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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

#111

Post by technological »

calvinbhai wrote: post #33
technological wrote: post #24

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)

Ya you should. I think many of us think it is similar to regular electric cooker but forgot to note it is "electric PRESSURE" cooker.

Re: How the Instant Pot cooker developed a cult following

#112

Post by AtheistOfFail »

monsieurbanana wrote: post #106
swalsh wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 corre…

Yes, but people tend to exclude that since you're not watching the pot.

Re: How the Instant Pot cooker developed a cult following

#113

Post by rprospero »

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.

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.

Re: How the Instant Pot cooker developed a cult following

#114

Post by smanatstpete »

mrob wrote: post #70
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…

>No noise. 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 ve…

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.

Re: How the Instant Pot cooker developed a cult following

#115

Post by shostack »

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 and have to wait till it is done (sometimes an hour) to see if you ruined something.

It is hard to find consistent info on how long to cook certain things, and it is easy to overcook things into mush.

And for anyone citing cooking time of a couple minutes... That's just misleading. Most recipes quote how many minutes to set it for. They do not tell you it takes upwards of 15 minutes to come up to pressure in some cases, and depending on the release instructions, some things can take another 20-30 minutes to release pressure if it is a large volume of liquid.

That said, it makes amazing steel cut oatmeal and we've had a couple other successes.

I'd love more recipes that were purely easy quick prep, toss it all in, no extra cooking steps (like finishing in the oven), and good for making easily freezable and quick to reheat one pot meals. Many recipes I've found are overly involved to the point where the IP seems unnecessary.

I desperately want to use it more, but so many recipes fail to meet the above criteria. Hopefully that improves. Maybe my expectations are just too high?

Re: How the Instant Pot cooker developed a cult following

#116

Post by nanodeath »

criddell wrote: post #110
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.

$57.99. But they were also pretty cheap in December, I think -- see https://camelcamelcamel.com/Instant-Pot-IP-DUO60-Multi-Funct... .

Re: How the Instant Pot cooker developed a cult following

#117

Post by connor4312 »

criddell wrote: post #110
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.

The 7-in-1 six quart cooker (currently $100) was just under $70: https://camelcamelcamel.com/Instant-Pot-IP-DUO60-Multi-Funct...

Re: How the Instant Pot cooker developed a cult following

#118

Post by zhte415 »

mrob wrote: post #55
zhte415 wrote: post #31

This is amazing. I am serious. 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 expl…

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 auto…

> 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.

Re: How the Instant Pot cooker developed a cult following

#119

Post by awjr »

pbnjay wrote: post #66
koolba wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Hard boiled eggs are a lot easier - you barely even have to think about it.

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. ;)

Re: How the Instant Pot cooker developed a cult following

#120

Post by dagw »

masklinn wrote: post #30
bryanlarsen wrote: post #16

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…

> 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).

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.
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