This is pretty funny for me to read. As the article mentions many people apparently did, I picked up an Instant Pot on Prime Day last year. I had no idea there was such a following around it until reading this, I just wanted a pressure cooker.
I received it, and stuck it in my closet expecting to pull it out when I needed to pressure cook something. My wife discovered it pretty soon after and began using it for several tasks I didn't even realize it was capable of. She absolutely loves the thing, to the point I was joking with her about it. It's funny to me to see that our experience is far from unique.
I have a different rice cooker / multi-function electric cooker which doesn't sell itself as a pressure cooker, though I think it does build up a slight steam pressure when in use.
If you buy a pressure cooker for "when I needed to pressure cook" you might not notice that it's also capable of being a multi-function electric cooker.
My girlfriend bought me a sous-vide stick for christmas https://anovaculinary.com/ I'm loving it, and was just trying to figure out how to make yoghurt in it. I was thinking a pot inside a cambro container or a bunch of mason jars in the cambro.
An instant pot is an interesting choice. We have an old-fashioned pressure cooker at home, which doesn't get nearly enough use.
I bought a sous vide set up a couple of years ago and I've been very underwhelmed with it. Are there any recipes that you think are especially good?
I think my favorite is probably turkey breast just because it doesn't get dry. Everything else I've made in it (mostly different meats) has been okay, but nothing special. My family and I generally prefer things cooked on our grill.
I have to admit that I don't like the texture of poultry breast meat done sous vide. Maybe I should experiment with not vacuum sealing it (just leave it with minimal air). But if you have an instant read thermometer (or a stick-in-and-wires-out continuous monitoring kind), the key is temperature. Just use a low oven (225 say) and pull it out when its ~135-140.
My favourite thing to sous vide is steaks, which I finish on a steal plate on my grill. But I just use the beer-cooler sous-vide trick, so I can't really do e.g. 72 hour short-ribs.
The actual temperature you choose is really dependent on taste, but some, specifically meats, that shine are salmon, short ribs, steak and smokerless smoked meats like brisket and pork shoulder (hey we can't all have a smoker in our apartment). But getting the taste and texture you like takes some trials. If I had to pick one in particular, it would be short ribs at 185F for 24 hours.
Most cooks, outside of seafood, that I enjoy tend to take >12 hours. I barely use it for something like chicken thighs or pork chops.
If you're good at the grill, there's no reason to use a sous vide. Honestly, with very few exceptions, you can do everything the sous vide can do faster using traditional methods.
However, I personally like to pre-cook a bunch of food using sous vide then finish on the grill. Now food is ready with a lot less hassle on my part. Finishing on the grill, a pan, or in the oven is crucial to get good browning flavor!
So, to me, it's either for niche things (precise soft boiled eggs, unique cooking temp for meats), or as a time saving thing I can set, forget, and not fret over precise timings. Or do something like 3 racks of ribs over 24 hours in a cooler.
Otherwise, I agree, it's not my first tool I reach for to whip up dinner.
> I'm loving it, and was just trying to figure out how to make yoghurt in it. I was thinking a pot inside a cambro container or a bunch of mason jars in the cambro.
I bought an Anova myself during the last Black Friday sale.
While I haven't made yoghurt in it (and I'm not sure what heating would do to yoghurt cultures), I have aged eggnog in ziploc bags. Polyethylene bags are probably best for anything that doesn't need to set.
I wouldn't recommend mason jars unless you're doing a custard like creme brulee. You can't fully immerse them under water, and if you don't cap them properly, they'll either crack under pressure, or let water in. There's a "fingertip-tight" rule for mason jars, though I haven't tried it [1]:
> Place the lid on the jar. Twist the lid until “fingertip tight,” meaning just barely closed and still possible to open with your fingertips.
> To close the jars fingertip tight, place the lid on top of the jar, then twist the band to tighten using just your fingertips. When you begin to feel resistance, twist once in the opposite direction, then once more in the original direction to tighten.
> Closing the jars until fingertip tight means that air will be able to escape from the jars when you submerge them in water. If you close them too tightly, the trapped air will press against the glass and could crack or break your jars.
I've heard of people using it for massive batch jobs and freezing the now-sealed contents. Like gallons of chili. Or 10+lbs of chicken and seafood. Now prepped and portioned and saveable for the freezer.
Personally I use it for more niche goals.
Taking cheap steak cuts and getting a perfect internal temp as well as batch cooking chicken works out really well.
I also set it up in a cooler and do 3 racks of ribs for BBQ events. Don't worry that the Anova claims it can't control that much water. The insulation of any cooler will let you far exceed it's ratings.
Making cheesecake is one I certainly didn't expect. I still haven't tried it, but I've heard you can get great results because of the moist environment.
Even just focusing on the pressure cooking aspect, it turns out you can pressure cook all sorts of things you might not expect until you own one. For example, I've made incredible cheesecake in my Instant Pot.
Carnitas in 30 minutes. Pulled chicken in 7 minutes (which is actually really good!). Rice in minutes. There's always another way to do any of these things, but the instant pot does all of them.
My wife has 2 of them, we throw together whole dinners in minutes, the primary one never leaves the counter because it's become a daily tool. Our microwave stopped working about 6 months ago, and instead of replacing it, we just gave the microwaves spot on our counter to the instant pot.
Okay I have a question here, because I own an instant pot and I don't know if I'm understanding pressure cooking correctly or if I'm doing something wrong.
When you say you pressure cook a chicken in 7 minutes, it's 10-15 minutes for the heat and pressure to buildup, plus 7 minutes once pressure is at max, then 1-2 minutes to release the vapor (or wait 20-30 minutes until the pressure subsidies by itself).
Then it should be more like 30 seconds, 15 to put things in and 15 to take things out, or are you watching it for those 7 minutes? Just trying to point out that you should quote the actual time it takes.
The soul of marketing is getting people to overlook stuff like the laws of physics, the arrow of time, and compound interest. Any time you find yourself resorting to the word "should," it's a good idea to ask:
1) why would the universe naturally favor order?
2) why would the order it favors please my sensibilities?
Questioning the above premises will often yield opportunities that a rigid attention to preconceived notions would not.
If that is how cooking times are my slow cooker can make a mean stew in a few minutes - but you'll need to start it a half day before you want to eat it. If you remove the foil from a lasagna for the last five minutes and set a new timer, did it only take 5 minutes?
I don't get the trend in instant pot directions to say it only takes X minutes when it is really warmup + X + cooldown. It really doesn't help anyone know when to start cooking a meal.
I can make anything from ice cream, cheesecake, pizza, stew, sauces etc. from scratch without a recipe, but I find instant pot recipes to be some of the worst I've ever come across. It has a steep learning curve. That said, I think I'll like it when I figure out how to get what I want out of it. Maybe I'll even write a real recipe for it.
Half a day is a bit of an exaggeration - I've been making the best beef stews of my life in under an hour, including prep, warm up, cook, and steam release.
Likewise pulled pork in just a shade over an hour, perhaps 10 minutes actual prep time.
Most home pressure cooking is sensitive to your local air pressure. You already have to adjust for that. And the kinetics of pressure cooking mean that structural changes that happen while getting up to temp will be a rounding error compared to full temp, for all but the shortest cook times.
Honestly, for eggs I've found this to work a treat:
Take a small pot with a lid, add 1cm (1/2 inch) of water, put eggs in, throw on cooker (up to boiling very quickly). 5 minutes later, soft boiled, 7+ minutes for hard boiled.
Usually find 5 minutes is just enough time to make toast and a coffee. ;)
Using the pressure cooker for eggs, aside from making the shells easier to peel, skips the "wait for water to boil" step and gives you several minutes of flexibility at the end of cooking since the heat shuts off when the timer runs out. You can also do large batches of eggs while only heating 1 cup of water.
My wife has made hard boiled eggs, risotto (kinda) and yogurt in it. Didn't expect any of those. It advertised yogurt, but I didn't expect it to turn out as well as it did.
Hard or soft boiled eggs -- bonus is that when you pressure cook them, it makes the shell stupid easy to get off (crack a ring around the middle, then pull the shell off).
5mins for hard, 4 mins for softer yolk, 1 min for runny (like for eggs benedict), quick release pressure + put in to an ice bath when done.
I've never tried pressure cooking my eggs, but in minimizing prep my favorite way is to steam them.
Put a little water in a pot (maybe half an inch), cover, bring to a boil, then reduce to low for 7 minutes and you have a perfect hardboiled egg. You should still have a bit of water in the pot when done, but not too much to delay boiling. End to end in about 8 minutes you have a cooked egg!
The boiling is almost instant in a small aluminum pot, unlike bringing my pressure cooker up to temp, and you dont have to depressurize.
Unless you're using much smaller eggs than I do, 7 minutes must leave you with almost wet yolks. With standard US "Extra Large" eggs, 13 minutes is a fully-opaque yolk, down to around 9-10 minutes where the center of the yolk is much darker. It's been a while, but I think US "Large" eggs maybe only subtract about a minute from those times.
How much are they on Prime Day? I just looked and they are $70, $100, or $180. I want the $100 one but if it's significantly cheaper on Prime Day, I'll just wait.
Maybe I'm confused. Are you talking about the Instant Pot story, or the ads around the story? I'm seeing a Car Fax ad, an ad for a movie, a t-shirt company ad, some other google ads and some ads promoting other BBC properties.
I can't speak for grandparent poster, but when I read the article, it seemed like it was more advertisement than journalism. So it passes the duck test. It doesn't really matter to me if anyone actually paid BBC to run the story, because to me, it is at least 51% advertisement and no more than 49% news story.
If this were filed under World News, I would agree. But it's in the business section and they run lots of stories like this. It's one notch more newsy than the entertainment section.
And I usually consider the entertainment section of anything to be more than 80% advertisement. If you usually run an ad-blocker on your browser, make sure you also have an ad-blocker running in your brain. The more passive you are about your information sources, the more likely it is that someone could use one to push one of their ideas on you.
Having worn a foil hat for a while myself, I still find occasion to put it back on every once in a while. Question everything. Never stop asking yourself how you really know what you think you know.
In life, like in software, never trust your inputs.
When you've got a great product, your users become your extended sales force: I've bought this for my relatives for the holiday season and have recommended it to my friends. I think Amazon recommendation system opens new product avenues like this that didn't exist before.
It is easy to praise this product -- it combines a rice cooker with a pressure cooker and stew simmer (and, I guess, a yogurt maker) all in one device that saves kitchen storage and counter top space. They've thought of lots of stuff: making the seal easily replaceable, and allowing you to buy extra tin cans with lids (from cooking right to refrigerator). The cans are perfect size for the dish washer, etc. It's well designed, solves an urgent need, solidly built and just works.
I have been using one for more than a year. It makes cooking so easy and quick and the flavor stays inside and food turns out really delicious. Best part is it doesn't even make slightest of the sound or smoke.One of my best buys.
My go-to recipes are pot roast, chicken soup, phở, and bolognese sauce. Basically, any recipe that requires boiling or simmering for a long time (and/or can be made in a slow cooker) can be made faster and (more importantly to me) tastier by the Instant Pot.
I make indian dishes mostly, Dal comes out perfect. I cook veg, like green beans - only takes 3 min (5 if you add warm-up time) which otherwise will take 20-30 min. I also cook pasta - low pressure for 6 min gives perfect la dante!
My wife has prepared a lot of these dishes in the past, but without a pressure cooker. So, what's different with the pressure cooker is that the cooking time for these dishes is much lower?
I would not even categorize the cooking time to be lower for many dishes (Because you will need the pressure to vent slowly for 20 mins unless you manually vent it). It is more of once things are inside the pot, you do not have to tend to it till it is done. The cooking time certainly helps for dishes like pot roast and it tenderizes tough cuts of meat much better without dehydrating them. Having said that, the above holds true for any well built electric pressure cooker. Instant pot is just a well built electric pressure cooker.
I am part of the cult. We bought after the recommendation of a friend. What I liked: nice set of presets, comes with a cookbook with quite a few recipes, very easy to operate.
Some time ago, when Apple bailed out of self-driving car business, my friend and I discussed what would be the good category for Apple to try next and I suggested advanced kitchen devices. Seriously though: instant pot with Nespresso machine are close to best damn money I spent. Currently I am investigating Anova devices and dreaming about something that would cut down (hehe) my peeling and chopping time.
I find some basic knife skills to be a huge labor saver. I've had the same decent (ie, not serrated) $25 chef's knife for decades and can plow through basic veg prep in a few minutes. I don't like all the extra gadgets except a peeler. When I factor in setting up and washing some chopping or slicing machine, I'm way faster with just a knife and board. Two things to wash. And the board is also used to hold stuff on its way to the pot, so that cuts down on temp bowls too.
Watch one good video on how to dice an onion an you're 90pct there.
I mostly agree. I do have a food processor but, unless I'm doing a lot of chopping and don't care if it's pretty uneven, I find that just using a good knife is less total work and gives better results.
While I did mention the food processor in the sibling post, I have to agree with you here too. A great sharp knife with a modicum of skill goes a long way. And the cleanup is definitely simple!
I sharpen woodworking tools so my point of view is slightly different, but I'd recommend diamond plates over water stones.
I've had great results with both but water stones need to be soaked in water before use (instructions say 10 minutes, but my experience is more like 30 minutes), they release a messy slurry when they wear and they don't stay flat for very long (flatness isn't that much of an issue with knifes I suppose, but essential for woodworking tools) and wear down as you use and re-flatten them.
Diamond plates stay dead flat, need very little maintenance, ready to use (just wet them, no soaking) and last 10 years or more in my infrequent use.
1200 grit isn't super fine (compared to water stones) but is enough for basic kitchen sharpening (you don't need coarser ones unless you sharpen damaged blades and you don't need a finer one to get decent sharpness). I'd add a leather strop and some honing compound (chromium oxide) if I needed to get them sharp enough to shave (like I do with my tools).
That's about $20 for diamond plate + strop + compound, you can't get a decent water stone for that price.
But the real difference between sharp and kinda-sharp is practicing the skill of honing the blade. Sharpen a little at a time, test frequently and do it often.
A basic electric knife sharpener will produce very sharp knives, certainly sharp enough for most people.
Purist will call them crap, but I use both a traditional whetstone and an electric sharpener and the electric gets 90% of my usage. It takes a few minutes to take a knife from "very dull" to "pretty sharp". The whetstone definitely gets them sharper, but it takes a lot longer and you only notice your knives are dull when you're right in the middle of making dinner.
Keeping the angle consistent is the problem with use a simple sharpening stone.
I recommend a jig that keeps the angle for you. I use a spyderco sharpmaker (https://www.amazon.com/Spyderco-Tri-Angle-Sharpmaker/dp/B004...), but there are others. I enjoy eating steak with a super sharp knife, so I have it out frequently for sharpening our set of steak-knives, and less frequently for our chef's knives.
Food processors (proper ones, not hand "choppers" and the like - those are nearly pointless) are a terrible replacement for basic knife skills.
What they are mostly great at is a few things that are so labor intensive (ever made hummus by hand?) you otherwise might not bother. Also a good time saver for things like pasta dough.
Good for making mayo and the like by hand and for thin slicing potatoes and carrots. The biggest issue for me is setup + cleanup >> use time for most cases.
As a fellow lazy kitchen-er, I've got a decent recommendation:
- small food processor to significantly reduce the chopping time. I picked one up cheap on a whim (I think for making hummus) and now most of the time I just coarsely chop veggies and throw it in with a slicer blade or grater, depending on what I'm making. (By coarse, I mean, I'll quarter the onion so that it fits down the chute)
- Quit peeling! I've got a vegetable peeler that is sitting very sad in the drawer because it hasn't been used in a long long time.
Yep, serious eats has a few videos on cutting that are useful. It only takes a couple minutes to dice an onion or shallot. Much less time than cleaning a food processor.
For sure. For small things, I'll definitely just use a good knife. For making things like stews, I'll probably fill the food processor 5 or 6 times with vegetables (it's on the smaller side), and then just spray down the hopper and the lid with the sink sprayer.
With both of these, it seems that improving your skills may significantly reduce your perceived time expenditure. If you are proficient with a vegetable peeler it doesn't take much time at all to use, and depending on what you're doing will improve your results.
I'm pretty sure K-cups can be recycled now. At least, they are being collected separately from the garbage and somebody comes to pick them up from my office anyways.
Aluminum cups are recyclable with their own program as sibling comment noted. I have Nespresso boutique with the recycling bin very close to my office, but I understand how it can be a problem in general.
30 seconds? My machine takes 30 minutes just to heat up. I bought my grinder (Baratza Vario) and machine (an E61 based heat exchanger) in 2012 and they are getting to the end of life. I'm seriously thinking about switching to a Nespresso setup because it's way more convenient and the coffee is still pretty good.
We have a k-cup machine at work and it's drinkable, but not great.
There was a nespresso machine at the office where I used to work. The coffee it produced was tolerable and nothing more. I recommend an Aeropress if you want something quick that makes good coffee.
I'm not sure I'd group the Nespresso and Keurigs together. I've never had a good k-cup coffee but the Nespresso produces great cappuccinos and cafe au laits in about a minute. There's a dramatic difference in flavor between their different roasts though, I'm partial to the capriccio and voluto blends.
>I'm not sure I'd group the Nespresso and Keurigs together.
We have both in our workplace kitchen; they both produce mediocre coffee, in my opinion (and I'm no coffee snob). I wonder how the Nespresso got such a reputation? Is it widely considered good?
That seems strange to me. I got the Nespresso Inissia as a Christmas gift a few months ago and it takes maybe 30-60 seconds to heat up. Then, <30 seconds for every shot of espresso after that.
I own an Anova and a Joule and enjoy both. One item I enjoy a lot is a generic vegetable cleaver. I find them to be better at making consistent slices. Cheapest piece of cutlery I own but the one I use the most.
OK, so if someone is taking it seriously, let me specify a little, since I've been thinking of it for some time: a rice cooker that uses vapour.
I often cook rice in the pressure pot. It takes something like 5 minutes to warm the pot, 4 minutes of cooking and a few minutes more for releasing vapour until I can open it again.
It would be nice to have a device that:
1. Wash the rice with cold water first.
2. Makes vapour in a few seconds holding the pressure.
3. Automatically stops when the rice is cooked.
4. Finally releases vapour.
5. Bonus point if it cleans itself.
Just that, plain boiled rice in five minutes, instead of 10-15.
When I was looking for a pressure cooker, I dropped into the subreddit r/pressurecooking and was surprised to see it was basically devoted to the Instant Pot!
The Instant Pot came on the market with perfect timing, just as the pressure cooker started to go from "geek" to "mainstream" in its adoption curve. The fawning press articles claim that it was Instant Pot that took pressure cooking from niche to mainstream, but I don't buy that -- I think it would have happened anyways.
It's a good pressure cooker. A good stovetop one will be faster, but it's only significant if you've got a gas or induction range. And of course the stovetop models don't have any automation.
> just as the pressure cooker started to go from "geek" to "mainstream" in its adoption curve.
Pressure cookers have been around for a long time: first manufactured in 1864 according to wikipedia (1). It's just that they have been out of fashion for few decades - possibly supplanted by the microwave oven in the 1970s and 80s.
So maybe the time was right for a better design to come back. The older designs had a reputation for very occasionally exploding, or the lid flying off and getting embedded in the ceiling. Not common, but it did happen and that puts people off.
The lids on older models like my mother's were physically capable[1] of being removed while under pressure, which would be entertaining. Still use it, though.
[1] The amount of force required is large, though. I'm not sure I could do it without tools.
I think that it wasn't so much a 'geek' thing as it was that a complete generation or perhaps two forgot that they existed - and now the next generation is [re]discovering them.
I bought an old-school pressure cooker last year when my rooftop garden unexpectedly produced way more tomatoes and hot peppers than I had expected. Started to get into canning and pickling as a result.
Sadly, I no longer live there thanks to a breakup but I'm looking forward to buying my next place with gardening space so I can pick up where I left off. Do these things work for canning or is it mostly just a matter of available volume?
I don't usually post, but please don't use a pressure cooker for canning as it can cause botulism if the food isn't sufficiently acidic. The only safe way to can non-acidic foods is with a pressure canner, not a pressure cooker.
Having now looked up the difference between the two (I've only ever seen pressure canners, with the locking lids and real pressure gauges, but which everyone I know calls a pressure cooker), I'm now curious what in the world you would use a plain pressure cooker for? It seems like a strictly worse piece of equipment.
I am aware of this and I follow the official guidelines for adding citric acid if needed. Also I was using a pressure canner and not a pressure cooker so my question was more whether this device was similar in function (as I know nothing about them). Looks like you answered my question and it's not the same thing/comparable, so thanks!
As I understand it, the electronic ones are not recommended for pressure canning because you can't be absolutely, positively sure they reach a certain pressure. Best stick with your old-school model for pressure canning.
> just as the pressure cooker started to go from "geek" to "mainstream" in its adoption curve.
It's really really weird to read that, in europe pressure cookers have been mainstays of most every kitchen for decades, especially after SEB's "super cocotte" (released in '53, they'd sold 10 million by '69).
Was wondering the same thing. I had an old one and the pressure relief mechanism looked pretty foolproof. Basically just a weight sitting on top of a vent tube -- when the pressure got high enough, the weight was lifted and the pressure released.
There are some things like pressure cookers exploding that are just "known", despite them not really being true. Ford cars are less made in America than Japanese brands; an electric blanket won't burn your house down; no one is hiding metal pins in Halloween candy to hurt children.
"Urban legend" describes these sort of thing, but how do you even begin to fight them with marketing in some form.
If Mr Qin had wanted to do marketing at the beginning, some segment of the market is going tune out the instant pressure cooker is mentioned.
The first time I ever encountered a pressure cooker was when my science instructor had to take a week off to recover from the injuries she sustained when hers ruptured.
I'm an American and I just bought one and I've been kind of wary around it, even going into the other room while it cooks. I know it's irrational, but I find I keep thinking about the Boston bombings.
> I know it's irrational, but I find I keep thinking about the Boston bombings.
It's worse than irrational, unless you've filled your pressure cooker with explosives and plugged the pressure relief valves it's not going to do anything except boil empty.
Happened to my parents and me, back in the mid-90s. Luckily, nobody was in the kitchen the moment it happened. All I remember is that it left a decent dent in the vent hood above the stove, and Gulasz... Gulasz everywhere.
Then again, I was also right next to an exploding Mokka / Espresso stovetop cooker, so maybe I am simply unlucky :)
I still own a pressure cooker and use it regularly - a cheap one from IKEA at that.
I remember somethin similar with spagetti bolognesa, but it wasn't the pot fault, but a friend that mistakenly thought it was already cold enough. She had some burns and instead of a feast, the guests had to become an emergency cleaning squad.
Fortunately the dessert was saved: a condensed milk can also made in the pot into delicious toffee.
Pressure cookers used to be a mainstay in the US as well, but fell out of fashion and are now coming back. I'm not sure pressure cookers are that popular in Europe either at the moment.
> I'm not sure pressure cookers are that popular in Europe either at the moment.
They're as popular as ever, they're not trendy but it's something you normally get once you're beyond a pair of pans and pots, the smaller models (4~5L) may even replace/obviate a large pot.
Was thinking about writing the very same thing, a pressure coocker has always been a common implement in every kitchen I've seen. I realize that there is much more to the marketing, final implementation and other details of these Instant Pots, but all these comments read to me like everybody just discovered that eggs are awesome and you can use them for so many things.
If you already have a pressure cooker which you are happy to use, and are content with making soups in a soup pot, are there any advantages to buying an Instant Pot?
1. No need to fiddle with getting the heat right to get to pressure, and then lower the heat. Just seal the lid and tell it to get to pressure. It will control the heating.
2. Timer. It will drop the heat once the timer runs out. A lot of people set something to cook for, say, 30 minutes. Then they go out of the house for an errand that takes over an hour. They don't need to worry about overcooking/explosions. It will turn the heat down after 30 minutes and keep the food warm.
That's really about it. I own both a stovetop one and an instant pot. Most of the raves I've seen for the instant pot apply equally well to other pressure cookers. Having said that, the two pros above are really, really nice. If people can afford it, I would tell them to buy this instead of a regular pressure cooker.
Thanks. I guess that's a no for me then. Point 1 is never an issue for me: turn the heat up to medium (or full, if you're in a hurry) until the pressure release "whistle" blows a couple of times, then turn it off. And while I never ever leave the house with the stove or oven left turned on, I guess I could see the convenience factor of point 2.
Indian here living in US. We used always get pressure cookers from india since they used to last longer and it's hard to find good ones here. But last prime day I brought one and I feel this is better than one which we use in India . Better - Cleaning this is a easy , ease of use and safety
Indian here. Glad to see your comment. I bought one during prime day (because I was curious about electric pressure cooker and needed a replacement for the desi cooker soon). And it is still in the sealed box :)
Now I want to use it asap! Never realized it had a cult following (article looks like a PR material though)
How does it work for different variety of pulses used in Indian cooking? For instance, I use x whistles in a conventional pressure cooker for one kind of daal vs y whistles for another kind. How well does the whistle semantic translate here?
I was heartened by how poorly "add hn to cart" would actually do on this site. Most of those articles are instantly killed by various filters. Maybe I should go back and have another read through the comments, but that was my takeaway and also something I've noticed when browsing /new.
That said, it doesn't surprise me to see this at the top of HN. It is a geeky cooking tool with a cult following. I'm certainly intrigued.
An electric pressure cooker brand (I've never heard of, but I don't like in Canada/US which seems to be the prime market) took over the electric pressure cooker market by adding buttons instead of a twist-dial timer where you manually set the desired time (my electric pressure cooker, which came free with by fridge years ago, and may be part of the reference to scaring people about exploding... they don't... they have cut-off devices if the wrong time is dialed) and a bunch of links and given some Googling what appears to be discount codes to incentivise bloggers.
Quite an amazing success. Smart targeting of an old-tech.
The Instant Pot does not run for a fixed time. It has a pressure sensor and only starts the timer when it has reached sufficient pressure. This means you can do things like cook frozen vegetables perfectly without weighing them, because they will condense the steam and keep the pressure below the starting threshold until they are defrosted.
I'm not aware of any previous pressure cooker that had Instant Pot level automation.
> The Instant Pot does not run for a fixed time. It has a pressure sensor and only starts the timer when it has reached sufficient pressure.
Yes, this is exactly what my pressure cooker does. There's a dial, which has indicative minutes, and a picture of what's cooked under certain minutes around the dial, for example a small icon of a bunch of beans appears under the 40 minute dial, similar for other items. But total cooking time rarely ends up at 40 minutes (for beans, indicated at 40 minutes for example when starting from cold water and unsoaked beans) because it pre-heats to starting temperature and then kicks-off. The heating plate heats pretty quickly, which also makes sense when seeing recipe examples for browning meat before starting the pressure cooking.
Seems identical, just analogue control. Just a standard modern pressure cooker without a bit of marketing a dial in-place of buttons.
I also have a pressure cooker for the gas stove, significantly larger, and while that takes manual timing it has a release valve if steam pressure gets too high.
I don't even know if they've done that much; I've got an old "Wolfgang Puck" branded electric pressure cooker with digital controls that I got for free, and it appears to be pretty much the same thing, as far as I can tell.
Seems like their real achievement here is successfully marketing a good version of an already-existing product with the "I made this" angle to a market that wasn't aware of it. And more power to them - pressure cooking is a great technique to have in your culinary arsenal. Still, it just seems odd to me when someone "invents" a thing that already exists and manages to generate tons of press for doing so. Reminds me of the Soylent guy.
I bought one to replace a rice cooker which had (aging) teflon coating.
The instantpot is a bit slower but it has a stainless steel pot and can do a lot more than just cooking rice and steam vegetables.
Moreover, it's actually cheaper and sturdier than the alternatives I considered.
Good product, would recommend. I try to stay away from pressure cooking, coffee brewing and knife sharpening communities though, maybe do I watch those swedish steel axes benchmarks, for some reason ;)
My instant pot was my second pressure cooker. The first was a cuisinart, which was a nightmare to use -- it wouldn't secure the pressure valve without.. encouragement.
I'd love to know what your favorite meal is to cook with the pot. Mine is chicken tagine.
I've been using it regularly since then and I highly recommend it. I had a manual pressure cooker many years ago but I rarely used it because it was too much hassle. The automation and easy cleaning of the Instant Pot makes a big difference. I rate it second only to the microwave oven as most useful cooking technology.
Same here! I'd never considered buying one until I saw Guyenet's endorsement. He's loath to recommend specific products so I knew it was a genuine endorsement.
It's strange. I was in the market for a pressure cooker that could double as a slow cooker, and saw the recommendation for Instant Pot over and over.
I eventually went with a Power brand pressure cooker (it was pretty much the same price at Costco, and I've had much better luck with Costco's warranties than Amazon's), which as best I can figure looks nearly identical, has the exact same functionality sans maybe a yogurt option, and should in theory be able to cook the same stuff in the same time. But whenever I ask for recipes, all I get is, "No man, you've gotta have an Instant Pot for this."
I have the same aversion to such products, but sometimes those "As Seen On TV" things aren't so bad. My parents' Ronco Rotisserie Oven is still kicking after well over a decade and makes some boss kabobs and roasts.
- There's no marketing magic here, this is just a great product.
- It's ugly, and the interface is weird. Doesn't matter, it gets the job done.
- Pressure cookers have been around for a long time, they're a really great cooking technology marred by some serious safety and inconvenience issues. There are a bunch of companies competing in Sous Vide right now (the hot new cooking trend) but the Instant Pot guys just took old technology and made it slightly better.
Yeah, that's a definite issue I've had in dealing with mine. Fortunately, they're easy to swap in/out and are mostly affordable to buy new ones ($11 for a two pack on amazon right now).
I have one I use for the chilis, bbq, ribs, etc I do. One for soups and such, etc. It's a slight pain I guess, but the ease of use of the Instant Pot in general outweighs swapping out the silicone seal occasionally.
Love the points made here, my first impression of this was I thought this pot was sort of gimmicky/redundant than practical for daily use.
Then I went home for Christmas and my mom was downright evangelical about this thing. My family is deep in the cooking gadget game but I've never seen this much enthusiasm for a new appliance.
Three things Instant Pot does that my older non-electric pressure cookers could not do:
1. Preserve the shape of the food being cooked. The older non-electric cooker would mush all the garbanzo beans or vegetables into a mash. When I cooked with the instant pot for the first time, I thought nothing was cooked fully because every vegetable and bean still were mostly in its original shape.
2. No noise. Non-electric cookers have the steam whistle to vent out excess steam which is noisy and annoying. Instant pot does not have that.
3. It has two pressure settings - lo and high pressure. When I bought it, very few of them offered this option.
Most electric pressure cookers come with a coated aluminum pot. Instant Pot was one of the first ones to offer a stainless steel container. This was the original reason I bought an Instant Pot.
I'm not sure if you are using your regular pressure cooker correctly. Your vegetables should come out similar as if you steamed them. You are probably cooking them too long. The pressure cooker also shouldn't have to vent all the time. At least with my Kuhn Rikkon you have to carefully adjust the temperature to ensure the food is at the right temperature and then very little venting should happen. Of course that also requires constant monitoring and adjusting. But most things only need pressure cooking for 5-10 minutes anyways.
Maybe I was cooking them too long. I used to have a $90 cooker (I think it was T-Fal), but I could never get it to cook correctly. With Instant pot, the cooking time does not seem to matter. Same thing with venting. I could never get it to vent without much noise.
the standard SEB pressure cooker that every household owns in France constantly vents when under pressure - there's a kind of spinning valve on the top that make a choo-choo train noise :)
usually you turn the hob to full until it starts spinning, then you reduce to low for the duration of the cooking
Only once it has reached full pressure. Steam escapes noisily through the lid locking mechanism for about a minute first (escaping steam is used to engage the mechanism, which makes it fail-safe because without the mechanism engaged it will never reach full pressure).
>It has two pressure settings
Only on the more expensive model. Cheaper version only has the higher pressure mode. But I have the cheaper version and I have never wanted a low pressure mode. It seems redundant because it already has slow cooking mode.
1 I have seen the steam escape for the lid to lock, but I would not categorize that as a noisy escape. But my perception may have been colored by my previous experiences.
2. True. But the difference when I bought it was around 25 dollars, so it seemed a worthwhile investment. I have used the low pressure to cook rice for some dishes which require the rice to be hard but cooked. I could do it in slow cooker mode, but it would take a long time.
I bought an Instant Pot about 5 years ago because I saw some good recipes and a suggestion on a Paleo blog. The price on Amazon seemed reasonable at the time, so I figured "why not." It turned out to be an incredible purchase. I've grown to hate single use devices that take up space in my kitchen (ugh, blenders, crock pots), but the Instant Pot is so versatile that it earns its keep.
I've long since abandoned that whole Paleo thing, but the Instant Pot still makes great meals. I don't need a crock pot in addition to this. It makes amazing pulled pork and carnitas. I can throw a whole chicken in there and have it falling off of the bone in less than an hour. I can brown beef in it before adding other ingredients for a good stew or chili. It makes really good hard-boiled eggs (though I've recently discovered eggs in my sous-vide and will never cook them another way). I don't know how the Instant Pot brand compares to other electric pressure cookers, but I'm 100% satisfied with mine.
I liked it so much that I bought my parents one for Christmas two years ago and upgraded mine from the previous model to the newer model on last year's Prime Day mentioned in the article. The newer model solved my one gripe with the previous model (setting the lid on the counter was awkward when taking it off).
I recommend these things to everybody. Whether you enjoy cooking or not, the Instant Pot makes cooking meals easier.
I must be the only person unconvinced by the Instant Pot!
I don't like having to braise/sear meat and caramelise onions directing in the IP on "Saute" mode - it's always either too hot or too cool. This process is much easier on the hob with a frying pan.. Which is fine, but then I have two things to clean.
If I want the benefits of a pressure cooker, I'll just buy one of those.
Oh and the UX on the IP is horrific! I needed the manual every time I used it (about five times).
The thing is terrific and I too have recommended it to anyone who will listen. I just hope they keep their quality control standards high as the popularity increases.
It's a huge money/time saver. I think it's already paid for itself for me as a yogurt maker.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 310 ms ] threadI received it, and stuck it in my closet expecting to pull it out when I needed to pressure cook something. My wife discovered it pretty soon after and began using it for several tasks I didn't even realize it was capable of. She absolutely loves the thing, to the point I was joking with her about it. It's funny to me to see that our experience is far from unique.
If you buy a pressure cooker for "when I needed to pressure cook" you might not notice that it's also capable of being a multi-function electric cooker.
An instant pot is an interesting choice. We have an old-fashioned pressure cooker at home, which doesn't get nearly enough use.
I think my favorite is probably turkey breast just because it doesn't get dry. Everything else I've made in it (mostly different meats) has been okay, but nothing special. My family and I generally prefer things cooked on our grill.
My favourite thing to sous vide is steaks, which I finish on a steal plate on my grill. But I just use the beer-cooler sous-vide trick, so I can't really do e.g. 72 hour short-ribs.
Most cooks, outside of seafood, that I enjoy tend to take >12 hours. I barely use it for something like chicken thighs or pork chops.
However, I personally like to pre-cook a bunch of food using sous vide then finish on the grill. Now food is ready with a lot less hassle on my part. Finishing on the grill, a pan, or in the oven is crucial to get good browning flavor!
So, to me, it's either for niche things (precise soft boiled eggs, unique cooking temp for meats), or as a time saving thing I can set, forget, and not fret over precise timings. Or do something like 3 racks of ribs over 24 hours in a cooler.
Otherwise, I agree, it's not my first tool I reach for to whip up dinner.
I bought an Anova myself during the last Black Friday sale.
While I haven't made yoghurt in it (and I'm not sure what heating would do to yoghurt cultures), I have aged eggnog in ziploc bags. Polyethylene bags are probably best for anything that doesn't need to set.
I wouldn't recommend mason jars unless you're doing a custard like creme brulee. You can't fully immerse them under water, and if you don't cap them properly, they'll either crack under pressure, or let water in. There's a "fingertip-tight" rule for mason jars, though I haven't tried it [1]:
> Place the lid on the jar. Twist the lid until “fingertip tight,” meaning just barely closed and still possible to open with your fingertips.
> To close the jars fingertip tight, place the lid on top of the jar, then twist the band to tighten using just your fingertips. When you begin to feel resistance, twist once in the opposite direction, then once more in the original direction to tighten.
> Closing the jars until fingertip tight means that air will be able to escape from the jars when you submerge them in water. If you close them too tightly, the trapped air will press against the glass and could crack or break your jars.
[1] https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/foolproof-cracklin-crem...
little 4 oz jarz are perfect for 2 eggs.
The fingertip tight allows air to bubble out but water doesn't seem to get in. (it's extra cool because they actually form a little vacuum seal too)
I suspect yogurt would behave the same way - but who knows?! It's always an experiment the firs time.
Personally I use it for more niche goals.
Taking cheap steak cuts and getting a perfect internal temp as well as batch cooking chicken works out really well.
Getting a precisely boiled egg is amazing (see http://www.seriouseats.com/2013/10/sous-vide-101-all-about-e...).
I also set it up in a cooler and do 3 racks of ribs for BBQ events. Don't worry that the Anova claims it can't control that much water. The insulation of any cooler will let you far exceed it's ratings.
My wife has 2 of them, we throw together whole dinners in minutes, the primary one never leaves the counter because it's become a daily tool. Our microwave stopped working about 6 months ago, and instead of replacing it, we just gave the microwaves spot on our counter to the instant pot.
When you say you pressure cook a chicken in 7 minutes, it's 10-15 minutes for the heat and pressure to buildup, plus 7 minutes once pressure is at max, then 1-2 minutes to release the vapor (or wait 20-30 minutes until the pressure subsidies by itself).
Am I correct?
1) why would the universe naturally favor order? 2) why would the order it favors please my sensibilities?
Questioning the above premises will often yield opportunities that a rigid attention to preconceived notions would not.
I don't get the trend in instant pot directions to say it only takes X minutes when it is really warmup + X + cooldown. It really doesn't help anyone know when to start cooking a meal.
I can make anything from ice cream, cheesecake, pizza, stew, sauces etc. from scratch without a recipe, but I find instant pot recipes to be some of the worst I've ever come across. It has a steep learning curve. That said, I think I'll like it when I figure out how to get what I want out of it. Maybe I'll even write a real recipe for it.
Likewise pulled pork in just a shade over an hour, perhaps 10 minutes actual prep time.
Or are we excluding one unwatched time but including another unwatched time for some reason?
Usually find 5 minutes is just enough time to make toast and a coffee. ;)
5mins for hard, 4 mins for softer yolk, 1 min for runny (like for eggs benedict), quick release pressure + put in to an ice bath when done.
Put a little water in a pot (maybe half an inch), cover, bring to a boil, then reduce to low for 7 minutes and you have a perfect hardboiled egg. You should still have a bit of water in the pot when done, but not too much to delay boiling. End to end in about 8 minutes you have a cooked egg!
The boiling is almost instant in a small aluminum pot, unlike bringing my pressure cooker up to temp, and you dont have to depressurize.
Seems cooks illustrated also found these nicer for peeling: https://www.cooksillustrated.com/articles/168-easy-peel-hard...
The BBC is publicly funded, visitors to BBC news from outside the UK will get served ads.
Maybe I'm confused. Are you talking about the Instant Pot story, or the ads around the story? I'm seeing a Car Fax ad, an ad for a movie, a t-shirt company ad, some other google ads and some ads promoting other BBC properties.
Having worn a foil hat for a while myself, I still find occasion to put it back on every once in a while. Question everything. Never stop asking yourself how you really know what you think you know.
In life, like in software, never trust your inputs.
It is easy to praise this product -- it combines a rice cooker with a pressure cooker and stew simmer (and, I guess, a yogurt maker) all in one device that saves kitchen storage and counter top space. They've thought of lots of stuff: making the seal easily replaceable, and allowing you to buy extra tin cans with lids (from cooking right to refrigerator). The cans are perfect size for the dish washer, etc. It's well designed, solves an urgent need, solidly built and just works.
What do you cook in there that you've really enjoyed?
That's... about the same amount of time it takes on the stovetop, no?
(I just bought one after reading this thread hehe)
Here's a few things I tried:
- Mississippi pot roast
- Carnitas
- Pulled pork
- Cilantro lime basmati rice
- Butter chicken
- Chili
- Chicken breast
- Crack slaw
- Pulled chicken
- Chinese hot pot
- Hard boiled eggs
- Soft boiled eggs
- Steamed broccoli
- Steamed cauliflower
- Kale and bacon
- Mussels
- Cheese cake
- Meatloaf
- Italian sausages
- Beef curry
- Poached salmon
- Pork ribs
- Swedish meatballs
- Taco meat
- Chicken fajitas
- Black beans
Some time ago, when Apple bailed out of self-driving car business, my friend and I discussed what would be the good category for Apple to try next and I suggested advanced kitchen devices. Seriously though: instant pot with Nespresso machine are close to best damn money I spent. Currently I am investigating Anova devices and dreaming about something that would cut down (hehe) my peeling and chopping time.
Watch one good video on how to dice an onion an you're 90pct there.
Learn to keep your knives sharp. A sharp knife is a safe knife and makes the whole prep process go faster.
https://youtu.be/kSKpz1UqIl4?t=4m13s has overkill levels of detail (and some marketing upsell) but communicates the idea well.
I've had great results with both but water stones need to be soaked in water before use (instructions say 10 minutes, but my experience is more like 30 minutes), they release a messy slurry when they wear and they don't stay flat for very long (flatness isn't that much of an issue with knifes I suppose, but essential for woodworking tools) and wear down as you use and re-flatten them.
Diamond plates stay dead flat, need very little maintenance, ready to use (just wet them, no soaking) and last 10 years or more in my infrequent use.
I have big 8" plates for my woodworking tools, but I intend to buy a small 1200 grit sharpener for kitchen for about $6 from here: https://www.fine-tools.com/ezelap-diasharpener.html
1200 grit isn't super fine (compared to water stones) but is enough for basic kitchen sharpening (you don't need coarser ones unless you sharpen damaged blades and you don't need a finer one to get decent sharpness). I'd add a leather strop and some honing compound (chromium oxide) if I needed to get them sharp enough to shave (like I do with my tools).
That's about $20 for diamond plate + strop + compound, you can't get a decent water stone for that price.
But the real difference between sharp and kinda-sharp is practicing the skill of honing the blade. Sharpen a little at a time, test frequently and do it often.
Purist will call them crap, but I use both a traditional whetstone and an electric sharpener and the electric gets 90% of my usage. It takes a few minutes to take a knife from "very dull" to "pretty sharp". The whetstone definitely gets them sharper, but it takes a lot longer and you only notice your knives are dull when you're right in the middle of making dinner.
I recommend a jig that keeps the angle for you. I use a spyderco sharpmaker (https://www.amazon.com/Spyderco-Tri-Angle-Sharpmaker/dp/B004...), but there are others. I enjoy eating steak with a super sharp knife, so I have it out frequently for sharpening our set of steak-knives, and less frequently for our chef's knives.
What they are mostly great at is a few things that are so labor intensive (ever made hummus by hand?) you otherwise might not bother. Also a good time saver for things like pasta dough.
1. http://www.thekitchn.com/brendan-mcdermotts-knife-skills-cla...
2. Misen.co and http://www.seriouseats.com/2015/09/best-cheap-chefs-knives-m...
- small food processor to significantly reduce the chopping time. I picked one up cheap on a whim (I think for making hummus) and now most of the time I just coarsely chop veggies and throw it in with a slicer blade or grater, depending on what I'm making. (By coarse, I mean, I'll quarter the onion so that it fits down the chute)
- Quit peeling! I've got a vegetable peeler that is sitting very sad in the drawer because it hasn't been used in a long long time.
I don't mind the 30 seconds of ritual to enjoy a cup of coffee/espresso.
This is in sweden though.
We have a k-cup machine at work and it's drinkable, but not great.
We have both in our workplace kitchen; they both produce mediocre coffee, in my opinion (and I'm no coffee snob). I wonder how the Nespresso got such a reputation? Is it widely considered good?
That seems strange to me. I got the Nespresso Inissia as a Christmas gift a few months ago and it takes maybe 30-60 seconds to heat up. Then, <30 seconds for every shot of espresso after that.
OK, so if someone is taking it seriously, let me specify a little, since I've been thinking of it for some time: a rice cooker that uses vapour.
I often cook rice in the pressure pot. It takes something like 5 minutes to warm the pot, 4 minutes of cooking and a few minutes more for releasing vapour until I can open it again.
It would be nice to have a device that:
1. Wash the rice with cold water first. 2. Makes vapour in a few seconds holding the pressure. 3. Automatically stops when the rice is cooked. 4. Finally releases vapour. 5. Bonus point if it cleans itself.
Just that, plain boiled rice in five minutes, instead of 10-15.
It's a good pressure cooker. A good stovetop one will be faster, but it's only significant if you've got a gas or induction range. And of course the stovetop models don't have any automation.
And it's half the price of a good stovetop model.
Pressure cookers have been around for a long time: first manufactured in 1864 according to wikipedia (1). It's just that they have been out of fashion for few decades - possibly supplanted by the microwave oven in the 1970s and 80s.
So maybe the time was right for a better design to come back. The older designs had a reputation for very occasionally exploding, or the lid flying off and getting embedded in the ceiling. Not common, but it did happen and that puts people off.
1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressure_cooking#History
[1] The amount of force required is large, though. I'm not sure I could do it without tools.
Sadly, I no longer live there thanks to a breakup but I'm looking forward to buying my next place with gardening space so I can pick up where I left off. Do these things work for canning or is it mostly just a matter of available volume?
Takes an hour or two off of a pot roast.
It's really really weird to read that, in europe pressure cookers have been mainstays of most every kitchen for decades, especially after SEB's "super cocotte" (released in '53, they'd sold 10 million by '69).
"Most people have some concept of urban legends of exploding pressure cookers in their grandmother's kitchens," says Mr Qin.
Am in Europe, literally everyone has a pressure cooker, never heard about them actually exploding.
"Urban legend" describes these sort of thing, but how do you even begin to fight them with marketing in some form.
If Mr Qin had wanted to do marketing at the beginning, some segment of the market is going tune out the instant pressure cooker is mentioned.
Umm... It would have just taken you a simple Google search before writing that comment...
It's worse than irrational, unless you've filled your pressure cooker with explosives and plugged the pressure relief valves it's not going to do anything except boil empty.
Old:
https://lasrecetasdecasa.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/ollapre...
New:
https://www.worten.es/i/10acef2d003a99a785ece3ca0a0281ef4dd9...
Then again, I was also right next to an exploding Mokka / Espresso stovetop cooker, so maybe I am simply unlucky :)
I still own a pressure cooker and use it regularly - a cheap one from IKEA at that.
Fortunately the dessert was saved: a condensed milk can also made in the pot into delicious toffee.
Thanks for telling me about the recipe! I never knew Dulce de Leche could be made in a pressure cooker - that's on my to do list for tomorrow now.
Happens frequently with cheap ones in 3rd world countries.
They're as popular as ever, they're not trendy but it's something you normally get once you're beyond a pair of pans and pots, the smaller models (4~5L) may even replace/obviate a large pot.
1. No need to fiddle with getting the heat right to get to pressure, and then lower the heat. Just seal the lid and tell it to get to pressure. It will control the heating.
2. Timer. It will drop the heat once the timer runs out. A lot of people set something to cook for, say, 30 minutes. Then they go out of the house for an errand that takes over an hour. They don't need to worry about overcooking/explosions. It will turn the heat down after 30 minutes and keep the food warm.
That's really about it. I own both a stovetop one and an instant pot. Most of the raves I've seen for the instant pot apply equally well to other pressure cookers. Having said that, the two pros above are really, really nice. If people can afford it, I would tell them to buy this instead of a regular pressure cooker.
Now I want to use it asap! Never realized it had a cult following (article looks like a PR material though)
1) Steam is contained inside and not released
2) Steam is released
So rather than x whistles it based on the time.
For example for one cup of Toor dal (Yellow peas / pigeon peas spilt ) we put it for 16minutes with steam valve closed.
That said, it doesn't surprise me to see this at the top of HN. It is a geeky cooking tool with a cult following. I'm certainly intrigued.
It's featured on an endcap and does not sell one bit. This was a surprise.
An electric pressure cooker brand (I've never heard of, but I don't like in Canada/US which seems to be the prime market) took over the electric pressure cooker market by adding buttons instead of a twist-dial timer where you manually set the desired time (my electric pressure cooker, which came free with by fridge years ago, and may be part of the reference to scaring people about exploding... they don't... they have cut-off devices if the wrong time is dialed) and a bunch of links and given some Googling what appears to be discount codes to incentivise bloggers.
Quite an amazing success. Smart targeting of an old-tech.
I'm not aware of any previous pressure cooker that had Instant Pot level automation.
Yes, this is exactly what my pressure cooker does. There's a dial, which has indicative minutes, and a picture of what's cooked under certain minutes around the dial, for example a small icon of a bunch of beans appears under the 40 minute dial, similar for other items. But total cooking time rarely ends up at 40 minutes (for beans, indicated at 40 minutes for example when starting from cold water and unsoaked beans) because it pre-heats to starting temperature and then kicks-off. The heating plate heats pretty quickly, which also makes sense when seeing recipe examples for browning meat before starting the pressure cooking.
Seems identical, just analogue control. Just a standard modern pressure cooker without a bit of marketing a dial in-place of buttons.
I also have a pressure cooker for the gas stove, significantly larger, and while that takes manual timing it has a release valve if steam pressure gets too high.
Seems like their real achievement here is successfully marketing a good version of an already-existing product with the "I made this" angle to a market that wasn't aware of it. And more power to them - pressure cooking is a great technique to have in your culinary arsenal. Still, it just seems odd to me when someone "invents" a thing that already exists and manages to generate tons of press for doing so. Reminds me of the Soylent guy.
The instantpot is a bit slower but it has a stainless steel pot and can do a lot more than just cooking rice and steam vegetables. Moreover, it's actually cheaper and sturdier than the alternatives I considered.
Good product, would recommend. I try to stay away from pressure cooking, coffee brewing and knife sharpening communities though, maybe do I watch those swedish steel axes benchmarks, for some reason ;)
Are you pressure cooking your rice or using the "rice" setting? I've found rice to cook faster in this vs. my old Aroma rice cooker...
I'd love to know what your favorite meal is to cook with the pot. Mine is chicken tagine.
It defeats the purpose if you have to baby-sit and fiddle with the lid for an hour hoping to get a seal.
I have only had that issue once with the Instant Pot so far and it was solved with a quick re-seating of the sealing ring.
[1]: http://a.co/441GESa
I've been using it regularly since then and I highly recommend it. I had a manual pressure cooker many years ago but I rarely used it because it was too much hassle. The automation and easy cleaning of the Instant Pot makes a big difference. I rate it second only to the microwave oven as most useful cooking technology.
I eventually went with a Power brand pressure cooker (it was pretty much the same price at Costco, and I've had much better luck with Costco's warranties than Amazon's), which as best I can figure looks nearly identical, has the exact same functionality sans maybe a yogurt option, and should in theory be able to cook the same stuff in the same time. But whenever I ask for recipes, all I get is, "No man, you've gotta have an Instant Pot for this."
Also, the fact that the Power Pressure Cooker XL is "As Seen on TV!" turns me off personally, but I that may not be a universal reaction.
Stainless Steel is better for health than Teflon.
A couple of key takeaways:
- There's no marketing magic here, this is just a great product.
- It's ugly, and the interface is weird. Doesn't matter, it gets the job done.
- Pressure cookers have been around for a long time, they're a really great cooking technology marred by some serious safety and inconvenience issues. There are a bunch of companies competing in Sous Vide right now (the hot new cooking trend) but the Instant Pot guys just took old technology and made it slightly better.
edit: formatting
Breville was it.
Do they work especially hard at making devices usable?
I have one I use for the chilis, bbq, ribs, etc I do. One for soups and such, etc. It's a slight pain I guess, but the ease of use of the Instant Pot in general outweighs swapping out the silicone seal occasionally.
Then I went home for Christmas and my mom was downright evangelical about this thing. My family is deep in the cooking gadget game but I've never seen this much enthusiasm for a new appliance.
1. Preserve the shape of the food being cooked. The older non-electric cooker would mush all the garbanzo beans or vegetables into a mash. When I cooked with the instant pot for the first time, I thought nothing was cooked fully because every vegetable and bean still were mostly in its original shape.
2. No noise. Non-electric cookers have the steam whistle to vent out excess steam which is noisy and annoying. Instant pot does not have that.
3. It has two pressure settings - lo and high pressure. When I bought it, very few of them offered this option.
Most electric pressure cookers come with a coated aluminum pot. Instant Pot was one of the first ones to offer a stainless steel container. This was the original reason I bought an Instant Pot.
Only once it has reached full pressure. Steam escapes noisily through the lid locking mechanism for about a minute first (escaping steam is used to engage the mechanism, which makes it fail-safe because without the mechanism engaged it will never reach full pressure).
>It has two pressure settings
Only on the more expensive model. Cheaper version only has the higher pressure mode. But I have the cheaper version and I have never wanted a low pressure mode. It seems redundant because it already has slow cooking mode.
2. True. But the difference when I bought it was around 25 dollars, so it seemed a worthwhile investment. I have used the low pressure to cook rice for some dishes which require the rice to be hard but cooked. I could do it in slow cooker mode, but it would take a long time.
FWIW, I've found that if you push down on the lid firmly once it starts venting steam in any quantity it will lock instantly.
I've long since abandoned that whole Paleo thing, but the Instant Pot still makes great meals. I don't need a crock pot in addition to this. It makes amazing pulled pork and carnitas. I can throw a whole chicken in there and have it falling off of the bone in less than an hour. I can brown beef in it before adding other ingredients for a good stew or chili. It makes really good hard-boiled eggs (though I've recently discovered eggs in my sous-vide and will never cook them another way). I don't know how the Instant Pot brand compares to other electric pressure cookers, but I'm 100% satisfied with mine.
I liked it so much that I bought my parents one for Christmas two years ago and upgraded mine from the previous model to the newer model on last year's Prime Day mentioned in the article. The newer model solved my one gripe with the previous model (setting the lid on the counter was awkward when taking it off).
I recommend these things to everybody. Whether you enjoy cooking or not, the Instant Pot makes cooking meals easier.
I don't like having to braise/sear meat and caramelise onions directing in the IP on "Saute" mode - it's always either too hot or too cool. This process is much easier on the hob with a frying pan.. Which is fine, but then I have two things to clean.
If I want the benefits of a pressure cooker, I'll just buy one of those.
Oh and the UX on the IP is horrific! I needed the manual every time I used it (about five times).
The cheaper pots don't even bother with all the magic setting buttons.
It's a huge money/time saver. I think it's already paid for itself for me as a yogurt maker.