A recipe about chili in an instant (pot)

What with my adverse feelings about anything spicy/not covered in ketchup, I have no recollection of touching chili to my lips before the age of 18. It took some now lost-to-time inspiration in college to attempt cooking or eating it on my own, and luckily my dad's recipe was white bread enough for me to handle as a novice. It's easy not to add the jalapeño sauce and downplay the chili powder, then warn your guests that you have a very delicate tongue (gross) and they won't be eating real real chili -- that this is a comfort food bastardization.

This is an unavoidable to disclaimer, given that chili is a dish with such historical significance it has its own Wikipedia page. No one has ever said anything other than "This is good" in my years of serving this meal. But who knows what polite people are thinking when they're in your home, and the circumstances -- someone feeding them -- possibly accounting for their silence more than the quality of the meal. It's also a bunch of meat, which is typically delicious, and it's something I tend to serve to big groups because it feeds so many, which always keeps people's mouths full and less full of opinions. Sometimes when I'm feeling fancy I make corn bread to add on top but last time I really fucked it up and since my days right now are filled with watching old episodes of A Chef's Life and reading Vivian Howard's monstrosity of a cookbook on southern cuisine, I don't want to try that again unless I'm committed to buying some good cornmeal and making a recipe that doesn't come from the side of the bag (not that there's always anything wrong with that). If I don't do cornbread I serve it with some bread like a baguette, and I always add the sour cream and cheddar cheese because I'm not a monster.

So, yes, I've made this recipe before, many times, particularly in the years prior to learning that the vegetarian versions of meat dishes can also be good. (I mess with a variation on this one for bean chili now, thanks to my friend Sydney's tutelege.) What's notable about this attempt at chili was that I thought I'd twist it and try out The Instant Pot. Perhaps the most talked about development in home cooking in the past few years, the Instant Pot has massive communities on Facebook and has been promoted via cookbooks that at first glance seem like they'd be right at home in the 1950s, when fast fast fast was the rule for women who didn't want to spend every waking moment taking care of the people around them. "There’s no other single gadget that can make weeknight cooking easier," Melissa Clark, the author of the aforementioned cookbook, wrote in the New York Times last year. "It can cook food either quickly or slowly, and it does both consistently, evenly and automatically. Get one, and you can get rid of your slow cooker."

Lucky for her, I don't have a slow cooker, because my brain doesn't like to plan what I'm going to have for dinner until it's the next meal in front of me. But the idea of using something that embraces my spontaneous nature -- spontaneous only about eating, mind you -- has become appealing to me. Now that I have access to and space for an Instant Pot, I've committed to actually figuring out how to use it, and not just watching other friends do so. The chili seemed to be the perfect vessel for me to take this step into the bold unknown.

The only issue was that dad's recipe -- origin unknown -- was not written for an Instant Pot. (I assume when it was written pressure cookers existed, but no way did we have one. All we had was two gifted rice cookers that were rarely used; both were perhaps regifted.) I remedied this by doing what you're not supposed to do and googling "instant pot chili recipes" and combining the steps found in the first result with the ingredients listed above. Since most meat chili recipes are basically the same mix of parts -- meat, vegetables, broth/beans/tomatoes, spices -- that wasn't really much of a risk, honestly. I also consulted one of the many handy guides to using an Instant Pot so I didn't blow my face off. Luckily, my dining companions arrived after the basic sautéing was done, but before the part where we were actually doing the pressure cooking and I could potentially roast my face off.

The weirdest thing about the Instant Pot is how it's both highly communicative and entirely not. Like it will beep and tell you how long until a dish is finished, but it doesn't really have proper "start" buttons -- you just set it and it starts an indeterminate number of seconds later. (Or maybe it is determinate if you've read the manual but why would I do that?) This leads to some limbo moments, like you're getting to know a new paramour who you think is in touch with his feelings but then other times is totally out to lunch and stares at you blankly when you express an emotion outside of true positivity.

Anyway, I seared all the meat (though really need to get more diligent about buying beef with the proper fat ratio for meals like this) and spices with the sauté function on high and then poured off the excess fat and water. I set that aside, and then did the vegetables on their own.

I've always made this recipe with one green and one red pepper because I like the colors, and yellow onions, because I find white kind of astringent tasting. A note on beef broth: I know it's pretty bullshit but I was in the habit and told myself to follow the recipe so I bought it.

When the vegetables have finished searing you add the rest of your ingredients and season a bunch more and then get to pressure cooking. This, I am sorry to say, is the last photo you'll see of this meal because I forgot to take more pictures and also like, you know what chili looks like: kinda gross!

Some 30 minutes later, the pressure was released -- with an assist from my guests -- and the top opened. The main issue, which I had predicted, is that there was still a ton of liquid in there. Since the lid is on while it's cooking, a lot of the liquid just doesn't cook off. To remedy this, I kept it on sauté for a bit to cook down, but then got impatient because this meal is supposed to be in an Instant! so I didn't do it as long as I probably should have. You also can't season as you go, which personally drives me freakin' nuts.

I'm not really sure I "get" the Instant Pot yet. Is it really faster? The whole dish took at least an hour, as it usually does, and tasted basically the same as it always does. It was nice to use one less pan. But I'm not super convinced it was much easier, except that I did have long stretches of time I could just walk away and talk to my guests and hang out. So if you like ~relaxing~ as you entertain, that's pleasant. But I like the part where you're listening and people are talking and you're doing something else and just letting them talk to you about their lives. Or maybe I just hesitant to embrace this new world order where things are "easy." That sounds more likely.

KATE