Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I purchased this for my DIL. We gave her and my son an Instant Pot last Christmas. It's still in the box. She's been afraid to use it, because like many others, the buttons scare her. She thought it was too complicated, so in the box it stayed. He simply hasn't taken the time to read the manual. After living with us for a couple of months this summer, and seeing the meals I cook in mine for 7-8 people, she said "That's it? That's all there is to it?" Um, yes. It really is that simple. Now ready to move out and unbox her IP, she's in need of recipes, so I bought this book for her (at Costco, lower price). Although I haven't cooked from it myself, I'm well familiar with several of the recipes in it, because they come from some of my favorite bloggers. Many of the others sound very appealing to me. After perusing several chapters, here's what I've found: The book is printed on heavy, glossy paper, and is well bound. There are photos of about half of the recipes, maybe a bit more. It's presented with 1 recipe per page. The ToC is well organized and includes every recipe in a given chapter, along with page numbers. This makes an index almost redundant, but it's got one of those too. Timing charts are in the back of the book. There are 11 chapters; Breakfast, Appetizers & Snacks, Beef & Pork & Lamb, Poultry, Fish & Shellfish, Beans & Grains, Vegetables, Soups & Stews & Chili, Desserts, Sauces & Spreads & Jams, and Basics. There's a wide variety of recipes in here, something to suit most any cook. Most use the pressure functions, along with a few for the slow cooker. Some of them (about 25, I counted) are marked "Blogger Favorites" with attribution given. The remaining 150 are, according to the authors, brand new for this cookbook. A lot of recipes have an international flair, so if you're strictly a "meat and potatoes" cook, this isn't the cookbook for you. If you require calorie counts for recipes, look elsewhere, that information isn't here, either. Cooks who are experienced in low-cal, low-fat, etc... cooking should have no trouble adapting these recipes to their needs, because they use commonly available ingredients and do not call for packets of this and jars of that. Timing appears to be spot-on for the recipes I checked (about 20 of them). Instructions are clear and concise, instructing the cook to use certain buttons (along with timing adjustments) for different cooking tasks. The authors have included total cooking time, including time to reach and release pressure, a real boon that's lacking in most other cookbooks. The first pages explain (with pictures) how to use the IP, and tell us that all the recipes were tested in the 6-qt DUO. There's an entire page explaining how to read and use the recipes in the book. If a beginner reads these introductory pages, they'll have no problem understanding and following the recipes. There's enough detail here that cooks who are experienced with a pressure cooker will easily be able to adapt their favorite recipes to the IP, or modify the ones here to suit their tastes. I have a few quibbles, but they're minor. I think they could have done without the instructions to use the Meat, Stew, etc... buttons, but I suppose if they're going to keep the pre-programmed buttons, they've got to justify them. It is nice to know when to use the Multigrain setting. The book lacks instructions for converting the slow cooker recipes to pressure, and vice versa. This would be good information to present, but that information is readily available online. This link gives a good explanation of how to do it: https://www.kitchenstewardship.com/make-slow-cooker-recipes-for-instant-pot/. There are no indexes for the slow cooker recipes or the Blogger Favorites. Those would be nice to have. I considered knocking off a star for these omissions, but in end I felt that the things that are included made it 5-star worthy. I've found no other Instant Pot cookbook that is so detailed. This is the cookbook that should be included with every new Instant Pot. I'm thinking of buying one for myself.