Someone mentioned the Instant Pot further down the thread. I’m curious partly because I keep coming across articles about how great it is. I’m interested, because I have very little, if any, culinary skills, and my wife and I eat out all the time at local cheap canteens, something she’s very fond of doing. I did cook in the past, but only back home in the West, and nothing very complicated.
However, I could really do with a change: I feel like I have the same damn meal every day, and all the local canteen food just tastes the same to me now. I mentioned the Instant Pot to my wife, and showed her an article, but according to her it’s not really any different from the kind of bog-standard rice cooker you get in every house here.
I have no idea if that’s the case or not, but if anyone here does know, I’d love to hear your opinion. Instant Pot, yay or nay? I want to make stuff like spaghetti sauce, potato curry, vegetable stew…
On Instant Pots: be careful, because I think in Taiwan they may refer to two different things; first, the, um, cooker thing with an on/off switch that pops up when it judges everything’s ready. I’ve only used that for steaming, although I assume it can do other things. That’s age-old tech, although I’ve never noticed them in a North American kitchen. And second, there are the newer Instant Pots, with an absurd number of functions: slow cooker, pressure cooker, rice cooker, yogurt maker, steamer, etc. I’ve never seen those newer gadgets here in Taiwan.
On those newer ones: they sound pretty good, with plenty of sites, such as the Wirecutter, giving them good reviews - they’re apparently far better than the gimmick I initially thought they were. My sister-in-law in Canada raves about hers, but so far she’s mainly used it for how much faster it cooks, and that’s not such a big deal for me - actual cooking time is usually minor compared to the prep and washing up time.
I’m planning to get one because it looks like it can replace my (rather crap, cheap, locally bought) slow cooker, and add other functions too. I haven’t tried looking for them in Taiwan - I probably should, but 90% of the times I’ve looked for stuff in Taiwan, I’ve just had it shipped from Amazon USA anyway, or bought it in Canada on my annual visits. So at the moment I’ve got the Instant Pot “bookmarked” in camelcamelcamel for both Amazon USA and Canada, and I’ll buy it at whatever website has the first big price drop.
EDIT: for potato curry, spaghetti sauce, and the like, it’s really not going to make much of a difference - those things are easy to cook on stovetop anyway. How much do you want to make slow-cooked style dishes, especially with different kinds of beans?
Nah, there’s a Philips pressure cooker available at Costco now. I think it’s still NT$5,499, but during Christmas week it was NT$4,499. And I’ve seen a similar Philips model that comes with an extra cookpot for NT$1,000 or so more at SoGo in Hsinchu.
Helps if you read traditional Chinese, but it’s very handy. I’ve made my American version of chili, some curries, short ribs, and other dishes in a fraction of the time they’d take normally. Pretty nice machine.
But is that the same kind of 10 in 1 gadget as the instant pots, or only a pressure cooker? (I’ve just googled a bit and couldn’t find any English info about the Costco one you’ve posted.)
Yeah, it cooks rice, it’s a slow-cooker (there are two pressure settings on top, and a third for no pressure), you can sauté meats - as far as I know it does everything that Instant Pot does.
This question threw me, too, before I bought it. I didn’t have one in the US, so I could only go online to compare. Took some convincing before I was ready to buy.
Comes with a 5L bowl that has a modern, non-stick surface. The only thing I don’t like about it is that I can’t find an owner’s manual online in English. I had to suss out what each button does on my own. Still works great, of course.
Cool, thanks for the explanation. Since I’ll be going to Canada anyway I’ll probably buy one of the more commonly reviewed models, but I didn’t realize there were options here.
Damn “region blocking” for appliances. We’ve got a convection oven / microwave that I’ve never used to its full potential because I can’t figure out the Chinese instructions, and there aren’t any equivalent products in English language markets. It looks similar for this Philips model at Costco.
Having a slow cooker or pressure cooker (instant pot) is a life saver and time saver. There are unlimited recipes online for just about anything you can imagine and super easy too. Pretty much throw your stuff in the pot, set the time and there you go. Definitely worth buying.
In reply to an earlier post, I could cook at home, but I’m just not a fan of the gas cooker in my apartment, which is some huge roaring thing that looks like it wants to reach out and burn me alive. Then there’s the smell, and having to keep an eye on it, plus doing all that once summer comes and the kitchen feels like an actual oven itself.
The idea of using an everything in one device, at least a couple of times a week, if it’s really as easy as people say it is to use, is very appealing. I do suspect the one I’m thinking about is quite a bit more than just a rice cooker, as my wife seems to believe. Or maybe I’ve just been taken in by the hype. But there are an extraordinary number of recipes floating about online, and throwing stuff in a pot for half an hour and then having dinner ready without literally sweating over a gas hob is…well.
You’re right, the Instant Pot is much more than a rice cooker and it is very convenient. Like SuiGeneris pointed out, there are lots of recipes online.
I have the Philips, which isn’t exactly like the Instant Pot but does all the same things. I picked up some beef heel muscle not long ago. It’s a very tough cut and so fairly inexpensive. I cut up 0.5kg of raw meat into 1cm cubes and placed it in my Philips.
I added a couple handfuls of red beans (like are used in red bean soup here) that I had cleaned and soaked for like 30 minutes (at most). I added a small container of chili powder from PX Mart, some roasted and crushed cumin seed, a can of diced tomato and a tablespoon of tomato paste, a shallow palmful of salt, a whole bulb of crushed garlic, two diced, fresh celery ribs, a tiny pinch of cinnamon, about 10 grams of 82% cacao chocolate, and a large bottle of 18 Day beer. I used water to fill the pot up to the maximum amount line, and put the pot in the machine.
Then I turned it to maximum pressure, selected the 50-minute option for beef, and pressed start.
What’s weird is the machine makes a noise like a cell phone ring, then nothing happens. When I first starting using this thing that really freaked me out. No feedback at all, for about 15 minutes. Then the machine began to groan very softly. After 25 minutes it was slightly more noisy but still very quiet. At 50 minutes the cell tone repeated and it automatically turned itself to its Warming mode. Popped the lid open (you can do that safely with the Philips machine; make sure you check if that’s safe) and the chili was perfect. Beef was pull-apart tender and the beans were cooked as if they came from a can. Super convenient, and a big time saver. This is the same recipe I used in a slow cooker in the US. Took 8 hours on Low.
No mere rice cooker will do this in 50 minutes. The lack of feedback takes some getting used to, but now it’s a feature, not a bug.
Just to add for the sake of anyone remotely curious that I’ve now had an Instant Pot for a few months and for me it’s been a revelation. If you have any skill at cooking, take that comment with a pinch of salt, because I spent a significant proportion of my adult life back West eating microwave food due to my distinct lack of culinary skill.
I’ve been mostly making near-vegan dishes using broccoli, onions, tomatoes, mushrooms, carrots, garlic and these things which look like pumpkins with an orangy flesh on the inside and a hard green skin on the outside from local markets. Maybe they are pumpkins. Either way, I’ve been making myself pastas, risottos and simple curries for a while now and my only regret is that I didn’t buy a bigger Instant Pot. The best thing is being able to store enough leftovers for a couple extra meals.
More appropriately to this thread, I heard the flooding down south means prices for fruit and vegetables are going up. Wondering if it would be worth my while to buy some of those bags of mixed frozen vegetables Costco sell.
Also, browsing instant pot recipes online, of which there appear to be an infinite variety, I stumbled across many recipes for pesto risotto which all recommended Costco’s own brand pesto sauce. Just saying.
I agree that an instant pot makes cooking stupid simple. The first time I used mine I it was so quiet that I couldn’t figure out if it was cooking or hadn’t turned on. Finally about 20-25 minutes the pot began to groan ever so slightly and I knew it was cooking.
Once you get the ingredients right it really makes cooking easy. A dish that I’d start on the stovetop by 3pm to have it ready by 5:30pm I was able to start at 4:45pm, and the flavor was still great. Pretty handy kitchen gadget.
Tastes even better, I find, if you make food in the Instant Pot earlier in the day. A couple of hours left sitting out really enhances the flavours. I wondered why and did some research and learned a lot of good restaurants make stuff early in the day and reheat it for customers in the evening for precisely this reason.
