I use a Cuisinart pressure cooker like a chain smoker. I cook a vegetable stew that lasts 4 or 5 meals, then cook my next vegetable stew for the next 4 or 5 meals, and so on.
No recipes. Basically what's fresh and in season from the farmers market with legumes (lentils, beans, peas, et), nutritional yeast, herbs or flavoring (usually ginger or jalepenos) and water. Then salt to taste, topped with nuts, and crispy vegetables like onion or pepper.
Actually, here's a video of it -- http://joshuaspodek.com/20-minute-vegetable-stew. It's 20 minutes and not that exciting, but it shows how to make a delicious stew from entirely fresh ingredients with zero planning.
I make bread starting with wheat berries in it (grinding them into flour in the blender first). Also fruit stews that are incredible desserts.
Total life changer. Restaurants are disappointing in comparison and I live in Manhattan. It paid for itself in the first use.
First the caveats: My pressure-cooked bread tastes delicious to me, but I experiment so my results vary. Most batches wouldn't make it into a bakery.
For one thing, I start with wheat berries that I turn into flour in my blender. I blend some to fine flour so it gets doughy, but some course, which gives more texture and, I hear, lowers the glycemic load or something like that.
For another, I add flavors. I started with garlic and onions, then moved to banana, carrot, apple, cocao powder, etc, and various combinations, usually based on what's in season at the farmers market. The one I made over the weekend had banana, cranberry, and ginger.
Here's the recipe I started with, though I use water instead of milk to keep it vegan.
- 2 cups (250g) all purpose flour
- 1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate baking soda (not baking powder)
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 1/4 cup (270g)whole milk plain yogurt (or sour milk, or milk with 1¼ tablespoons of vinegar)
- water in pressure cooker under the metal container the dough goes in
Instructions:
1. Oil metal container so bread doesn't stick
2. Mix everything
3. Pressure cook high presser 15-20 minutes with 1/2 cup water under the metal container
I've only done soda bread, working my way to yeast.
My metal container happens to be my rice cooker bowl. I don't use the rice cooker any more, but the bowl fits perfectly in the pressure cooker. To keep the metal bowl from touching the pressure cooker's teflon, I cut some potatoes and put them in the water, so I get a few pressure-cooked potatoes in the process.
These pages have pictures that helped, although my bread is much more grainy and brown:
I'm fairly utilitarian about cooking and I see where OP is coming from... After working a full day I don't want to take more time to cook and clean. I want to relax or do something fun, and cooking isn't that for me. Being able to make a meal that lasts 2ish days is pretty excellent way of not having to spend time on cooking while still getting a good (if repetitive) set of meals.
On the other hand my wife enjoys cooking so she'll end up doing most of that and it's my job to clean up afterwards. Time-wise it works out to about what it would take for me to make something simple. When she leaves town for a few days I go back to my utilitarian ways.
I keep telling myself to try recipes, but when you buy everything in season, every week I'm getting new ingredients with new flavors, textures, and so on. There's huge variety. I look forward to seeing what new tastes and flavors I'll find this week.
The stew I'm eating for lunch now has Lima beans, Brussels sprouts, kale, carrots, squash, onion, jalepeno, and a few other vegetables.
In August it would have had eggplant, broccoli, red peppers, and a mix of dozens of other vegetables.
In June it would have had spring vegetables.
In February it will have parsnips, beets, cabbage, and so on.
The legumes in my cupboard include Lima beans, split peas, and lentils, and some red/white striped bean from my CSA. In the past month I've used kidney beans, adzuki, pinto, northern, and I forget what other kinds.
(I should mention, I eat other things too -- oatmeal with fruit and nuts for breakfast, lots of fruit, nuts, uncooked vegetables, etc.)
If you work the combinatorics of one legume plus, say, three or four vegetables/mushrooms, nuts and other toppings, there's more variety than I'll exhaust in my lifetime.
I've never eaten this much variety.
That said, I've been meaning to make a Thai dish. I keep telling myself to try, but I keep enjoying what local farms provide.
Lots of people seem to be wondering why Instant Pot has become a hit while electronic pressure cookers have existed as a category for quite some time.
I personally think it's a great case of tipping points, networking effects and branding all working together.
The Instant Pot is a genuinely good product, so it didn't have a trouble finding early users. These people then produced recipes, books and videos not for pressure cookers, but for the Instant Pot specifically. There's 1600+ books for Instant Pot on Amazon, everything from how to cook Keto meals to Indian food. If you have a Breville Fast Slow, and I have a Cuisinart CPC-600 pressure cooker, the cooking times, settings and pressure levels aren't transferable between the two, and may produce quite different results. Hence the networking effect of everyone having the same brand and model of cooker, combined with the tipping point of reaching a certain mass of Instant Pot users, causing an explosion of recipes and guides, which again drives further adoption.
So why don't people create "Breville Fast Slow Pressure Cooker" recipes in the first place? I think it's because of the branding. The Instant Pot name itself is already fun and self-describing, and the marketing downplays the pressure cooking aspects. Pressure cooking has a negative association historically from a safety point of view. So while everyone tries to sell electronic pressure cookers, I think most people who buy this product aren't interested in pressure cookers at all, instead they're specifically getting an Instant Pot. And while technically they may be the same, the customers don't necessarily perceive it that way.
>I think most people who buy this product aren't interested in pressure cookers at all, instead they're specifically getting an Instant Pot. And while technically they may be the same, the customers don't necessarily perceive it that way.
I don't know how deliberate it was but de-emphasizing its pressure cookerness was a smart move. A lot of people still associate "pressure cooker" with "explosions" and, even if they know intellectually they're not really dangerous, they'll still move on to the next item.
As others have said, the price is also quite reasonable--in fact, a lot of stovetop pressure cookers cost more. $100-ish is around the point where a lot of people will take a flyer on something and won't be too put out if it starts gathering dust after a few months.
I have read an interview with the owner where he said he deliberately added & marketed a bunch of redundant safety features because Americans are afraid of pressure cookers.
I wonder how one properly make a safety valve that works even when smeared by food, or prevent the smearing from happening. Should the valve be really large in cross-sectional area, so that the force a food clot would have to withstand becomes large?
Pressure sensor that cuts off the electricity if pressure gets too high. No more electricity, no more heating, pressure drops.
Another one I've seen on my mom's pressure cooker that she's had for probably 40 years or more, is a physical plug that will shoot out if the pressure gets too high and the release valve gets stuck. Of course, not sure what the potential damage from this plug would be (I've only ever seen it shoot into the pot when it was removed from the stove, and cooled too quickly). But better than the whole thing popping.
If you actually read this article, there's barely any information in it that warrants that many words. It's basically just an advertisement that goes "lots of people have bought this thing!" with the automatic effect that readers will then go "wow sounds popular I should think about getting one".
When anything doubles in sales for 6 straight years I think this kind of article is warranted. When it is a top 5 item across stores on Black Friday. The story is how a small Canadian company has such religiously loyal customers and evangelist. I think it is a far article.
I bought myself one in September. I love to cook and cook 70% of meals. Almost everything is from scratch and takes over an hour. I now use this Instant Pot 3 or 4 days a week. I owned a non-electric pressure cooker my whole life and find this makes it so convenient to just get good tasting food done quickly and with much less prep work.
Also this is about Tech Startup inventor making such a strong impact on appliances. No advertising just Amazon and Internet Word of Mouth.
Edit: Also it is virtually sold out across the internet. Bought one for my parents and it was only found by stopping in at stores and looking for the last one not inventories.
I think to OPs point, is not that articles in general aren't warranted. It's just that this one was useless. It doesn't tell me what instant pot did to make it beat out rivals other than some nonsense about sensors.
And sending units to reviewers is paid advertising. I'd like to hear more about that. Was that his plan from the beginning? Make the same device everyone else does at the same price but get blog reviews?
The article does get into the viral marketing etc. but, like you, I would like to hear more. I'm honestly not sure why the Instant Pot took off when (admittedly mostly much more expensive) electric pressure cookers have been around for ages. Though, reading the article, it's also not clear to me if the founder really knows why it became so successful either.
> In 2010, after several months of sluggish sales in and around Ontario, Mr. Wang listed the Instant Pot on Amazon, where a community of food writers eventually took notice. Vegetarians and paleo dieters, in particular, were drawn to the device’s pressure-cooking function, which shaved hours off the time needed to cook pots of beans or large cuts of meat.
> Sensing viral potential, Instant Pot sent test units to about 200 influential chefs, cooking instructors and food bloggers. Reviews and recipes appeared online, and sales began to climb.
I really don't know what you are talking about. It spells out exactly what they did, and why they did it.
It also talks about taking advantage of "Fulfilled by Amazon" back in 2010, still early in the program, and credits Amazon with over 90% of it's sales at one point.
But what was the original plan? Was it to make the same product Cuisinart and Presto were already making at the same price and hope? Why would someone invest $350k with such a plan?
How did those blogs settle on the Instant Pot when better known brands had functionally the same units at the same price (which the author seems not to know)? Why is it continually more successful than pre-existing brands from much larger companies? Crock Pot sells a unit for half the price. Almost all brands of electric pressure cooker have between 4 and 4.5 stars on Amazon because they're all about the same and admittedly a good product.
That's the story and it gives it short shrift. Not how Instant Pot invented something that actually existed for decades. Or how they don't explode, a problem solved before I was born.
Yes, but it seems as if it was starting to gather a fair bit of attention on Amazon before they sent out the test units. I suspect that the initial answer was some combination of Amazon + good product + smart positioning + good luck.
Overall, it's an interesting story about a product that succeeded largely through viral marketing but I'd have liked more detail than you're likely to get from a general interest article.
There's not that much more detail, but a University of Waterloo article on them (https://smbp.uwaterloo.ca/2017/03/instant-pot-climbs-the-soc...) describes the name of the tactic described above: influencer marketing. It's interesting that they align the fact that cooking is often a social phenomenon, with the fact that influencer marketing seemed to work well for Instant Pot.
Some of it's probably the product for sure. If I remember right, rice cookers like the Zojirushi models had pretty much everything Instant Pot has, except the pressure cooking part. But that's a pretty big "except", given the dodgy past of traditional stove-top pressure cookers.
Modern stovetop pressure cookers are pretty safe these days but some people certainly worry and, as others have said, they can be a bit fiddly. You certainly don't fire them up and leave the house.
Influencer marketing is a big deal in many product categories these days. The details vary by B2B or B2C, product/service area, etc. But reviews by people who may not be full-time writers and reviewers can be very important, especially for product categories that don't have a lot of trusted expert review sources.
With money and goods often changing hands there can be a whiff of payola about the whole process. But most people who have a trusted following really are giving honest opinions. You may be able to get me to write a review if you send me something I'm interested and qualified to have an opinion on. I'm not going to be positive just because because I got some freebie though.
I owned a stove top and my wife refused to use it. My wife uses the Instant Pot all the time and the dreaded slow cooker is gone for good.
I still like the stove top 8 qt model for when we have company for dinner and I am making a roast, (I always try to eat a roast all the time so good excuse).
> anything doubles in sales for 6 straight years I think this kind of article is warranted.
If they started at 1 sale the first year they would be at 64 sales. No matter where they started they doubling every year for 6 years is 64x (2^6) sales.
64x sales over 6 years is great if you're an investor, but it isn't news.
Inability to buy one means they are having trouble with production.
You can bet it is doing more than 2x this year with great sales copy in the NYT.
I think you should just do it. This is an article about a kitchen appliance and how the guy gave away 200 units and used Amazon Fulfillment to grow his company.
> Inability to buy one means they are having trouble with production.
Yes they can't make enough of them even though they are doubling production every year.
> I think you should just do it. This is an article about a kitchen appliance and how the guy gave away 200 units and used Amazon Fulfillment to grow his company.
Good point. I actually unsubscribed previously because of their "native advertising" policy (and then resubscribed in the last year or so).
> Yes they can't make enough of them even though they are doubling production every year.
The point I was trying to make in the first post was that doubling sales/production/anything else every year for six years doesn't mean a whole lot without seeing year 1.
1) If they doubled production every year for 5 years maybe they should have had extra capacity for year 6.
2) If year 1 they sold 1 unit then this year they sold on the order of 64 (obviously minimal). If year 1 they sold 100 units then this year they sold on the order of 6400. From a production standpoint that is not a difficult task.
I was just disappointed that NYT ran what is essentially a corporate PR puff piece as a "news" article.
I was under the impression that instant pot was not the inventor of the electric slow cooker / rice maker / pressure cooker hybrid, they were just the ones to import the concept from China and market it to North American audiences. Can anyone who lived in China in the late 90s confirm - was the instant pot style of pressure cooker popular back then, or is the instant pot brand truly the original I nventor of the hybrid pressure cooker concept?
Speaking As a (very satisfied) owner of an instant pot, when I first received it I recall noticing it looked very similar to devices I would see for sale at my local east Asian grocery store
China since 2001 here. Most of the early rice cooker type pots didn't do 'pressure cooking' but obviously rice cooking in a confined space does have a pressure element potentially so it's not a huge leap. Not sure when the first ones with this leap appeared. Definitely before this guy named it in English. Given that he didn't have huge capital it's 99-100% likely he just rebranded and/or slightly modified an existing device and paid to get safety approvals for North American markets, thus making it import-capable. Note that they had a recall in 2015 which sort of implies they are not engineering in North America for the North American market. https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2015/Instant-Pot-Pressure-Cooke...
It's pretty weird when you consider how food trends go. In China, back in the 90s, my parents use a pressure cooker and a wok for everything. And it's the norm as for most families I know both parent work and they have to come home at 5:30 and put food on the table at 6:30, with no easy option like frozen pizza. Now with supermarkets and food delivery you don't need to cook if you don't want to, and if you do choose to cook it becomes much more fancy(and western) with more time consuming steps.
I really liked this comparison. You might be right!
Can you say more? For example:
1. Back in the day, in the US, easy pre-made home meals were the rage. Frozen meals. Microwave dinners. Meals from a can. I don’t mean, “yeah, sure, we still have those today.” I mean, “This is the new society, this is the future, and this food is delicious and amazing!!!”
Was that ever a trend in China?
2. Is there a “Blue Apron China?” I don’t use Blue Apron, and personally think it’s silly — just wondering if there is something similar in China.
So i think in both places cooking has become more of a hobby/status signaling thing.
In China there's something similar to blue apron in late 90s or early 2000s. But it kinda die out because it's offered more on the convenience side instead of healthy side.
Baking stuff becomes quite popular in recent years, because it's a western thing, and it's time consuming, good for share with friends in itself or as photos:good showoff material. Whereas the old method of finding whatever is fresh today at wet market and do a quick stir-fry becomes more and more reserved for older genration, and thus is not a fancy thing todo. Pressure cooking also is something you do when you don't have time and worry about fuel bill, not sexy.
Preprepared food is looked down upon in both us and china , it seems. In US i think people feel empowering by the idea of feeding your family in a healthy way without a stay at home mom; in China a stayed at home mom just recently becomes a thing to brag about, and cooking seems to be a important tool to do it.
1. I don't think there was a trend like that except for instant noodle soups. Actually we are proud of being able to cook and generally frozen meals never worked well for Chinese stirfry things. After staying in US for several years I'm still not convinced those meals are "delicious".
2. Nothing I am aware of. At least noting at that scale. Premium food delivery is ubiquitous so you don't need blue apron for speed. Buying veggies is also not hard. Also be apron only saves you for preparation, which is the easiest part in Chinese cooking.
Japanese made the first Rice Cooker back in 40s in the last century. Even now, Japanese rice cooker is among the favorite merchandise/gift for Chinese tourists.
Lived in Taiwan 93-99. Electric rice cookers and steamers were very common in home and restaurant/street stand use, as were bamboo steamers. Never saw a pressure cooker. Dishes like 粥 or 滷味 or meat braises were cooked stove-top in pots, although I think it's possible to do 粥 (congee) in an electric rice cooker, too.
We've used a Japanese multi cooker for years. Tiger brand. Does rice, steaming, slow cooked stews and soups, even cakes and yoghurt. I'm very surprised at everyone talking as though the Instant Pot invented it.
The key difference is that the Instant Pot is a pressure cooker, which ordinary rice/multi-cookers are not, they just heat the pot to boil water until the temperature reaches a cutoff point.
Electric pressure cookers were invented in the US in the 1950s. The instant pot is pretty much identical to the one my grandmother had in the 1990s (I think presto).
I think you are talking about Korean electric pressure rice cooker. They have various cooking mode but more geared for rice. But people found a way to make cakes etc. This is North America version of them.
The makers are Chinese Canadian, I would say they were inspired by Asian designs but probably have a better product in terms of internals and externals as is normally expected.
This article glosses over the real story which is how did Instant Pot win when their product is functional similar to ones that have existed for a long time? (And no, it's isn't sensors, they all regulate heat and have a valve that prevents explosion.)
This is the same as when people write articles about AirBnB and act as if they invented the space when VRBO was there for years.
I have no problem with stories about an upstart toppling the existing players (in fact I love em) just tell me how it happened.
As an owner of an Instant Pot that gets regular use, and another pressure cooker that lives in storage now, I think I can take a stab at it:
Compared to stove top pressure cookers, it's just easier. Stove top ones require constant attention and fiddling to manage the heat an pressure properly. With the Instant Pot, put food in, close lid, set time, go watch One Life to Live reruns until you hear beeping.
Compared to other electric models, it's either cheaper, or easier to use, or both. Many comparable models are prohibitively expensive, while the Instant Pot is $100. And the interface is dead simple. Push button, adjust time, walk away. I haven't used another electric model, but a couple friends have them, and, to hear them talk, theirs aren't quite as simple to operate.
(That first step might be more confusing before, probably by the 3rd usage, you realize that all the buttons labeled 'bean', 'soup', 'veggies', etc. all do basically the same thing and are really just there for show.)
Idk, my grandma has a similar unit she got a couple decades ago. It was cheap though I don't know how cheap. (I do know my grandma though.) Lots of competition that's similarly priced.
The main benefit of the stovetop units (I have both) is speed. The heating element on the cheaper electric is drastically underpowered and can't even get a good Mailliard. The higher end ones can but they're still much slower than a gas stove, especially when full of liquid. I pretty much go back and forth between the two based on what I am cooking.
So many people are afraid of gas ranges. It's ridiculous. My wife is literally terrified she'll burn the house down.
Yet we use a giant gas-powered pressure cooker in the basement to take warm showers and somehow that's okay.
We used our gas range even when the power was out, to toast tortillas (that's a bit tricky though, but worked well), and even in a pinch during a multi-day blizzard as an emergency heat source (though it didn't run all night, and was relatively safely monitored, you know, the "don't try this at home, kids").
To be fair, though, gas is dangerous. Gas leaks, ranges/ovens accidentally left turned on, objects being left near the gas range's open flame, etc. -- the number of failure scenarios vastly exceed that of electrical ones. Having multiple sources of energy also complicates your house.
Comparing a gas range to a gas-heated water heater isn't really appropriate, since the water heater is an enclosed unit where the user is never directly exposed to the gas or the flame.
Gas is clearly superior to plain old electric, but induction (which is very nearly as good as gas when it comes to cooking) has been here for a long time, is much safer, and isn't even particularly expensive.
Every possible way except being able to take the pan off the heat temporarily without having the range freak out. At least that's my experience with the induction hob that I have (and generally just ignore the electric range).
I'm with you though. Induction is absolutely amazing. But I'd love to be able to lift the pan off to spread my crepe batter around without the hob beeping at me angrily (and shutting itself off if I take too long before putting the pan back on)
I think that's an implementation detail, not a standard feature. Certainly in Sweden induction is basically standard in any kitchen done up in the past 3-4 years or so, and I've never seen that problem.
One problem that is real is that they all insist on using resistive touch controls on the cooking surface instead of physical knobs. Which means if you spill liquid on your cooking surface or accidentally slide your pot onto the buttons all the controls freak out.
Not every way. Flat bottomed woks suck. Gas is much better for a wok, and a wok is a considerably better tool than most westerners realize.
Induction also is easily breakable. That's why you don't see them in commercial kitchens much.
Also I have several large cheap Aluminum stock pots that I love and would have to replace. Try finding a five gallon induction capable stock pot at your local restaurant supply store.
It's true that your standard induction cooktop isn't great for woks, but there are plenty of specialized induction wok burners on the market. And while induction isn't popular in commercial kitchens here in the US, they are very popular in Europe, without any severe problems. And I would assume that as a result there aren't any problems with induction capable cookware availability at local restaurant supply stores either.
So maybe you're right as of right now, but it's not inherent to the technology, but just its level of penetration in the market at the moment.
There are commercial induction Wok burners but I've never seen one for home. And I've heard the commercial ones still lag but I've never used one.
Commercial induction burners max out at about 5000 BTUs(and above 3500 is rare), and that's on the expensive models. A relatively cheap commercial gas range will have many 10,000 BTU burners. My $500 home gas oven that I recently bought has an 18,000 btu burner! I know gas is less efficient, but that burners going to put out more heat than any two induction burners.
On a wok or any large item (such as the 5 gallons of wort or tonkotsu broth I sometimes make) you couldn't get enough watts with induction to properly stir fry or to heat a large mass quickly. Some of the bigger gas units you can buy for home put out really high BTUs while taking up very little electricity.
My point wasn't that induction isn't great, it is. It's just not better in every way. It's got strengths and weaknesses.
I have one and it’s pretty impressive how fast 3.7kW can heat things up (apparently you can even get 5kW models). I ditched my electric kettle as it was too slow in comparison.
Browning food. Electric ones don't get hot enough to do it when you're cooking at pressure. You can get around it by leaving the lid off and sauteing the food a bit first.
Nomnompaleo clued me into the Instant Pot about 3 years ago and I've used it at least weekly since. Most appliances go to the graveyard cabinet, not this. Just polished off a turkey stew: Pepper, onion, garlic, mushrooms, bacon & 4 turkey drumsticks. 1 hour to cook 40min to cool 20m prep yields 4 or five great meals. Umpteen substitutions and variations of the above keep bringing me back. The device is still working flawlessly. Glad I bought a second pot and lid.
I've also had one for a while, coming up on 3 years. I went through a phase where we didn't use it much, but I'm back to using it at least weekly. It makes amazingly tender meats, in an hour instead of 3 like I would normally do for stew beef. I have a selection of easy meals do all the time. One thing I really like is that I can put chicken, veggies, and some rice in it, set it on 35 minutes, and when it's done I just stir and have shredded chicken. The meat just falls apart.
They make one to seal the pot that goes in the fridge, too. I don't think it is used for cooking at all. I havn't bought one yet, but it is on my list.
I'd argue that's just how stews are. It's quite rare that they have an interesting mouthfeel or look particularly appetizing. I can understand making a stew out of tough beef but I'd rather rather spend money on a nice cut of meat or just eat chicken.
This is of course 100% subjective, sautéing is to me a much more interesting way to cook food (boiling things that needs to be boiled beforehand), I'll probably get cancer before the stew-heads though.
This is probably the reason I don't use my stovetop pressure cooker all that much. I just don't make a lot of the one pot stews and such that they especially excel at. I have a few recipes that I make now and then but it isn't a go to appliance for me. It's also the case that I work from home a fair bit of the time so getting a meal on the table with a short cooking time isn't major consideration.
That's a typical description for "set it to run for way too long" that comes with using any make/model pressure cooker.
Remember that the time it takes to pressurize the vessel is not dead time, if you tell it to run for 5 minutes, it's going to run for 5 minutes plus the several minutes it needs to reach pressure, plus however long you leave it before releasing the pressure valve.
Halve the time you typically use (seriously) and see whether that results in better texture for you.
Most meals with varied ingredients you shouldn't just throw everything in at once. Also it's not uncommon to add things at the end (sliced almonds, french fried onions, scallions, etc) to vary up the texture. There are 'one pot' set it and forget it meals you can make if you want but you'll get more out of it if you use a variety of techniques for the different ingredients used.
If you want varied textures, throw some frozen vegetables in after you finish cooking it. (Peas, carrots and corn are good options — anything with some snap that are small pieces.)
another cool kitchen appliance with a cult following is the panasonic flashxpress. its a toaster oven that uses ir light instead of typical heating elements and convection. there are really good, cult-worthy toaster ovens and pressure cookers but unfortunately there are no such bread makers. we really need a better bread maker on the market.
The problem is that bread comes in different shapes and sizes and a lot of us like bread with a good crust. Not that I've used one in years but my recollection is that bread makers didn't handle any of that very well (nor did they really knead effectively).
They were fairly popular at one point but they've pretty much fallen off the radar--I expect because they don't really make very good bread.
We used to have a bread maker and I would agree with your assessment. Not to mention; is it really that hard to make bread by hand? Genuine question since I've never made a loaf by hand. But I do make biscuits (American) fairly often and they're not that hard.
It's easy, but time consuming. The idea behind the bread machine is that you chuck in the ingredients 5 minutes before going to bed, and have freshly baked bread waiting for you when you wake up.
Quick breads (baking soda/powder) are pretty close to being as easy as a bread maker. Anything with yeast though (even no-knead recipes) require multiple steps, including appropriate temperatures for dough to rise. As the sibling post says, it's a lot more fussing around than dumping some ingredients in a device and closing the lid.
automatic ingredient dispensing is the biggest one. the second biggest is automatic removal of the bread from the pan.
the other comments are wrong, bread machines make very good bread. ive been basically living off of bread machine bread for months so i happen to know.
the idea of a bread machine is to render bread-making easy. so you can set a timer on the machine and have it start the mixing and baking process whenever you want. however, the bread must be removed from the pan as soon as its done baking or else it will become soggy. this is a pain and almost completely nullifies the overall convenience of the machine because yes you can set a timer but you have to make sure to be around when its done -- this is highly, extremely annoying and also dramatically reduces your ability to make bread spontaneously. automatic removal would be very easy to implement, i have a few ideas myself on how to do it. but nobody does it.
the automatic dispensing of ingredients would be the final key stone is the whole arch of bread making convenience. for simple whole wheat bread, like the bread i make, there arent very many ingredients and all but one are dry. so automatic dispensing is conceivable. i would love to be able to fill a few hoppers with cheap, healthy ingredients and then be able to simply push a button and later on find a fresh loaf of bread waiting for me. but apparently im the only one.
also a bread machine with a nice display and ui would be nice. nobody seems to be able to do it.
We read that this is a common problem when we bought our Instant Pot so we went ahead and bought a couple of extra rings. One thing I've noticed though is that the black ring tends to not seal as well as the semi-clear ring that comes with the IP for some reason. I suspect other colored rings may have the same problem.
That said, it's nice to have different colored rings so that you know "red ring for spicy", etc...
I'm a massive fan of things that improve my quality of living, save me time, and save me money. This little hunk of magic does all three.
I had no patience for my slow cooker, and this lets me experiment with foods I normally would have avoided. Beans? 90 minutes from dry. Real steel cut oats? 20 min. roughly. It has saved countless hours of cooking by letting me make awesome meals for the freezer. Lastly, it has easily paid for itself in the first year of owning it by letting me cook in bulk.
The one thing that throws me is it is hard to experiment with when dialing in a recipe. Between pressure build-up time, and figuring out quantities, etc., it can be challenging to say, toss something in for a few more minutes, because you can't watch the food while it cooks, so you don't really know when it is fully done short of cooking it more, testing it, cooking it more, testing it, etc. And that can take a good 10 minutes per test.
You throw the food in the cooker, press a button, walk away, and it will be ready and hot for you whenever you decide you are hungry. There's no temperature adjustment, no watching, and no stirring. When I cook grains in the Instant Pot, I pressure steam them in a bowl, which means the pot doesn't need to be cleaned (and the bowl is easy to clean). The Instant Pot isn't much faster than a pot on the stove for many grains, but it's a heck of a lot easier and more consistent.
I think the best part of the instant pot is how affordable it is. My mom had a pressure cooker for about 10 years now. It finally broke and we saw these huge sales during black Friday so we couldn't resist. It's crazy how useful these things are. We use it for soup, congee, and yogurt on top of the standard pressure cooking functions! Making your own yogurt is great because you can change the consistency and taste to your liking! You save a couple bucks too. We prefer the stainless pot rather than the non-stick pots that most pressure cooker have.
We received one last Christmas. Use it regularly for beans and pot roast. The suggested cook times in the manual were a little too long though--and that matters in a pressure cooker. A couple minutes can make the difference between success and slop.
25 minutes for dry beans and 30 minutes for a decent-sized roast is more than enough time to get the job done.
Fantastic job, Mr. Wang!
edit: I'm just doing black beans. Larger ones may need more time.
Why would it depend on the altitude? It's a sealed vessel that holds (iirc) 7 psi on low, and 11 psi on high. It seems like these pressures should remain the same regardless of altitude, unless the outside atmosphere is somehow involved in the pressure release valve, which is hard to imagine.
Traditional pressure cookers with weighted regulators would need different weights for different altitudes for consistent cook times.
The sensors/mechanics of the InstantPot are a black box to me, so I'll just have to assume that it makes some kind of difference since they added an altitude setting to one of the models.
While you can't leave a traditional pressure cooker unattended, with the IP you just put the ingredients in, select the time, and forget about it. Once the timer goes off, the IP will lower the temperature and keep the food warm.
I often prepare stews right before I leave the house, so I can come back to a hearty lunch/dinner a few hours later.
- Increased popularity of homecooking/healty eating over the last years (celebrity chefs shows, websites,youtube, etc...), over take out or frozen stuff.
- Ease of use. The IP has a premade setting for all its major functions. It can be left unattended, keeps the food warm automatically, etc.
- Flexibility. It can work also as a steamer, slow cooker or yogurt maker.
- Compactness. It is kind of bulky, but since it´s electrical you don´t need a stovetop to use it. You can use it easily in a small studio with a very basic kitchenette, for example.
My only beef with it (heh) is that the UI tries to be too idiot-proof and ends up being kind of a mess, otherwise it is a fairly well designed and funcional piece of hardware.
it's the combined saute function that got me, also the ability to slow cook. I don't know if it was the first electric one, but its the one I heard of. I remember my grandparents had a stove top pressure cooker and it was a pita to run. The instant pot just push a button, it's very easy, and all in one pot.
> It is also a testament to the enormous power of Amazon, and its ability to turn small businesses into major empires nearly overnight.
Lot of people say that Amazon tends to move in on a product which they think has been doing well and start selling Amazon branded stuff. Is there a reason why Amazon hasn't done the same to Instant Pot?
> Sensing viral potential, Instant Pot sent test units to about 200 influential chefs, cooking instructors and food bloggers. Reviews and recipes appeared online, and sales began to climb.
I wonder why does the article keeps framing the company's growth as something which spent almost nothing on advertising, and achieved enormous size primarily through online word-of-mouth?
I own an Instant Pot and I wasn't impressed. The rice sticks unlike a real rice cooker and the pressure cooking was slow. I followed some normal pressure cooker recipes and I had to double or triple the time.
Rice doesn't stick only in rice cookers that don't have a non-stick interior pot. My parents have some older generation rice cookers that still work, and they have aluminum interior pots and the rice sticks to them.
The only problem is that the stuck rice doesn't burn a little at the bottom. That is the best part of the rice when mixed with soup.
I had to soak the silicone ring in white vinegar for a couple hours to make it lose its awful out-of-box odour. I also ran it on the two minute steam setting with white vinegar. It's been great since then.
I found that the ring picks up odors from some dishes that travel to the next. Definitely have had yogurt that was inadvertently flavoured with bone broth. I was pretty good!
I love this thing. I feel like the whole family is eating healthier since we have it. My favorite food is Risotto, which comes out really great. Has anyone a very good resource for some other great recipes?
Help the uninitiated out here -- what's the difference between an Instant Pot and a generic slow cooker? Looks like this thing just has more heat settings?
They are kind of the opposite of each other. Slow cookers are just that: set it in the morning before work, come home to a slow-cooked bit of meat and veggies. Instant Pot and pressure cookers in general rely on the fact that water under pressure boils at a higher temperature than at sea level pressure, so it cooks things faster. For example, lentils might take 45 minutes on the stove, 10 minutes in a pressure cooker.
In summary, slow cooker->I’ve got time to wait, make the meat fall off the bone; pressure cooker->45 minutes for lentils? Who’s got that kind of time?
Been using a rice cooker for some years now, it's already a huge step up from cooking it in a pot. And it seems almost nobody uses rice cookers here (NL). Fun fact, people from Asian countries are rather unlikely to know how to cook rice in a pan.
I'll very likely get one of the IP's, as cooking ribs and other slow cooked meats do take a lot of time now, and pressure cookers are like playing with a bomb.
I just don't understand the point of a rice cooker, I really really don't. Cooking rice is the simplest thing in the world - throw rice in a pan with water and some salt, turn the gas on, wait 10-15 minutes. Done. Why would I buy a separate device taking precious space in my kitchen for what has to be the easiest cooking task imaginable? When you say "people [..] are rather unlikely to know how to cook rice in a pan" I just don't understand. It's like saying that someone doesn't understand how to make a cup of instant coffee. The only way to fuck it up is to put it on gas and then forget, but that would ruin any dish.
Your recipe only applies to certain types of robust rice. Basmati rice is not simple - if you just boil it for 15 minutes, you'll destroy it.
At the very least, good basmati is steamed - you only add enough water to cook the rice (you don't drain it afterwards), then bring it to the boil before simmering it at a very low heat. It's pretty hard to reliably get right - every time I use a new stove or pan or try to cook a quantity I don't often do is a gamble. If you mess up it's either crunchy or squishy.
I mostly cook a medium grain rice, but this works for other methods (though it takes attention):
Measure and wash rice until the water runs clear.
Add twice as much water (by volume) as you have rice to a saucepan, and a bit of salt.
Boil the water.
Stir in the rice.
Cover with a glass lid (clear lid is important) and reduce to medium/low heat, the water should just barely be boiling.
Wait until the steam tapers off and you can't see the water layer anymore.
Carefully remove the lid, and start stirring the rice.
Continue to stir until the last of the water is absorbed / boils off.
This results in fluffy rice that isn't wet and doesn't end up stuck to the bottom of the pan.
I usually only buy the one type of rice, a short grain brown rice from SunRice in Australia, and usually only when it's on special.
Anyway, point being: I know I can cook this one particular type of rice to perfection in a saucepan with 1 volume-unit rice to 1.5 volume-units water. Bring it to a rapid boil for one minute, then wrap the whole pot in two dry cotton bath towels (hotbox), leave it for ~45 minutes.
Voila!
Also works with some short grain white rices, with 1:1 ratio and many fewer minutes in the hotbox.
Personally, I can't stand any long grain rice (Basmati, Jasmine, etc).
People with their crazy rice strategies. I found the secret to perfect rice every single time and it's as easy as can be. The secret: cook it like pasta. Plenty of water so it won't evaporate away, test it now and then (you don't even have to taste it, you can tell by the texture), and when it's ready strain it. No other strategy has been so consistently perfect, not to mention stress-free. No ratios. Any variety. No problems.
Side bonus: a lot of that nasty arsenic washes away instead of sticking to the rice and going in your body.
You're making assumptions that your definition of "perfect" is the same as everyone else's. There are cultural differences with respect to the preference of the actual texture and stickiness of the rice.
For example, my Chinese parents basically don't like the stickiness or texture of rice made by any other culture. It might be close minded, but it does illustrate that different cultures have different standards for what makes rice "perfect".
Yep, that's my strategy and that's why I don't understand the complexity people talk about. I only cook long grain rice though. I throw it in a pan with a lot of water, boil until it's done, strain. Like you said - just like pasta.
Oh, I should probably mention I have a bit of a penchant for hotboxing cooked food in general. So it's more of a crazy good-cook strategy than a specifically crazy rice cooking strategy.
I lived in a house with 6 other people at one point when I was at university. Rice was the cheapest form of carbs you could buy, so rice was our staple food.
With the amount of rice we ate, it just wasn't practical to cook rice on the stove. We always had rice in the rice cooker (we didn't keep it warm though), if someone finished the last of the rice, they'd just add more rice and water, and turn the rice cooker on. We'd cook rice 2 or 3 times a day, it probably helped that we ate rice for 3 meals a day. Even when we moved down to 5 people, it was still so much more practical to use a rice cooker.
Anyway, my point is that if rice is your staple food, it makes sense to get a rice cooker. It's just that much easier, and saves a space on the stove. Just add rice, salt, and water, and press the start button. It means you can worry about cooking the rest of the meal, or even just go off and do something else and forget about the rice.
Yeah, for us in the west that's what it looks like, also many of us think 'rice is rice is rice'. But there's a huge variety all with different cooking needs, and there is a large difference between well-cooked and just-boil-until-it-looks-done rice.
But, as with most single-purpose appliances, rice cookers only make sense when you use it daily so that you can leave it on your counter top. Better rice cookers have start- and stop timers so that you can do long prep methods without having to think about anything.
I've never been to a Chinese home that didn't have a rice cooker (huge selection bias in there but still). If it were as useless as you say, a rice cooker wouldn't be a primary appliance in Asian households, the way a coffee machine or kettle is for us in the West (after all, why use those? you can just boil water in a pan).
>> I've never been to a Chinese home that didn't have a rice cooker (huge selection bias in there but still).
That's a pretty fair statement. I'm of a Chinese background, and the only people I know who don't have rice cookers are people who don't cook rice often enough to merit one.
Also, I don't think I know any Chinese people who even bother cooking it the traditional way in a pot. My parents taught me how to do it when I was 10, but the only time I would ever do it that way these days is if I want the burnt crust at the bottom of the pot (sooo good when eaten with soup).
Cooking rice on the stove is not the easiest thing ever. First you need to boil the water, then turn it down, then wait X minutes, then turn the stove off.
With a rice cooker you turn it on and forget about it; it always comes out perfect. When you do that every day, it's so very easily worth it.
Unlike what you stated, it quite needs some practice to get the right formula for cooking rice. There are at least three kind of rice sold in Asian markets, and different kind of rice need different duration, heat, and water to get the best taste. And cooking in pan often leaves fried rice layer at bottom, which could destroy the flavor of the whole pot. It is not simple as you state. Just think about it this way, East Asians might be the people in the world eat most rice in their meals, and they all use rice cooker. There must be a reason for that. Also most East Asian don't add salt when cooking rice, but after cooking white vinegar is added for sushi rice.
If you live in a household that cooks rice once or twice a day every day, it's easier to have a dedicated device. If it saves you 2-3 minutes each time because you don't have to measure the water or watch the timing, then it's worth it after your 300th pot or so. If you eat rice only occasionally, then it's probably not worth it.
I did, at one point, have a multi-purpose rice cooker that had all kinds of setting similar to an instapot. I could put rice, mean, veg and cook the whole thing without attending it. It was nice, but when it broke down I didn't replace it.
I've had basic Aroma ones currently have a nice Korean one. I'd say the quality is vastly different between those.
The high quality Japanese or Korean ones will be pressure cooked and cooked in a way that allows it to stay warm in the cooker for days. Not a single grain of rice will be stuck/inedible. If you get the cheap rice cooker, it'll burn, cook unevenly, go bad if left overnight in warm mode, etc.
If you eat rice 2-3 times a week, get a Zojirushi or a Cuckoo.
I thought this was going to be an article about the marijuana industry and the rise of e-cigs. In fairness, there's an interesting article to write there too..
EDIT: Great idea to write an article like this right before the holidays. Sometimes I wonder if the author owns stock in the companies they are basically promoting...
FWIW, Instant Pot now makes a sous vide circulator too. I bought one on Black Friday, and it works pretty well (although that's from the perspective of a n00b). It's cheaper than the Anova and other big names.
It looks to be about the same price as Anova. They're both in the $120-$130 range. It's amazing how these circulators have come down in price. Wasn't that long ago your choices were DIY or about $800 for a Polyscience.
I think it is amazing that so many are still so expensive. It is just a heater, a little motor turning a fan, and a thermostat/timer. There seems to be less involved in most of them than a $30 toaster oven.
I'll not try to justify the pricing, but they're still relatively low volume niche products. It's also not really accurate to compare the thermostat to a toaster oven. For many applications, sous vide depends on very accurate (less than one degree deviation) temperature control. When I bought a PID temperature controller to do the standard DIY slow cooker thing before the less expensive circulators existed, I paid close to $100.
I love my instant pot. I don't do anything artisanal as I'm not fancy enough for that. Some chicken breast with some teriyaki sauce and water for 20 minutes comes out great.
thats so funny, i was just considering buying one of these after learning about their existence earlier today. these things are great because you can make rice, beans and baked potatoes. if you buy a nice bread machine too, all the essentials are covered and you are all set up to save a whole lot of money. after reading this article and these comments, i will definitely pull the trigger on one of these. the only problem is that there are so many models, i dont know which one to get.
This fear of exploding pressure cookers seems to be a uniquely American phenomenon. Pressure cookers are used by pretty much every middle class Indian household and I have never heard of an explosion. They all come fitted with a 'safety valve' that pops to let out the pressure before it can reach a dangerous point.
Unfortunately the company continues the propaganda:
"Mr. Wang credits the device’s technological advances — most notably, a group of sensors that keep the cooker from overheating or exploding under pressure."
I guess that helps in converting people hesitant on pressure cookers to consider an instapot.
Quora[1] seems to think it could happen under certain special circumstances but not quite "explosion" but rather jettisoning the safety valve.
Pressure cookers are quite common in Spain, and most fear from exploding pressure cookers comes from the 70s and 80s, when they had less security features, valves could get stuck, and people were careless ( i.e: opening the lid before pressure venting, forced cooling under the water tap...)
I've checked on Google News for accidents in Spain, and haven't found anything more recent than 2012.
Using modern pressure cookers is quite safe. Just check your valve works, that your ring seal is in proper condition, and close the lid properly.
AND NEVER TRY TO OPEN IT IF PRESSURE HASN'T VENTED
My Fissler pressure cooker recommends forced cooling under a stream of water for precise control of cooking time, as an alternative to venting steam through the valve, to prevent loss of flavor.
Speaking as one who is American born married to a woman from the subcontinent ...
We’ve had accidents involving traditional pressure cookers 2 or 3 times. It’s not really an explosion though we’ve called it that. There’s a rubber emergency valve that pops out and a jet of high pressure steam rockets up. Usually our ceiling gets coated with gravy or orange colored lentils. Once this happened 5 minutes before dinner guests arrived so we all just went out to eat instead! With more experience we’ve avoided the issue (don’t cook lentils that clog up the outflow tube). But it’s still a worry.
Incidentally we’ve been using the instant pot for the last year now and it’s great. Bought them as presents for various members of the extended family too. It plays s cute little song when t starts and stops. No psuedo-explosions or orange colored ceilings either.
As an American, I've heard that this can happen but have never heard of a specific example of it happening accidentally (sadly, there are multiple examples of them being deliberately used as weapons). I suspect it's an old wives' tale, possibly an exaggeration of poorly-made or damaged cookers somehow being opened at pressure and the "explosion" actually being rapidly venting steam.
I once tried to pressure cook a large pot of habanero peppers (to make hot sauce).
(While doing this I was drinking with friends... bad idea)
I wanted to open the pot and so put it in the sink and ran a little cold water on it until I could just get it open. The resulting steam hit me in the face and hands. My face turned all red and hands swelled up and I could barely see. No real damage but it was very intense pain for a few hours and completely sucked. It also made me not like spicy food for about a year thereafter (fortunately that went away).
Off topic but just a word of warning about pressure cookers and hot peppers.
They do run at a lower pressure, FYI. Which means you don't get all the benefits of a pressure cooker, but I suspect that drops the explosion danger quite a bit too. The new one we got at work seems a bit touchier than my one at home, it wouldn't come up to pressure on a recipe I always do on my 2.5 year old one. I wonder if there were some problems experienced that they put in fixes for or if they were just being clever. It said "burn" which apparently it says if there isn't enough liquid in there. I added some extra and off it went, I was making chili and probably should have put the tomato paste in after the cook rather than before, it was pretty thick.
Electric ones are safer than stove top ones that are manual. I've had the latter explode in my kitchen way back in 80s due bad luck. Food particle got lodged in pressure vent inside and its lit exploded open destroying overhead vent. Loudest bang ever and haven't used it much since. But electric ones are much weaker and have so many safety I would trust it.
One interpretation: Juicero is about making you reliant on them (the machine is useless without their packets), whereas this is about expanding what you can do as a home cook.
Technological inventions that fall in this latter category are where the real value for people is, even though the press and investors are a little too obsessed with the former at times.
Does it deal with power failures, as in it remembers it's state and then properly adjusts for delayed start and stop considering the duration of power failure and adjusting process considering the cooking due to already generated heat when power was gone?
In the third world, an awful lot of times. But being an automated device, if doesn't deal with power outages, then I can't dependent on it to do cooking overnight, while I am asleep. Waking up and finding that machine didn't do its job, because power failed for a few minutes in the middle of the night, is not an ideal situation at all.
Don't understand. Friend brought theirs over yesterday, we made tamales and then they cooked them in the pot. Took only 20 minutes! But hey, steaming them in a double boiler takes 40 minutes so that was a savings I guess. If you include the time to pack the tub carefully and program it, maybe it was slower.
And it didn't really 'steam' the tamales. They came out pretty gummy and a little dry. So no fan here.
No recipes. Basically what's fresh and in season from the farmers market with legumes (lentils, beans, peas, et), nutritional yeast, herbs or flavoring (usually ginger or jalepenos) and water. Then salt to taste, topped with nuts, and crispy vegetables like onion or pepper.
Actually, here's a video of it -- http://joshuaspodek.com/20-minute-vegetable-stew. It's 20 minutes and not that exciting, but it shows how to make a delicious stew from entirely fresh ingredients with zero planning.
I make bread starting with wheat berries in it (grinding them into flour in the blender first). Also fruit stews that are incredible desserts.
Total life changer. Restaurants are disappointing in comparison and I live in Manhattan. It paid for itself in the first use.