****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
When I bought my InstantPot, I bought several vegan pressure cooking cookbooks in order to have plenty of recipe ideas to work with so that I would actually use my new gadget and not just put it in the cabinet collecting dust. JL Fields book is my most-used cookbook! I love the variety, the simplicity, the versatility, and the ease of use of these recipes. I have enjoyed trying new things as well as new twists on old favorites. I wanted to wait until I’d made several things before writing a review; I’ve currently made over 20 different recipes, and many of these I have made more than once because they are so good and have become monthly staples!I’ve made the Three-Bean Delight (fave), brown rice (finally, rice that does not stick! I can get rid of my rice cooker now because my instant pot makes better rice!), Spanish Rice (fave), Freekah (first time to try freekah, I really liked it!), pumpkin spice porridge (really liked!), oat, amaranth, and carrot porridge, Garam Masala Lentil Soup (Fave), white beans and greens soup (fave), curried mung bean stew (Fave, first time to try mung beans, love!), potato soup (this one was just ok, not too fond of the tofu in this, next time I will leave it out), portabello mushroom and barley soup (Fave!), very veggie split pea soup (fave), bean and barley stew (fave), Anasazi bean and potato soup (this was pretty good, but I made several substitutions because I didn’t have all the ingredients, I will try this again now that I have Anasazi beans), speedy bean chili (fave, this is great when you have canned beans and don’t have time to make beans from scratch), black bean and sweet potato stew (Fave!), kale, lentil, and squash chili (fave), black eyed pea and collard green chili (Fave!), summer lentil and millet chili (fave!), black beans and quinoa (Fave! I used red quinoa because that’s what I had and I Loved it with the red, I will always make this with red quinoa!), navy beans, rice and greens (Fave!), amaranth lentils (fave), fava bean risotto (very good, but dried out a little when reheated, when fresh, it was wonderful!), black eyed peas and farro (Fave!).As you can see, most of these recipes are favorites and I have made them numerous times! What I usually do is batch cook on the weekends, making several things, and freezing several bowls. These recipes are very versatile; I don’t use the oil to saute, using veggie broth instead (if I even take the time to saute first!). I often substitute different greens for whatever I have in the fridge, and I rarely saute the onions and garlic first, just throwing everything in the pot (the only time I really saute first is if it calls for sautéing carrot or sweet potato with the onion, since these are hard veggies, I will saute those, but if the recipe calls for just sautéing onion and garlic, most of the time I don’t do that.) There are a few recipes that call for soy curls or TVP, but not very many and you can always leave those out. I’m glad I purchased this cookbook and I have already got my money’s worth out of it, discovering several new foods that I love! And I already have 3 more new recipes picked out to try this weekend!In addition to delicious and simple recipes, the cookbook starts out with pressure cooking 101, common answered questions, cooking time charts, and tips for cooking beans and grains. I prefer to use the cooking charts in this cookbook over the charts in my Instant Pot manual. When the recipes lists a cooking range, I use the middle range; for example, the black bean and sweet potato stew calls for cooking at high pressure for 22 to 24 minutes, I will use 23 minutes and that has worked well for me. Love this cookbook!
