Have had one since Black Friday. I feel generally competent in the kitchen to the point where assembling a nice meal (dare I say gourmet?) from scratch without a recipe is relatively easy for me. That said, I've found the Instant Pot to have a steep learning curve. For starters, you can't easily check on the food while it cooks, so if you are experimenting with large batch sizes and timing you are kind of gambling an…
You are right that the timing involved on many sites is misleading, yet I find that without fail the "active time" when using the pressure cooker is WAY lower while the total time is roughly the same or slightly shorter than a normal recipe (much shorter if making something with beans). That's the big win for me.
You can experiment all you want, but I don't. I just take recipes from others and use them, with some adaptation. There's a lot of resources, and most people have already workshopped anything I'm interesting in making.
