Instant Read Thermometer
Temperature is precious and over/under cooked food is a waste and dangerous. Everyone cooking needs an instant thermometer. After doing a bunch of research I decided on the ThermoWorks Thermapen brand even when they were still selling for $99 on sale. They have come down in price and I have some links below to cheaper options that are well reviewed on Amazon. Competitive knockoffs simply were not available years ago when I needed to get one.
Chainmail Scrubber
This thing works great on quickly cleaning the stainless steel Instant Pot. This thing is great on food that is stuck in the pot.
Claws to shred meat easily
These things are great! I used a blender a couple of times to make shredded chicken (you can Google it), but it makes a mess even in my largest mixing bowl. Little pieces always shoot all over the place. These claws are fast and easier to clean. I haven’t used my blender for shredding chicken in years now.
EXTRA POT!!!
Having an extra pot can greatly speed up the pressure cooking of multiple items for the same meal. This made the biggest impact on my use of my Instant Pot. Just having the extra pot allows you to prep something else while the Instant Pot is cooking. Often meat is going to take a lot longer to cook, than vegetables. As a result, you end up cooking the meat first, then taking it out, adding the veggies, putting the meat back, etc. It’s just more of a “process” aka pain in the rear.
A simple example is that on a weekly basis I cook a large batch of frozen vegetables and prep a large batch of frozen chicken in my second pot. That way I can quickly swap them when the vegetables are done. It simply keeps things moving.
Notice in the below picture the Instant Pot is at pressure cooking while I have the second one heating up on a burner to pre-cook some meat before using that in the Instant Pot next. Time saver!
