Originally Posted by
YVR Cockroach
I bought an Instant Pot stick a few months back. Tougher cuts of steak and pork chops were disappointing. Haven't tried fish though I live next to the ocean. What works particularly well are duck legs and chicken thighs (check your temperature). I think beef short cut ribs (a.k.a. kalbi) will work well but I was SVing mine in marinade. Big mistake.
For efficiency, I got a small cooler chest from a Big Brothers Big Sisters yard sale and made a lid out of some insulating foam (didn't want to put a hole in the original lid). Heat loss is minimal.
The trick with Instant Pot is some things cook really long and other short - for tougher meats, sometimes the longer the better - but in all cases, always natural release tougher meats because when you flip the valve open to do a rapid release, the pressure drop can pull the moisture out of the meat leaving it dry and tough with all of your juices now sitting in the bottom of the pot. I tried chuck roast a couple times in the IP following online recipes that were too short and left me with a pile of shoe leather, but just letting it go long with natural release resulted in fork tender, moist meat.