My 21 year old bought himself an InstantPot for his apartment. He lives alone, works and goes to college. In the first couple of weeks he’s had the pot, he’s made sweet potato fries, and chicken wings that he’s raved about. The chicken wing endorsement is a huge deal for us! Before being transplanted in the mid-west, we hailed from Buffalo, New York. Need I say more???
Growing up in Western New York, chicken wings – GREAT chicken wings – were a meal time staple, especially when selecting a place to eat out. Unfortunately, we have never found wings in the mid-west to be adequate. They are chewy, slimy, fatty, and generally unappetizing to eat! Some people even cook them in a crock pot! GROSS!
So, when my son said his homemade wings turned out crispy, well cooked, and more delicious than any wing he’s ever had outside of our Buffalo visits, my ears perked up!
While my husband and I continue on our Keto Diet Journey, we continue to try to new recipes. After a little discussion, we figured why not try a new way of cooking as well?! Since a regular InstantPot would not fry wings, we bought the same version as my son – the Duo Crisp and AirFryer Combo InstantPot. I got it at Target, but they are available at other stores, too.
Yesterday was the day I decided to try cooking with it. Since I needed to read about how to use it before cooking, I chose a simple recipe to try it out. It was an Italian Sausage Soup recipe I found while scouring the internet for tasty keto recipes. This one was specifically meant for an InstantPot.
The soup turned out great and we’ll make the recipe again – it was delicious. But, using the InstantPot was interesting. I thought I’d share some of my observations.
Height Matters!
1) It is hard to use when you are a short person. I am lucky to have ample counter space in my kitchen. So, using the InstantPot on my kitchen counter was a logical choice. However, the first thing I had to do (after I ran through the pressure cooking trial) was to sauté the sausage. My first error? I dumped the sausage in without preheating the pot. This was easily rectified, however. I just removed the sausage and put the pot on preheat for saute. There’s actually a button for that function! The pot is pretty simple. It basically tells you when the pot is ready.
But, after I dumped in the sausage, I noticed that at my height it was difficult to see into the pot and stir the sausage! I found myself standing on my tippy toes to peer down inside. All the photos below were taken from this vantage point! This is a negative!
Directions for Specific Versions of “The Pot.”
2) The next thing I encountered was that the recipe called me to use the meat/stew setting. Huh? Where is that? I did not see a button with that label. I decided to be “wild” and test several of the buttons, but after pressing them all, none said, “meat/stew.”
Being stumped, I turned to google and searched. Finally, I found that my version of the combined InstantPot/Air Fryer does not have the same “smart buttons” as the simple, single InstantPot. This made sense after I thought about it. There needs to be buttons for the air-fryer part of the appliance, so one can only expect so much. After an adequate amount of reading, I determined (or made an educated guess) that I needed to use the pressure cooking button for the soup and just set the time called for in the recipe.
Yummy Soup
The soup was great and I feel good passing on the recipe (see below). The set up and clean up of the InstantPot was also easy. Next step? Learning to use the Duo Crisp Air Fryer. You might guess that chicken wings are on the menu this week! We should be good to go with wings on the keto diet because true Buffalo Wings are never breaded or baked! And, we already know Franks Red Hot Sauce is Keto friendly!
Stay Tuned for our chicken wing ding!
For those interested, the soup recipe can be found here. Highly recommended!
The Apples in My Orchard 
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