I do cure meat, but I didn’t know I needed a pressure cooker or instant pot for meat to cure ?
And yes, you’re right I’m not a big fan of steamed food/vegetables.
Also if I owned a pressure cooker/instant pot, I would never let it cook unattended for a whole day - well I’m just not a fan of these short-way cookers.
I also go to work - so I often cook in large batches and leave it in the fridge for up to 3 days for easy fast reheating.
But I’m lucky since I can buy restaurant made hot dishes at my work and bring them with me home after work.
S & H Green Stamps brought back memories. I pored over the catalog and visited the store. That was a loong time ago. For those of you aren’t familiar with GS’s here is a little history. And surprisingly they started in 1896. I remember they were handed out at different businesses and you had to paste (or lick?) the stamps to fill up a book. Then you traded them in for over valued items. Seemed like a good idea at the time.
It’s a strange combo of functionality for me too, but I suppose this and the Instant Pot are great if you are in a tight space with limited storage for cookware. In my area, rents and home prices are still outrageous, so tight kitchen and storage nightmares are real. The founder is Chinese, and if he’s spent any time living and cooking in East Asia, there are ridiculously tight kitchen/cooking areas in many homes in that region. My sister lived in Hong Kong and had 2 burners and no oven. In the apt growing up in the US, my mom’s wok actually make made using an adjacent burner impossible. You could only use the burner that was diagonal from the wok. Getting all-in-ones would be ideal for these circumstances.
I have an Instant Pot that I use primarily for its pressure cooking function and it does tht nicely. I already had a slow cooker, rice cooker, etc. and I have no intention of getting rid of those. When cooking a lot of food at once, having this type of pot is like having an extra burner. I see nothing wrong with that!
I just don’t personally see the benefits of owning these cooking machines in my kitchen.
I had the Zojirushi rice cooker, and it produced excellent cooked rice.
Just so be it that I prefer a rice where I sauter the rice in butter, onions and spices first, then cook the rice.
So a rice cooker was redundant in my case.
I find regular rice, whether it’s basmati, Yasmine or brown rice, rather bland and boring even with the sauce mixed in.
It’s my preference. Millions have other preferences.
I don’t judge them at all.
I’d rather make a stew in my copper pots or Dutch ovens and refrigerate them for 2-3 days than making the stew in a closed sealed instant pot. It’s sole less to me using such machines. Home made food to me is all about sole and character.
But I don’t judge other people.
I’m eating take away veal shish kebab with salad, tzatziki and bulgur tonight. I’m not a sacred home cooking monster. I do short cuts like many others, but in my home kitchen I try to cut down on unnecessary redundant extra short cut cooking machines like air fryers (my oven has convection), rice cookers, instant pots and what not.
I would rather buy a new copper pan to add to my 50+ pan collection than buying yet another short cut do it yourself cooking machine. BUT I do not judge others.
If this helps, my response wasn’t directed at you or anyone else in particular, although some of the posts in this thread may have shifted to other tangential areas.
I will chime in to say that I sometimes think there is an automatic and too quick assumption that someone who uses these type of gadgets either cannot cook well or is unwilling to use regular equipment. There may be some where this is the “dummy-proof” option, but I love short cuts just as much as any one else. Multi-tasking and budgeting time in our lives is a reality. There are tasks we love to painstakingly do the old fashioned way and some we prefer to go faster with reasonable results. Whatever floats your boats, I say.
Maybe that. When I make a specific rice dish which takes center stage and I care a lot like Matsutake gohan, then I make it in old fashion clay pot.
However, when rice plays more of a normal and lesser role, then I just make the rice in a electric rice cooker, so that I can focus my attention and energy on other dishes.
Sometime I make Okiwana soba from scratch, but many times, I don’t have time and just cook a prepackage noodle.
By the way, I do recommend Myojo brand over the Sun Noodle brand for Okianwan soba.
I don’t think I’ve seen the soba. Will have to look for that. Besides from being a salt bomb, those Myojo ones are pretty tasty.
I have my clay pot that I use for rice on rare occasions too. Not so much for matsutake gohan, but when I try to replicate HK style clay pot rice, it’s the only vessel that gives it that specific taste (and crunchy bottom). 99% of the time, it’s the rice cooker. Everyone keeps telling me about cheats on how to make congee with the Instant Pot, the rice cooker, or using a mixer/beater, and that is one thing I like doing the old fashioned way. I simmer the rice in the water/soup/stock for a good 2-2.5 hours in my pot until you get the perfect soft, almost dissolved rice texture, and the liquid becoming thicker and not like soup.
Yeah. I have two shoyu ramen places I like. One of the two is very salty, so what I learn is that… for some ramen, the idea is not to drink the soup/broth.
Yeah, I have two of those too.
For the occasions which I make those Chinese sausage rice or Lap duck rice dishes.
For congee, same as you, I do it the tradition way where I cooked the rice for probably closer to 3+ hours until the rice barely dissolved (I think it is called “opening flower” in Chinese. Yes, the liquid start to thicken, the rice grains start to crack open up.
Think it’s overpriced. You already own a slow cooker if you ever wanted one. Buy a reasonably priced pressure cooker. I have electric and stovetop and prefer the stovetop. I use the electric when I’m not going to be close to the kitchen to monitor.
A regular pressure cooker isn’t a short cut cooking machine but similar to other cooking methods, e.g. regular pots, sous vide etc., just another way of cooking things in a certain way which can’t be accomplished by other methods. Similar to for example sous vide you can’t do certain things with regular cooking pots/pans what you can do with sous vide (or pressure cooker). Non of these methods is better or worse (or has less soul or character) but they just deliver different results and all require understanding of each technique.
I have a stove top pressure cooker, which I use to make chicken stock from all the bones saved. Takes about an hour at pressure to get as much as those bones will deliver. Vents quickly. The IP will take 4 hours and a crazy amount of time to cool even vented before it will open. Ain’t got time for that!
And it takes up a lot of room in the cabinet. I’m not a big user of a pressure cooker in the first place. Stock is about the only thing I use it for. Dried beans I’ll do in a Dutch oven. Soups and stews, stove top in a regular pot where I can see what’s happening and taste to adjust seasoning
And another pev is the IP takes up a lot of room in the cabinet. I don’t want it as a resident on the counter top
I didn’t know that…
Glad I stayed with my stove-top pressure cooker. I can always run it under cold water and inside of 30 seconds it makes that sound and the pressure is released. I can open it and serve dinner!!
Obviously this is a gross exaggeration, just in case someone actually takes it seriously.
I have multiple stovetop pressure cookers that I use regularly, but the IP still has convenience and features that they do not provide (there are other threads on this, so we don’t need to rehash).
There’s a quick pressure release on the IP that enables the exact same outcome, without hauling a full PC into the sink.
Fwiw, I “quick release” my stovetop pc as well, just jiggle the weight a bit at a time (with a long-handled something) for the pressure to release faster. (Drives my mom nuts, because part of the energy efficiency of the PC is that the cool-down time is cooking time too.)
Getting all-in-ones would be ideal for these circumstances.
