An Instant Pot is a Pressure Cooker–and You Should Buy One
For someone who cooks as much as I do, it may surprise you to learn–or actually, it may be totally unsurprising, since I think many chefs feel this same way, but I digress… it may surprise you to learn that I do not love a lot of extra kitchen appliances or single use kitchen appliances. Like, if your sole purpose is to help me roast garlic the one time that I will be doing this in the next 5 years, then you will probably end up in a thrift store pile. I don’t have room to store the things that don’t have frequent utility and I don’t like to support the need-to-have-all-the-things mindset. I prefer minimalism and simplicity.
If you know me really well, you also know that I have a special distaste for things that come to market in massive trendy waves, where everyone seems to desperately want one and many versions come out in quick succession. These trends fade insanely fast, and a new one replaces it soon. It’s consumerism at its very, very worst. I literally hate this for us. Please do not ever buy me an air fryer. Or a regular fryer for that matter.
Instant Pots are Actually Kind of Ancient
When the instant pot trend started, I had no interest whatsoever in participating for this very reason. That and instant pots were just re-popularizing an already well known form of cooking–they’re literally just pressure cookers. Which, by the way, were invented in the 1680s…before the U.S. was the U.S. for some perspective.
Which is to say that so many people were largely being tricked into a trend that had already come and gone a few times over. Did I laugh at everyone for this? Yes, yes I did.
Prior to my marriage, I had actually owned a pressure cooker for several years, though I almost exclusively used it for canning, thanks to an unfortunate black bean experience that scared me from pressure cooking altogether. So when I got the Pampered Chef Quick Cooker for my bridal shower I was slightly skeptical that I would be able to make good use of it, and that I would enjoy the food I could make with it. I eat a lot of things, but I tend to be a prima donna when it comes to food quality; cooking food with enough pressure to turn it to mush has the potential to get ugly and often. I’m a texture eater; mush and I do not play well together.
And You Should Buy One
But it turns out, these instant pots have one thing on pressure cookers that I hadn’t really valued when they came out–electronics. The issue with the pressure cooker, from my experience, is that it takes a relatively diligent cook to monitor the pressure of the pot and start or stop the timer accordingly. I do this for canning regularly. BUT for canning, I’m usually set up for a massive production of food preservation. I’m not running around after work, trying to get dinner on the table while also starting laundry, and answering emails.
And that seems to make a difference. The one time I was pressure cooking in my old school pressure cooker, I burnt the beans to the bottom of the cooker so solidly that we had to soak it for days on end to get them off. There are still circular bean marks on the bottom of the pot as a humble reminder of my lack of knowledge and/or attention span.
Why Electronics Matter
The addition of electronics to the pressure cooker does a few things to help on this front.
1) It has the timer built in. This means that it automatically starts the time when the pressure is up, and automatically ends cooking when the allotted cooking time has passed.
2) It knows definitively when the pressure is up. On my pressure cooker, I’m watching for the little yellow plastic piece to float, telling me that I’ve reached pressure. When cooking over a stove, that pressure can fluctuate and that little piece can float back down and you may not notice if, like me, you walk away once you think you’ve reached pressure.
3) It seems much safer to vent. While you still have to manually let steam out of the instant pot, this one does not whistle that steam out wildly and in an uncontrollable manner the way my old pressure cooker seems to. The older one feels like it's prone to explode at any time. I don’t let anyone in the kitchen with me when I’m depressurizing it (and yes, this is even after I’ve let it naturally depressurize for 10 minutes). However they’ve reconfigured the valves on these things and it seems to work.
All of which is to say, if you don’t have a pressure cooker and need one, or you’re relying on a super old pressure cooker and you’re ready for an upgrade, an instapot could be a perfect fit–and I do not say that lightly.