 Hey everyone welcome back to Six Sisters Stuff. Today I'm going to show you how to use an Instant Pot. So my name is Kristen and every Monday I share an Instant Pot recipe with you guys. So if you are new to the Instant Pot make sure that you subscribe so you don't miss any of the recipes. I'm sure a lot of you got an Instant Pot for Christmas and you're a little intimidated you're not sure how to use it. Now when I first got my Instant Pot it sat in the box for about three months because I'll be honest I was terrified. I did not know how to use it and I just didn't didn't even want to go there. So I thought this video would be very helpful to show you how to use the Instant Pot and then those that have been around for a little while I'm also going to make a delicious macaroni and cheese. So all right so first I'm going to teach you how to use the Instant Pot. So this Instant Pot is called the Instant Pot Lux. There's also a duo that I use to show you how to use that too but I'm just going to show you. They're so similar that it'll make sense just showing you how to do it. So the first thing you do with your Instant Pot is that you want to make sure that you have the silver pot in your pot. If you don't have that silver pot and you just dump your food in you will ruin your Instant Pot so always make sure that this silver pot is in your pot. Next we're going to talk about the lid a little bit. The lid is you could you could hear the little dinging sound as I took this off. If you put the lid on correctly you'll hear that little chime. There we go that's what you want to hear that means your lid is on correctly. Now in order to pressurize any of your food you want to make sure that this little knob is turned to ceiling. If this knob is on ceiling that means it will pressurize. If it's on venting all the pressure will come out of your Instant Pot so as you're cooking ceiling not venting. Now I get a lot of questions about there's so many functions there's so many buttons I'm so intimidated and confused I'll be honest. I really just use the manual button or if you have a different model the pressure cook button those are the most common buttons that I use. I also use a yogurt button but unless I'm making yogurt or making bread I just use the manual or pressure cook. So when you're cooking something you're going to push the manual button and then there's a negative sign and a plus sign so depending on how long you want to cook it for so I'm going to go up let's say eight minutes. If I'm cooking it for eight minutes I'm going to let it sit there after I've done the plus and wait a few seconds and then it's going to say on that means you've done it right that's literally all you have to do and you can walk away. Now if you need to go down of course you can do the negative and that will make your number go down. Now the only other thing is that when you're cooking with your Instant Pot just remember it does take some time to pressurize don't be intimidated by that it will take almost 10 to 15 minutes to pressurize so I have a lot of people that start it they push it says on and then there's they're texting me and they're trying to call me and contact me to let me know that it's taking too long to pressurize it's not working it's okay 10 to 15 minutes to pressurize that is completely normal it's just how the Instant Pot works it takes a long time to get the water flowing. All right so I'm going to show you how to make an easy mac and cheese recipe we're going to show you some of the function buttons and you're just going to see how easy it really is so you want to make sure your lid is off your Instant Pot because obviously you need to use the pot and with we're making macaroni and cheese of creamy macaroni and cheese so we're going to start with one pound of elbow macaroni then we're going to do four cups of chicken broth now I love to get these containers because I know that there are four cups in here and I don't have to measure anything so we're going to pour it all in okay now the secret when making pasta is that you want to make sure yes I am using my finger you want to make sure that all the noodles are covered in liquid if you don't have enough liquid then you need to add more liquid to it you just want to make sure all the noodles are covered or you're going to have some hard noodles with your pasta all right this is all that we have to do we're going to put the lid on now okay we're putting the lid on can you hear that that means you're doing it right then you're going to turn this little knob to sealing now the other Instant Pots have a different looking knob they both have sealing and venting so make sure that it's on sealing okay once it's on sealing then we're going to come up over here and we're going to push the manual button or the pressure cook button and we're going to go down to just four minutes pasta only takes four minutes to cook so once you push the buttons then you're going to wait for it to say on once it says on you're good to go now the difference between making like let's say macaroni and cheese in the Instant Pot compared to on your stovetop is that you literally can set your timer to four minutes and walk away now you think of all the steps you have to do when you do it on the stovetop you have to heat your water you have to make sure it doesn't boil over then you have to put your noodles in you have to wait about seven minutes for your noodles to cook and you are just at the stovetop the whole entire time with the Instant Pot I can go clean up the kitchen I can go put away the laundry I can do a lot of other things while it's cooking so this is why I love the Instant Pot so much all right we're going to let this cook and then I'll come back and I'll finish making the rest of macaroni and cheese so once it's all done cooking you're going to have it say L L means that it is done you'll usually hear a little sound that it is done it beeps at you and then it's going to start counting up so you'll know how many minutes it's been done so usually with pasta and other things I like to do something called a quick release a quick release is when you turn it to venting right when it's done cooking now if you see some instructions that say natural release that means you're just going to leave it just as it is and let it release the pressure on its own natural release but with pasta and because I want to make this really quick we're going to turn it to quick release which is turning it to venting so all the steam will come out okay so once that's all done there's a little pin that will drop that means that you can open your lid safely oh and if you can see the pasta is cooked perfectly now there is a little bit liquid at the bottom and that is just fine because we're going to use that liquid for the macaroni and cheese so just kind of mix your noodles around a little bit there might be a little bit stuck together but that's not hard once you start mixing they'll come apart okay so now we're going to push the saute button the saute button is the other button that I use all the time so you can brown your onions or you can brown your meat stuff like that but we're going to use the saute button today to make everything warm so first we're going to push the cancel and then we're going to push the saute button there you go okay now it's time to add the good stuff with the mac and cheese so for first going to add a half a cup of milk and I'm just going to eyeball this a little bit and then about a teaspoon of Dijon mustard you don't have to add the Dijon I just like it just gives it a little bit of a kick and then just a dash of hot sauce you can use your favorite hot sauce whatever hot sauce you like or if you don't like hot sauce you don't even have to add the hot sauce I just like the extra flavor that it gives it and then last we're going to add just two tablespoons of butter so I'm just going to mix these things in there right now so we're going to let the butter melt and mix in the mustard and everything else it's starting to smell good all right so once the butter is all melted now we're just going to add two cups of cheddar cheese I like to use sharp cheddar cheese but you can use any kind of cheddar cheese that you want now if you shred your own cheddar cheese that will make it mix a little bit easier but I'm kind of lazy and I like to buy pre-shredded so I don't even have to worry about that stuff I'm a more of dump everything in and go kind of person all right once your cheese is melted and everything is melted and mixed together go ahead and push the cancel button you don't want to keep sauteing or it will burn the bottom of your pan it will burn the noodles so we're turning it off and so you'll just have nice hot mac and cheese ready to serve now if you want to make this a little bit earlier in the day you can always push the cancel button again it is also the keep warm button and you can just let it sit here for an hour or two I would put the lid back on and let it sit until you're ready to eat all right oh man these noodles smell so good I can smell just the little bit of Dijon mustard in there it's my favorite now I was thinking that you could easily do if you have the other box mac and cheese you could easily make just the Kraft macaroni and cheese too because it's literally the same thing you're just cooking your noodles and adding everything else when you're done so my question for you is if you're new to the Instant Pot have you used it yet and if you haven't why haven't you so put that down below in the comments I'm curious to see who has used their pot and who hasn't that's all I have for you today now don't forget if you're new and you want to use your Instant Pot more subscribe to the channel so you won't miss any of our Instant Pot videos all right see you later bye