Instant Pot Fast & Easy: 100 Simple and Delicious Recipes for Your Instant Pot

I'm an old cook but was new to pressure cookers/instant pots & fortunately stumbled on Urvashi Pitre's book in 2019 after buying our first instant pot. Since then I've bought it for our adult children when they've gotten their first pressure cookers: it's that good a cookbook & teaching tool. The biggest advantage to Dr. Pitre's cookbooks is that she knows what the IP technology does & how it affects food during the cooking process. Yes, her recipes are tasty & varied but they are also recipes that work in the steamy environment of a pressure cooker. That's SO important! Because pressure cookers use steam to cook quickly there are recipes that don't translate well to them, & foods cook with a lot less liquid that we're used to so you have to adjust both liquid levels & often the spicing levels as well to get a good outcome. Thus the best rice to use is Basmati because of how it cooks in steam, & you only need about 1/4 cup of liquid to cook 1 cup of rice. Too much more liquid & you'll get rice mush. This cookbook is a gem: you can cook the recipes as written & the recipes, including spice mix recipes, are easily adjusted to your own taste. After cooking a few recipes & getting a feel for instant pots I had no problem creating IP recipes for some of our family favorites & that's entirely due to Dr. Pitre's helpful, cheerful and supportive style of recipe writing. HIGHLY recommend!

My headline, #TrustUrvashi, about says it all. Urvashi Pitre has a very personal - friendly - writing style, even for something as potentially dry and boring as a cookbook! She uses the first person which brings her right into your kitchen, and she talks about how she has altered the traditional recipes to make them easier and faster. Every one of her recipes I've tried has come together perfectly; her recipes are well tested, as opposed to many sources that publish but don't test the recipes! There is some criticism of the number of recipes that use rice. Other readers have already gone to the trouble to check the counts, which are overstated by the critics. Besides, this cookbook includes recipes (traditionally called receipts in many countries that were colonized by the British), from many countries - and guess what, far far more countries in this big world rely on rice than American potatoes! Don't like rice? Fine, make your pasta or potatoes or dumplings separately and eat them instead of the rice. We love rice and rely on Jasmine, Basmati, and American converted white rice, depending on what we're making, so I appreciate Urvashi's use of rice. So, to paraphrase an old rhyme, Critics take cover, Grumps go to sleep - these recipes need cooking, and good food doesn't keep!

Book came quickly and was packaged well. We've made nearly 20 of these recipes so far and they have all been fool-proof and delicious. The author also has an informative youtube channel. My only complaint is that paperback cookbooks are susceptible to water! Lol. We split a drink on ours and it's a bit warped now.

NOTE: blatantly inaccurate review by HEIDI states “Majority of receipts [sic] are rice.” There are over 100 recipes in this book. ONLY approx 20 include rice. 20% is hardly “a majority”. That reviewer is intentionally stating false information in an effort to hurt this author. It’s unfair and people should know. This cookbook is a treasure of recipes from everywhere. Urvashi Pitre hits another one out of the park! This book is beyond fantastic with so many delicious and easy peasy recipes. As with all of her books, the layout is great, the pictures mouthwatering delicious and the recipes are true to her quick and no fuss style. You will not be disappointed in any of the recipes and they’ll immediately become family favorites. Get all of Urvashi’s cookbooks and you’ll be ready for any occasions that may arise. And don’t forget she has the brand new cookbook, “Keto Fat Bombs, Sweets & Treats: Over 100 Recipes and Ideas for Low-Carb Breads, Cakes, Cookies and More”, available to preorder. Enjoy!

The only cooking book that has inspired me to make delicious dinners for my family! Recipes are fast and easy just like the book says, without spending hours in the kitchen. The book is well organized, recipes are in the right order. There is also a few tips how to make the best use of it. Excellent illustrations. The recipes are from around the world, short and simple but delicious! Make sure you get the right book, there is a couple other books that have a similar cover but the content is just not worth buying them.

1---Urvashi Pitre is a kook, not cook, for tahini (sesame paste) adding where it shouldn't be = page 185 Baba Ghanoush, page 219 Cucumber Tzatziki. I refused to add it for the tzatziki ! And regrettably I followed her recipe for baba. Big mistake. Eggplant is subtle so the tahini obliterated its flavor. Who are you, Urvahi, to publish such nonsense? 2---I liked the Kunde (Kenyan black-eye peas with peanut sauce) page 142 but once again a nut flavor-dominated dish. 3---Also, many of her recipes strain to adapt them to this over-rated Instant Pot craze: page 191 Cardamon Halva in a 6x4 pan onto steamer rack into instant pot is ridiculous. Far easier on the stove top. Instant pot is handy for speeding up bean-vegetable prep but not everything which this cook and book lead you to believe. 4---I will try some of her Indian spiced meats, stew-type recipes but henceforth I will adapt them using my common sense. Conclusion: Urvashi Pitre's $22 cookbook is highly skewed to her PERSONAL Indian tastes so this book is just an extension of her Indian Instant Pot Cookbook. IMHO save the $22 and select your instant pot recipes online. . .without tahini !

I really don't understand the one review which said it's mostly Indian recipes with a few Mexican. There's a wide variety of cuisines : Indian, American, Chinese, creole, middle eastern, , Mexican, Jamaican, Italian, etc. Almost too many to type here lol. So I have photos of the table of contents so you can see for yourself. Because I was curious counted the recipes 101 (excluding the 9 recipes for making spice mixes) - I think there are 12 Indian recipes. So definitely not a big amount of the total. The majority of recipes have a full page photo - beautiful and personally this inspires me to cook! My cookbooks with photos get used all the time while the cookbooks without photos gather dust and often end up donated. And really the number of recipes that have rice listed is not majority either - yes 24 mention rice but in many cases it's an optional item to serve as a side. If you are low carb you could omit or have a different side like zucchini noodles or cauliflower rice etc

I am a huge fan of Urvashi and her cookbooks. I can count on every recipe turning out the first time. I particularly like the depth of flavors in the dishes, although I do need to put a touch less cayenne that most recipes call for. Her spice mixes are amazing and so much better than any I have found in the stores. Today, I have made Ghee, Garam Masala, Schwarma Spice and Sambhar Spice Mix, all recipes from this book. The Pea and Paneer Curry is delicious. Do buy this book if you like quick, easy and delicious dishes.

The book is excellent with awesome recipes. I am so grateful I purchased this book. However it was shipped with the bind of the spine broken and the pages are falling out. I am not impressed with the actual quality of the book. No fault of the author but if amazon

EASY, well laid out recipes for amazing food. Buy the book. Her blog is a dizzying nightmare of spam and computer resource wasters.

I love her food , done the fish in coconut and paprika yesterday it's blooming stunning. Doing the quiche today. Her butter curry is awesome. I'm buying all her books. AMAZING FOOD .

Love the recipes, easy to follow, and gives all info you need to know in order to cook in the Instant Pot.

This book is well worth buying. All the recipes I have tried have worked perfectly and are extremely tasty. They are also very easy to cook. I have several books by this author and they are all great.