Never heard of it before this article came out.
Is this just a US/Canada thing? I remember my parents having an old-school pressure cooker 20 years or so ago.
How the Instant Pot cooker developed a cult following
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Re: How the Instant Pot cooker developed a cult following
#222It'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 yog…
I seconded fr0sty comment: Teflon vs Stainless Steel.
Stainless Steel is better for health than Teflon.
Re: How the Instant Pot cooker developed a cult following
#223Have 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…
It's pretty fantastic for making stock/bone broth - just chuck everything in and turn it on for 2 hrs.
Same for stews: Just add all the ingredients (meat, veg, stock, herbs) then press the 'Stew' button.
The slow cooking function is also great for this: Pork shoulder/butt, sauerkraut, pepper, maybe peas/carrots - 8 hrs on med.
Re: How the Instant Pot cooker developed a cult following
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Because here you have two settings/ways 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.
so, its a trial and error way to figure out the time equivalent of whistles?
Re: How the Instant Pot cooker developed a cult following
#225I find meat cooked by pressure cookers and especially slow cookers sort of disgusting.
Mainly it boils down (pun intended) to the texture and the meat is lacking in caramelization (maillard reaction).
But I haven't tried the Instant Pot so maybe it has a solution for that.
If I could grill all the time I would. I almost can as I have a kamado style grill which has its own cult following as well (see Kamado Guru [1]).
There isn't much you can't cook on one of those grills.
Re: How the Instant Pot cooker developed a cult following
#226Does anyone know what the energy usage of the Instant Pot is overall compared to other methods of cooking?
I've explored various off-grid methods of living and the energy requirements involving food (both storage and preparation) can be surprisingly high. I'm curious to see if the efficiency gained by using a pressure vessel results in substantial energy savings.
Re: How the Instant Pot cooker developed a cult following
#227I find meat cooked by pressure cookers and especially slow cookers sort of disgusting. Mainly it boils down (pun intended) to the texture and the meat is lacking in caramelization (maillard reaction). But I haven't tried the Instant Pot so maybe it has a solution for that. If I could grill all the time I would. I almost can as I have a kamado style grill which has its own cult following as well (see Kamado Guru [1]).…
I usually try to sear the outside of the meat before I throw it into a slow cooker. I use cheap, tougher meats that wouldn't really be desirable cooked any other way.
Re: How the Instant Pot cooker developed a cult following
#228Instant Pots are AWESOME for meal prep especially for those who are bulking/cutting weight. In under one hour on a Sunday night, I prepared enough chicken, brown rice, and veggies to eat for lunch every day for a week (I don't eat breakfast and generally eat salad for dinner). The food tasted decent, but the amount of time spent on preparation can't be beat.
Re: How the Instant Pot cooker developed a cult following
#229This 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…
What's an example of a task you didn't think it was capable of?
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.
Re: How the Instant Pot cooker developed a cult following
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 du…
Which electric sharpener do you use? Thanks!