Cooking Tamales In Instant Pot

Instant Pot

If you've bought an Instant Pot, congratulations! You've added an excellent tool to your kitchen. But what about Instant Pot-specific (or pressure cooker in general) recipes? You're bound to find a ton of recipes online or from the official Instant Pot Community Facebook group, but what's the best way to keep track of them all with your iPhone? Fortunately, we've got you covered.

See Instant Pot at Amazon
$49 at Walmart

Instant Pot app
Instant Pot Smart Cooker & Recipes
Paprika Recipe Manager
CopyMeThat
Mealthy

Instant Pot app

The Instant Pot app can't get any more official, as it comes directly from the company.

This simple app lets you create a free account to keep your recipes, favorites, and grocery list in sync across multiple devices. Just sign up with an email address, create a username and password, and you're ready to go.

With the Instant Pot app, you can browse through a collection of over 450 tried-and-true recipes from the online community that the Instant Pot team hand-picked themselves. There's always a featured recipe that gets highlighted on a regular basis and you can browse the rest by category or check out the newest recipes.

For Instant Pot newbies, the official app has a helpful "New User Tips" article for reference whenever you need it. This covers useful tips to get you started with your new Instant Pot and describes important lingo, such as NPR (Natural Pressure Release) and Quick Release.

As you browse recipes, you can favorite the ones you like for quick access later. All recipes in the app include the ingredients and clear, step-by-step instructions, so they're foolproof. If you modify a recipe and want to make a note of it, you can do that too.

When you have a recipe you want to make, you can add the necessary components to a grocery list directly in the Instant Pot app. It's definitely your one-stop shop!

Free - Download Now

Instant Pot Smart Cooker & Recipes

The Instant Pot Smart, a Bluetooth connected Instant Pot, allows you to control and monitor your cooking progress from a smartphone or tablet (within range, of course). If you have an Instant Pot Smart, you'll want the Instant Pot Smart Cooker & Recipes app, too.

The Dashboard lets you check in on the current work mode, how much time is remaining, the temperature, and pressure and heating levels. If you need to make a change, just pick the correct function from your iPhone, without having to get up.

If you're more tech-savvy, the Smart Cooker app lets you write your own recipe scripts, which are shareable with others. Recipe scripts let you get more creative with your Instant Pot cooking, and even allows for sous vide with the Instant Pot Smart, rather than having to get a separate circulator stick or Instant Pot Ultra. If you're interested in making recipe scripts, check the official guide for directions.

Smart Cooker also has a handful of recipes with scripts built-in so you can check out the possibilities of using a Bluetooth-enabled Instant Pot.

Free - Download Now

Paprika Recipe Manager

Whether or not you're an Instant Pot-exclusive cook, Paprika is one of the best recipe managers there is — and for good reason.

As I mentioned, there are a ton of Instant Pot recipes online. Paprika features a great way to pull them off and dump them into an optimized and streamlined format for quickly referencing anytime. Paprika comes with a built-in browser so you can search and add directly within the app.

Or, to make things easier, you can make use of the Paprika Safari share extension to pull recipe details off Safari and dump it into Paprika. The extension is intelligent enough to determine what is an ingredient and what the directions are in Safari, so it only pulls out what's relevant to put into Paprika. You can make edits before saving it, and even categorize it accordingly.

Paprika can store hundreds or even thousands of recipes without an issue, even images. All ingredient lists and directions get laid out in a streamlined format and you can easily add ingredients to a grocery list if needed. If you prefer to plan out your meals, Paprika has full support for meal planning for the week or month. As you cook, the directions are interactive as well, so you can start timers and cross off completed steps as you go.

If you use multiple devices, Paprika is available on iOS, Mac, Android, Kindle, and Windows. You can create an account for free to keep everything synced.

$4.99 - Download Now

CopyMeThat

If Paprika's price of admission is a bit steep for you, then CopyMeThat is another good alternative.

Like its competition, CopyMeThat needs an account before you're able to get started. Fortunately, it's free, and so is the initial download. You can even sign up with Facebook to make things easier.

CopyMeThat's Safari share extension is easy to use, and the app prompts you to install it right away once you're logged in. Once it's up and running, just select it from the Share Sheet each time you want to snag a recipe online. You could also use their recipe clipper in your desktop browser.

Once you start accruing recipes in CopyMeThat, you'll find that they go where you go, no matter the device. Everything's kept in sync and you'll never lose a recipe, even if the blog you got it from is no longer around. Organize everything by tags, or just use good old-fashioned search. CopyMeThat is also great for adding in your own original recipes.

Again, if you prefer to plan ahead for your family, CopyMeThat's meal planning feature works nicely. And there's the ability to add ingredients to an in-app grocery list, so you don't need to manage a separate app for that.

Everyone's able to use CopyMeThat for free, but there are some limitations. If you find that it works well for your Instant Pot cooking, there's a Premium membership available. You can sign up for one year for $12.50 or get a lifetime membership for $25. Premium features include multiple shopping lists, recipe scaling, and much more.

Free - Download Now

Mealthy

While Mealthy is a new competitor to Instant Pot, their app proves to still be a useful tool for Instant Pot owners, as well as the kitchen in general.

Mealthy sells their own multi-functional pressure cooker called the "MultiPot," but you can use any pressure cooker, including the Instant Pot, for the specified recipes.

Cooks will find a huge variety of recipe choices in Mealthy. It showcases "Ready in 30" recipes for quick and easy meals, or you can browse other popular categories like, "One Pot or Pan," "Weeknights," or "Pressure Cooker." A search function is available when you have something particular in mind.

Some of us are more visual people, so Mealthy has a solution for that too. There's an entire section for easy video recipes where you can see how each step works.

Regardless of whether you check traditional or video recipes, you can add them to your own Recipe Box for accessing later. And every single recipe comes with gorgeous photos of the end product, easy-to-follow instructions (it's foolproof!), and an option to export the ingredient list via Share Sheet.

Even though Mealthy is trying to promote their own MultiPot, don't worry — you can achieve the same delicious recipes in your Instant Pot.

Free - Download Now

Get pressure cookin'!

As I've said before, the Instant Pot is a great convenience in the kitchen. A lot of us have an Instant Pot and it may even have inspired some of us to fall in love with cooking. These are just some of the best apps out there to help you with your Instant Pot meals.

Do you have an Instant Pot? What apps are you using to keep your recipes handy? Let us know in the comments below.

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