To Infinity and Back in an Instant

When I first got my Instapot, I was confused, but that is not unusual.  This 'Instant' notion was new to me, so I understood my learning curve would be a bit steep. What I was not aware of, was the time warp of the concept. An example of this was a recipe for  'Ligurian Lemon Chicken'. 'Ligurian' refers to the Italian Riviera. But I digress.

The recipe said: 'Serves 4-6, Prep Time: 15 Minutes, Pressure Cook Time: 12 Minutes'. Pretty straight forward, I would say.

I gathered my ingredients and went to work, following the directions:

• juice 3 lemons
• finely chop garlic, rosemary, and sage
• add lemon juice and olive oil to chopped herbs and marinate the chicken for 2-4 hours
• then saute the chicken in the inner pot for 15 minutes
• remove chicken, add wine to inner pot and de-glaze - 3 minutes
• return chicken to inner pot and cover with marinade
• cook for 12 minutes
• remove and serve

Now at my age, I realize this is new math and I have an old math mind. But still, aren't there 60 minutes in an hour. 2 to 4 hours equals 120 - 240 minutes - best I can calculate. But, before that there was the time preparing the marinade. Even with my fairly good cooking skills, it took me a minute or two to juice 3 lemons. Then maybe a minute or so more to 'finely' chop the herbs.

According to my calculations (using the shorter marinading time)  1 minute juicing lemon + 1 minute chopping herbs + 120 minutes marinating chicken + 15 minutes to saute the chicken + 3 minutes de-glazing the pan + finally 12 minutes cooking = 152 minutes (aka 2 hours, 32 minutes). This is where the time warp comes in. My only guess was that the pressure of the Instant Pot compressed the prep time from 137 down to a mere 15 minutes. Not so much in my case, but then this concept was new to me. Does that mean that this mystery pot shrinks the prep time so that when all is done, you are back to the future?