pot takes longer than actually cooking something conventionally, but you still get the advantage of not needing to look after it, not needing to check if it's done, etc. The instant pot is definitely faster than normal pots for things that need to boil for a long time though, such as beans or certain soups.
Another upside is that cooking something in an instant pot typically doesn't take as long as boiling it in a normal pot. For example, if you boil pasta in a normal pot for 10 minutes, cooking it in an instant pot for 5ish minutes (or less) will do the same thing, not counting pressurizing/depressurizing times. I usually boil potatoes in the instant pot just because it's faster and I don't need to watch the pot while it cooks.
After cooking, you can make the depressurizing time way shorter by using the quick release valve, which releases the steam much more quickly, but it can be loud and sometimes shoots bits of water out of the valve (not a problem but it makes you need to clean the valve more often). That'll let you open the lid in about 5 minutes max. I've started to do this more often.