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How the Instant Pot cooker developed a cult following

bbc.co.uk

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Re: How the Instant Pot cooker developed a cult following

#101

Post by ams6110 »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #74
literallycancer wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. "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.

Water heaters have many times the risk of exploding, and nobody blinks. Its strange how cookers got that reputation.

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.

Re: How the Instant Pot cooker developed a cult following

#102

Post by criddell »

always_good wrote: post #42
mynegation wrote: post #12

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 ar…

> Nespresso machine I got one of these as a gift and ended up giving it away after realizing how much garbage I was generating from it with those disposable one-use cups. I don't mind the 30 seconds of ritual to enjoy a cup of coffee/espresso.

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.

Re: How the Instant Pot cooker developed a cult following

#103

Post by ashark »

rajadigopula wrote: post #86
iambateman wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm having dinner tonight from an instant pot but it hasn't lived up to the hype for me. What do you cook in there that you've really enjoyed?

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!

> I also cook pasta - low pressure for 6 min gives perfect la dante!

That's... about the same amount of time it takes on the stovetop, no?

Re: How the Instant Pot cooker developed a cult following

#104

Post by dvcc »

AlexC04 wrote: post #62
briffle wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife made pulled pork in 1 hour this weekend. I have made several batches of yogurt 1 gallon at a time.

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.

ChefSteps has a ton of helpful sous-vide recipes that really help build out a skill-set. They also have a yogurt one! (https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/easy-delicious-sous-vid...)

Re: How the Instant Pot cooker developed a cult following

#105

Post by smanatstpete »

ajmurmann wrote: post #69
smanatstpete wrote: post #67

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 coo…

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…

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.

Re: How the Instant Pot cooker developed a cult following

#106

Post by monsieurbanana »

swalsh wrote: post #57
koolba wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's an example of a task you didn't think it was capable of?

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 j…

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).

Am I correct?

Re: How the Instant Pot cooker developed a cult following

#109

Post by fragmede »

literallycancer wrote: post #73
masklinn wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

Exactly. "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.

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.

Re: How the Instant Pot cooker developed a cult following

#110

Post by criddell »

AlexB138 wrote: post #2

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 sever…

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.
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