There was an AMA yesterday on Reddit by the founder of Camelcamelcamel. He said that the Instant Pot was tied with the Amazon Echo for having the most people tracking it. Pretty impressive.
How the Instant Pot cooker developed a cult following
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Re: How the Instant Pot cooker developed a cult following
#142There was an AMA yesterday on Reddit by the founder of Camelcamelcamel. He said that the Instant Pot was tied with the Amazon Echo for having the most people tracking it. Pretty impressive.
Re: How the Instant Pot cooker developed a cult following
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed! One thing to add: Learn to keep your knives sharp. A sharp knife is a safe knife and makes the whole prep process go faster.
Any tips on this?
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.
Re: How the Instant Pot cooker developed a cult following
#144Re: How the Instant Pot cooker developed a cult following
#145Earlier 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).
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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Re: How the Instant Pot cooker developed a cult following
#146Have 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 an…
I've never heard of the instant pot before now. Seems like your complaints are normal issues people have with pressure cookers.
I'd love to know how this fares vs. a normal pressure cooker, as far a learning curves go.
Re: How the Instant Pot cooker developed a cult following
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
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... )
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.
Re: How the Instant Pot cooker developed a cult following
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
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.
Re: How the Instant Pot cooker developed a cult following
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed! One thing to add: Learn to keep your knives sharp. A sharp knife is a safe knife and makes the whole prep process go faster.
Any tips on this?
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.
Re: How the Instant Pot cooker developed a cult following
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
I always find that dismantling, washing, and rebuilding the food processor takes more time than just chopping on a board and then washing the board.
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.