AJ's Mushroom Chili - A Newly Recorded VIdeo

I made this chili last night, and for the first time since I bought my first Instant Pot a few years ago, it failed to cook. This was the newer of the 2 pots, the 8-quart. I had all the ingredients in there, including the bag of frozen corn. I made it the way I always made it, based on a very early cooking webinar video of her doing it - slight changes from the recipe in the UWL 21 Day Recipe Guide, like 3 cans of black beans instead of one can each of black, kidney and pinto beans, as originally written.

An hour and a half after I put it on I realized I wasn't smelling the chili like I should have, so put down my book and went into the kitchen to check. There was the pot reading 1:02 on Keep Warm mode, but the pot itself was at room temperature, and when I removed the lid, there was my chili ingredients, lukewarm and uncooked.

ACK!

I played with the silicone ring, I removed the cover over the vent and made sure there wasn't anything blocking it, and put everything back on and watched. After a few minutes the button never raised, but it started counting down. No! I repeated the troubleshooting and tried again, and again it started counting down without getting to pressure, but it took over 10 minutes to get to this point. Different, but still not good. Off with the lid again, but at least this time everything was not only hot, the chili was boiling. I figured it has to be the silicone ring and took it completely out, rinsed it off, and reset it. Crossed my fingers and turned it on again, and this time the button popped up after about 5 minutes, and a few minutes later it started to count down. Whew!

While all this was going on I dug out my older 6-quart pot and got it set up by another outlet, just in case. By then the corn had defrosted, the mushrooms started wilting a bit, so it would probably fit in the smaller pot. Luckily I didn't need it and put it all back in the box again for next time I needed to use it.

After dinner, while putting the leftovers away for another night's dinner, I noticed a lot of scorching on the bottom of the pot. That got me thinking about the ingredients again. I remembered when putting it together I did what I do every time I make this and double check that there was no added liquid, that the recipe uses the liquid from the beans only, and in that early video she said if you're using homemade beans instead of canned, add 1/4 cup of water for every 1 1/2 cups beans because that's how much is in each can, so 3/4 cups of water. People frequently ask her about this on the UWL Facebook community, because it's strange because the pressure cooker needs liquid to make steam that causes the pressure, and she always says no added water, just the bean water. I had canned beans, so I didn't add water. I told myself next time if this happens, just add water. In fact, maybe I should just go ahead and add water right at the beginning to prevent this from happening again.

Then I saw the link to the above video on FaceBook, and because of last night's disaster decided to watch it, even though I saw about 5 previous videos of her making this in the past. I noticed she was doing things different than the written recipe I have. When she talks about using homemade beans instead of canned, she says to add 2 cups of water, not 3/4 cups. 

Wait a minute now! 

I looked at the years-old printout of the recipe from that early cooking party video, and nothing about added water. I opened up the PDF of the UWL 21 Day Recipe Guide, and that one has no mention of adding water either (but does have the 3 different types of canned beans). I then open the Kindle version of the UWL book and check, and sure enough, in that version of the recipe she says to add 2 cups of water if using homemade beans, but doesn't mention adding any additional liquid if using canned ones.

Aha! 

So, as a public service message, those of you who have the older original recipe, or the recipe in the 21 Day Guide, the one that uses three different types of beans - go back to your recipe file and add in to make sure you have a total of 2 cups of liquid, between the bean water and additional water. If all you have is the Secrets to UWL book, that has the corrected recipe already, so you're safe.

But now I'm wondering why, after all these years, did this recipe not work in the Instant Pot this time around. I used the same brand of fire roasted tomatoes, the same brand of beans, even the same brand of frozen corn! The only thing different was the mushrooms. I usually use cremini (baby portobellas), either in their entirety or mixed half those, half button, but yesterday at the grocery store they had no decent looking cremini but beautiful creamy white sliced button mushrooms, and on sale, too, in one pound boxes. And they were pre-washed, something the 8 ounce size boxes never are. Was that the reason my batch wasn't coming to pressure and later burnt? Was it the difference in moisture content between the 2 types of mushrooms, or because the mushrooms I used were dry, not newly cleaned?

Beats the heck out of me!

For now I'm going to chalk it up to the Full Moon. 

But next time I make it, even though it makes a lot of liquid when fully cooked, I'm going to add water right at the beginning, too. I'm lucky I put the pot on so early yesterday, hours before dinnertime, and was able to rectify the situation with enough time so I still got dinner on the table with no delay. Although I made this dozens, maybe over a hundred, times with no problems in the past, I don't want any problems in the future. Why risk it.