I also like using the old style “jiggler weight” pressure cookers. Other than the gasket, I throw the whole thing in the dishwasher. I will clean & check that small orifice in the top for debris with a thin wire, and let the dishwasher do the rest.
I don’t think I’ll ever purchase and instant pot. I made the mistake of purchasing an air fryer that I hardly ever use. Way too much to clean up by hand, I feel like an instant pot would also be too much set up and too much clean up.
Just buy a pressure cooker which can be quite helpful and covers many of the workflows of an IP
Ha. Too pessimistic, if anything. Maybe you’re late to the party, but Google “food printer” to see what’s already available.
And my understanding of lab-grown meat is that it’s viable in all but the economic sense. Note that growing (or printing) your own porterhouse might also get you more in touch with your food. Likewise reverse sear/SV. It’s not the method that’s problematic. It’s the automation, the convenience-uber-alles. IMO these take us further from, not nearer to, our food and food enjoyment. To an underappreciated degree, the easier/faster something is, the more likely it’ll be taken for granted. When that happens, something’s lost.
Finally, FWIW, I actually do think that the steaks you yourself break down from the subprimal and cook yourself are more satisfying and rewarding than the identical result from the meat counter and/or restaurant. It’s a means-ends thing.
A real hot button word for me, cheating, popped up. I do not think using a new method or machine is cheating. I do not think cooking like you are in the Ratatouilleemphasized text** kitchen holds some special status (unless you are actually a rodent that can also cook well!). Each end of the spectrum and all points in between has its unique benefits and limitations. Take chopping onions. Doing it by FP, I still need to use the knife and chopping board to get the onions peeled and chunked to accommodate the processor blades and bowl. If I dropped my salsa making onions into the FP I saved a ton of time (+), if I am really good at stopping the FP before they go to mush, I got a fine outcome (+), if I let it go too long, I got great tasting mush and chalk it up to user error, not the FP. When I am done, clean a FP bowl, top, tube, and blade is kind of an obnoxious chore (-) and may take awhile or, worse still, take up too much space in my top rack of the DW to do a single load with all the other dishes
(-). On the other hand, if I have a sensitivity to onions and used the FP and spared myself a good cry. If I need a good cry, I can think of other ways to induce it than making a pile of hand chopped onions. If I chop the onions by hand, it goes pretty fast with a big, sharp knife and a large cutting board, but it still takes longer (-). I can do a perfect brunoise or dice, but not everyone can, but for me it falls in the (+) category. Onion and board cleanup is quick and easy, but it it is a big pile, I will probably need to wipe some counter, too. What went on in my sensory world and my mind with each process will have been different. So I call that one a draw unless I am into either thinking about avoiding a longer, slightly harder task or dreaming of being a cooking rodent or having a flashback rewatching of Streep and her pile of onions in Julie and Julia. I have experienced all of this. I have the luxury of time to knead bread, but it was nice to visit my brother and wake up to a fresh loaf. I like to make mayonnaise with a bowl and a fork, but I am pretty picky about my mayonnaise. IB mayonnaise takes seconds but yields a product like Duke’s. I love Duke’s, too, and buying a jar isn’t cheating in my book!
For some reason, my screen kept truncating my reverie. So here is my parting gem. One of my favorite taco places makes the best tortillas imaginable. From the register I can see cooks patting them out by hand and tossing them on the comal. They are very fast, way faster than I am using a tortilla press but surely slower than the conveyor belt tortilla maker used in a lot of other restaurants. I find it extremely valuable to keep skills like patting tortillas alive and well!
Yes, I have a small one for quick small meals for Sunshine and I.
I have a rather large one when I want to make meals for freezing.
For some reason, I like the sound of the jiggler weight doing its thing. I guess that means dinner is cooking and will be served soon!
I love labour saving devices. That may have to do with the fact that 90% of our food is cooked at home. I used to do everything by hand, not out of choice, but necessity because we couldn’t afford the tools to make life easier. I have a decent foundation of cooking skills, so you could say I’ve earned my gadgets and toys. As long as you get your basics down first, good tools that make life easier are a good thing, not something that means you’ve lost touch with your food.
I agree.
However, coming from a culture where flatbreads are made twice a day, fresh for the two main meals, plus a few more times through the week for snacks and breakfasts, there is a difference between learning a skill and whether the time spent on a task that is just repetitive manual labor is better applied to something else.
I use a tortilla press occasionally, for big batch stuff, and it saves at least 75% of my rolling out time (if I was less picky about thickness, it would save 100%).
I’ve eaten chapatis and other flatbreads from an Indian supermarket in NJ that acquired a tortilla machine to make them fresh and on-demand for customers, and there is no deficit vs handmade. Actually they’re a lot better than many handmade ones – not everyone has the skill to make them well.
I agree except for gas grills: we will stick with charcoal.
Actually it’s a lot less.
I have three manual pressure cookers of varying sizes, but I eventually bought an instant pot because of the hands-off benefit. You set the time, and there’s really nothing else to do.
The only cleaning is of the stainless steel insert (pot) and occasionally the gasket / sealing ring.
For how many people?
What % of the world is eating at haute restaurants so they can be closer to their food via the art of plating?
(I have to say, this gave me a good laugh in a discussion of how we doing things manually makes us more in touch with our food.)
I hear ya. My tortillas are not as good as the ones I get at HEB. The value I was extolling is preserving a piece of culture. Machines can make superb tortillas (like the ones they use at HEB!). I also know what you mean about repetitive manual work. Imagine making tamales by yourself!
You couldn’t be more wrong
Agreed.
But I’ll repeat what I said before about whose labor it is the world over that we are talking about preserving as “culture”.
If you free up women from making tortillas and chapatis, what else could they be doing?
I enjoy cooking, so it is fun for me, but that is from a position of privilege.
My enjoyment is vastly enhanced by removing the mundane and using tools that provide a better, faster, or more energy-efficient outcome for the same quality of dish.
I don’t need to chop onions or garlic – my mini FP does a great chop down to a fine mince. My mandoline is better / faster than me with a knife. I love my immersion blender (and its attachments) and my nutribullet, both low-real estate / high impact helpers.
I use my tiny pressure cooker almost daily, to speed up cooking something or other. My instant pot took years of deliberating over counterspace, but I finally caved because the hands-off / turns itself off value was worth it to me (and it has a sous vide function).
Fun to me is experimenting, learning new dishes and techniques, cooking for those I love.
The process, that’s always open to streamlining.
Your comment about tortillas reminded me about how ridiculous I thought the gushing over “fancy” tortillas was when Corima opened in nyc. (Replace tortilla with flatbread from any other culture, btw,)
Yeah, this really is a first world perspective. I remember my grandmother once telling me that she never wanted to have daughters because being a woman is too hard and too much work. It took me years just to start appreciating the feelings behind that one simple statement.
Frequently wrong, never unsure.
Sometimes, no!, maybe, it depends! 
What is an IB!
Not much different in the “first” world, though.
I read IB as an “Immersion Blender” – maybe??
