Cooking has gone to Pot

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 24/01/2018 (3144 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Welcome to Jen Tries, a semi-regular feature in which Free Press columnist Jen Zoratti will try something new and report back. In this instalment, Jen Tries… the Instant Pot.

Everyone and their dog got an Instant Pot under their Christmas tree, and I know this because I’m on Facebook. Over the past 3½ weeks, my social media feeds have been filled with tasty-looking recipes designed specifically for the ultra-trendy kitchen gadget, which promises to replace half your kitchen appliances while helping you eat better and save money.

The Instant Pot, in case you still think I’m talking about marijuana, was, without a doubt, the small kitchen appliance of 2017. It’s a pressure cooker, slow cooker, rice cooker, yogurt maker, sauté/searing pan, steamer and warming pot — all in one. It’s become one of Amazon’s biggest sellers, and stores in Winnipeg couldn’t keep it on the shelves over this past holiday season.

While the hype surrounding the appliance has reached new heights, the Instant Pot itself isn’t new. Invented by Ottawa engineer Robert Wang, the now-coveted countertop appliance made its debut back in 2010. Early adopters loved it and, on the strength of word-of-mouth advertising, the Instant Pot became a culinary phenomenon.

People who love their Instant Pots really love their Instant Pots. The Official Instant Pot Community on Facebook has almost 1.2 million members. There can be upwards of 14,000 posts in a single day. Some devotees call themselves “Potheads,” a term I’m pretty sure is already taken and means something else entirely. I’ve heard the Instant Pot be described as “life-changing” and “revolutionary.”

In my life, I have no shortage of people evangelizing to me about it, the same way people used to evangelize to me about CrossFit or dry shampoo or Harry Potter. Cults are weird.

My most common interaction goes something like this:

Friend: “You have to get an Instant Pot!”

Me: “Why? What makes it so great?”

Friend: “It’s an all-in-one gadget! You can take meat from frozen to plate in no time! AND YOU CAN MAKE YOGURT WITH IT.”

Me: “Yeah, OK, but can it also chop stuff? Everyone knows chopping stuff is the worst part of cooking.”

Friend: “You can make yogurt with it!”

Me: “Plus, I already own pots and pans.”

Friend: “…but you can make yogurt with it!”

Look, I am not going to make yogurt with it. Mostly because I don’t understand why anyone would make their own yogurt, unless you crave the tangy, creamy taste of made-it-yourself sanctimony. Although, I did see an artfully composed photo of Instant Pot lemon vanilla yogurt in a Mason jar that honestly did look very good.

“It’s Canadian” is the other thing people like to say about it. I, too, am Canadian and can sauté onions — where are my breathless accolades?

Joking aside, I do see the appeal of the Instant Pot. According to formal product reviews and several of my friends, the Instant Pot does several things very well, including bone broth, hardboiled eggs, risotto and ribs. (People sure love ribs.) Roasts take a fraction of the time.

Still, I wasn’t convinced until my friend Anna told me she made mac and cheese in four minutes with her Instant Pot. Now that’s a sales pitch I can work with!

And so, I decided four-minute mac and cheese would be my inaugural Instant Pot dish.

First, I had to procure an Instant Pot. I borrowed one from my colleague Erin Lebar, who is much cooler than me and therefore already owns one.

Second, I had to find a recipe. There are several four-minute mac-and-cheese recipes for Instant Pot out there, but I made one from Delish.com.

Observation No. 1: Instant Pot is really playing fast and loose with the word “instant.” While the cooking time for my mac and cheese was exactly four minutes, it takes time for the pressure to build and the pot to heat up. And then the Instant Pot has to depressurize before you can open the lid. This can be done via a quick pressure release — which involves opening the valve — or natural pressure release, which involves letting the pot do its thing, which can take anywhere between 10 and 40 minutes. This recipe called for a natural release.

After dumping in the uncooked macaroni and a handful of other ingredients — including one ingredient that wasn’t supposed to go in yet — I sealed the pot up. The instructions that come with the Instant Pot are a bit unclear; I had to do a lot of Googling. Once you get the hang of it, though, it becomes much more intuitive.

Observation No. 2: The instruction booklet tells you explicitly not to stick your face over the steam release valve. Reader, you will want to stick your face over the steam release valve. I can’t explain it, you’ll just want to. Don’t touch the lid, either. You don’t need to check on the Instant Pot. The Instant Pot knows what it’s doing.

After waiting a few minutes, I decided to just go for it and open the valve for a quick release because I am impatient and a rebel (and hungry). I was half expecting to be sprayed with the curdled evaporated milk I wasn’t supposed to add until later. But after a little gasp of steam, I opened the pot to reveal perfectly al dente pasta, no boiling or straining or making a roux required. I mixed in my shredded cheese — I used pre-shredded to really maximize my time — et voilà: creamy, homemade mac and cheese that tasted way better than the boxed stuff but took roughly the same amount of time to prepare.

Observation No. 3: One thing that I and several others have noticed about the Instant Pot: it really cuts down on cooking smells. I once cooked a stew overnight in a slow cooker and was woken up at 2 a.m. by a pungent aroma best described as “eau de apartment hallway.”

Whether or not you find the Instant Pot “revolutionary” may depend on how you feel about the act of cooking itself. For those who find cooking to be a laborious chore and the last thing they want to do at the end of a busy day, I could see how the Instant Pot might be a godsend. For those who enjoy the entire process of cooking — especially those for whom the rhythms of chopping, stirring and grating are meditative — the Instant Pot might be a take-it-or-leave-it appliance. (It’s also not the most efficient appliance for every recipe. Sometimes a good old frying pan still makes the most sense.)

Another boon emerged when I asked my already-converted friends about why they love their Instant Pots: for some, it has served as an introduction to cooking — a fun toy that got them experimenting with new recipes they otherwise wouldn’t have tried, and gave them the sense of mastery and accomplishment that comes with cooking a great meal yourself. That, to my mind, makes it worth it.

Also, you can make yogurt with it.

jen.zoratti@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @JenZoratti