Don't Need Much Money is exactly what it sounds like: a site about needing less, so you have more. More time. More freedom. More room to actually live. The idea is simple. The less money you need to survive, the more time you have to thrive. Lower your living costs, live a healthy lifestyle focused on longevity and mobility, stay out of debt, and build a little savings, and you buy yourself something far more valuable than money: time. Time to do what you actually love, spend with people you care about, and put toward things that matter. This site is my own real life running that experiment. Most of what you'll find here are recipes and day-to-day habits. They aren't filler posts, it's intentional. Cooking from scratch, buying smart, wasting less, eating well, and staying healhty, fit, and limber all without spending much are some of the most direct ways I practice this philosophy day to day. This blog doubles as my own recipe box and exercise notes, and I share it b...
I am always a fan of trying to do more things with kitchen appliances. One of those wonder appliances is the Instant Pot. It can serve as a pressure cooker, slow cooker, rice cooker, steamer, yogurt maker, and even to sauté.
One thing I was curious about is whether the sauté function could boil water. Turns out when set to More, it certainly can boil water. This means it can also cook pasta. The trick is to not overfill the pot with water or pasta because pasta is prone to bubble, fizz, and boil over. That will happen if you overfill it.
My recommendation is to cook half of the box at a time. If cooking longer noodles like spaghetti or fettuccini, you should break the pasta in half so it can fit.
Here are the directions:
- Fill the pot liner with water to the max fill line.
- Bring the water to a boil on the Sauté More setting.
- Drop in 8oz of pasta (half a box).
- Cook for the amount of time on the box and watch carefully.
- If it bubbles and fizzes, give the pasta a stir or even blow carefully on it being careful not to steam your face. The bubbles should subside.
- Test a noodle and once it reaches the desired doneness, turn off the Instant Pot.
- Use oven mitts to lift the liner out, strain in the sink and enjoy.
Now, it turns out that isn't the only way to cook pasta in an Instant Pot. Someone has figured out how to use the pressure cooker setting. The instructions are on InquiringChef.com. The neat part about the recipe is that all the water used gets absorbed. The pasta becomes extra starchy this way and really sticks to pasta sauce.
I tried this process, and again I recommend only using half the box of pasta. The full box did bubble and fizz inside the chamber, so when I released the steam, the starchy water would splatter out of the top with the steam. But it sure was nice not to have to dump out water. It is recommended not to cook long noodles using this method. For those, I recommend sticking to the boiling method I outlined above.
So next time you need to cook pasta, give either of these methods a try. You never know when being able to cook different things in an Instant Pot will come in handy.
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