Indian Instant Pot® Cookbook: Traditional Indian Dishes Made Easy and Fast Kindle Edition

I purchased this mainly in support of the wonderful author Urvashi Pitre. I first came to know of her and her book on youtube, as I watch a lot of Indian cooking videos for (initially entertainment!) learning how to cook the cuisine and for inspiration. Urvashi has made a few videos on Indian spices, rice, and the Instant Pot. I was most impressed with her depth of knowledge of the subjects and her humble personality. She spends a lot of time working on her website, helping others on the facebook group, and generally spreading her enthusiasm for cooking and food. Her website twosleevers.com is extensive and includes a lot of recipes for keto or ketogenic (low carb) dishes. Writing, promoting, and launching a book is a lot of work, and I bought the book as a way to thank her for her efforts.Now on to the book review. The first two chapters Introduction and Kitchen Staples are very thorough. For me, I had watched videos for a year but always got stalled with "I don't know where to buy curry leaves." Then someone sent me to http://www.thokalath.com/grocery/ which helped me to find a very good grocer just 3-4 miles from my home. There is a huge Indian population in the metro area. I have had so many friends talk of the apartment building smelling of curry, and for me that'd be heaven, but I digress. This book is both a great introduction to Indian cooking in the Instant Pot, as well as presenting some lesser-known Indian recipes. Urvashi has gone to great effort to document recipes that use ingredients that are relatively easy to find. I have made several recipes so far and have been pleased with the results.Normally I would have given a book of this caliber 4 stars but I gave it 5 because of the author's high level of interaction on the web. There are on average only two pictures per chapter, and when a chapter has such a wide variation of recipes, more pictures really should have been included. Somewhere along the line, the decision was made on how many photos and what was to be photographed, I'm sure it was budget related, but more is always better for ethnic cooking. If you have access to the web, by all means go to twosleevers.com and do a search for the recipe you are interested in, there are plenty of pictures there. This book would have been enhanced with a glossary of Indian words. While they are sometimes spelled out, just cracking open a recipe for example, what does tikka mean? You get the idea!Noobies, you may need to supplement your Indian Instant Pot education by searching the title of the dish on youtube to see how it is done, and be advised, there are several ways to accomplish a dish. Look at the Twosleevers website for more photos and possibly videos.I highly recommend this book.

I got brave yesterday and made my first ever, from-scratch Indian meal of palak paneer, aloo gobi, and butter chicken; and while I cooked I thought of all of the success stories I’ve heard on Urvashi’s FB page. I thought to myself: I’m sure this will be good, but not so good it warrants a boasting post to a bunch of strangers on Facebook.I WAS WRONG. 😁Here is why:1. I made three dishes in probably an hour and a half, which was shockingly quick for something I thought might take much longer and dirty many dishes. Nope! I even cleaned the kitchen up while my last dish cooked and had time to spare in the backyard with the family! My husband just about fell over when he saw the clean kitchen (he’s cleaned up after me many times and knows how bad things can get! 😆).2. The food tasted SO GOOD. I was skeptical because the recipes were simple and Indian food has always seemed so complex and daunting. Urvashi’s recipes were anything but. 🤤3. I had been making someone else’s butter chicken recipe, thinking they’d be similar enough. I WAS SO WRONG. Urvashi‘s requires less work, less ingredients, and is more delicious and has a better flavor profile by a factor of 10. I HAVE SEEN THE LIGHT. 🤩4. My husband loved it, which wasn’t all that surprising. What was surprising is that my kids (2 & 6–the eldest is a pretty adventurous eater, but HATES spice, while the toddler is self explanatory. 😁), inhaled the food. Every time we’ve taken them to Indian restaurants, it’s been like pulling teeth to get them to eat. My son climbed in his father’s lap to demand bites from his plate. My daughter took a roti, stuffed it full of everything on her plate, and went through it like a possessed buzz saw. And when it broke in two, double fisted it until it was gone. AND! Never did she complain about the spice, which there was just enough cayenne and jalapeño in the food to barely register heat (an amount I adjusted knowing her spice fears). I AM STUNNED! 😲🤗So thank you, Urvashi, for the cookbook and the confidence to tackle something that seemed so overwhelming. You are gifted and I’m so glad I found you, my instant pot, and your awesome Facebook group!

I know this may sound overblown, but I feel like this recipe book totally changed my life.I love to cook, but *planning* meals always felt overwhelming - so many ingredients, running to different stores, have to use this or that up before it goes bad, etc. But then covid hit and the restaurants were closed and shopping was so unpredictable because of shortages, and my husband asked if I please-please-please could figure out how to make him some Pakistani food (he loves Punjabi cuisine). I tried Urvashi's butter chicken recipe (even though it's not Punjabi, it's the one everyone raves about and it seemed easy) and then when I started reading her book I realized I could keep spices on hand, chicken in the freezer, rice and canned tomatoes in the cabinet, and onion, ginger and garlic out on the counter, and whatever else in my life might be chaotic, I have all the ingredients for several different dishes I could make in the Instant Pot, even after a full day of distance learning. Cooking Indian food in the Instant Pot went from seeming overwhelming to seeming like a godsend.Even after lockdowns ended, Urvashi's recipes have remained like 50% of our recipe rotation, and not only the Indian/Pakistani recipes - all of them. Because after working my way through this book, I've bought all of her others. Our family favorites include the Chicken Karahi (dry Punjabi curry), Chicken Vindaloo, and French Garlic Chicken, but *every single recipe* we've tried has been delicious and has gone into our rotation. Just last week we tried her cheesecake recipe and it's also a keeper. But this book will always remain my favorite, because it was my entry into Urvashi-World. (And also, all the recipes are so good. So, so good.)

I bought this because I have a new Instant Pot and haven’t a clue what to do with it. I’ve just had a chance to glance through this book, but I think it will be really useful. I love Indian food and I make it quite often, usually for friends so I prepare several dishes for a meal. It’s very labour-intensive. Not difficult, just a lot of preparation. But I see lots of time-saving tips here. And good recipes for basic ingredients like garam masala, as well as very basic recipes I can adjust in a variety of ways. If you’re new to Indian cuisine, this a good, basic primer.

One of the better collections for the Instant Pot, thoroughly satisfied with my purchase

En mycket givande och iderik bok, skall bli ett nöje att testa dessa recept.Alla de fantastiska kännda recepten som chicken korma, chicken tikka masala m.m.Recept på Gara Masala, Ghee och mycket mycket mer.Detta är en ny juvel i min kokboks samling!

Well explained

Je cherchais des recettes dépaysantes pour m'évader un peu dans les plats du quotidien et je n'ai pas du tout été déçu. Du parfum, des recettes faciles à suivre, des ingrédients assez facilement trouvables au supermarché, de l'entrée au dessert (même si je n'ai pas encore tout testé, bien entendu), les quelques recettes que j'ai essayées sont très bien.