I bought myself an Instant Pot on Prime Day. Have you been watching people rave about their Instant Pots too? It browns the meat; it cooks the rice; it hard-boils the eggs with mysterious hard-boiling magic that means they never again stick to their shells when you peel them. I added one to my Amazon wish list at some point because it's the kind of thing my mother-in-law might like to give us for our anniversary if she knew we'd been thinking about getting one. (The plural pronouns in that sentence are purely hypothetical. I did not say to Elwood, "Wouldn't you like an Instant Pot for our anniversary?" He would not have confessed to a secret hankering for an Instant Pot of our own.)
And then on Prime Day they were all over my Facebook feed. THE INSTANT POT IS ON SALE, thundered person #1. IT HAS CHANGED MY LIFE, said person #2. OH THE SECRET JOYS OF NIU JIANG, chimed in-- well, nobody said that, actually, but did you know the Instant Pot will ferment your glutinous rice for you if you push the right button? Do you have an adequate quantity of niu jiang in your life, my friend? I am betting that your fermented glutinous rice supply is pretty sparse.
So I was at work today when I got the message that my Instant Pot had been delivered, and I started thinking of all the things I might do with it. Wasn't it a good idea to buy one appliance that could replace two of my more space-hoggy kitchen items (the slow cooker and the pressure cooker)? One of my friends had said that the smaller version of the Instant Pot could only handle two artichokes at once, and I was pleased that I could look forward to the multi-artichoke version.
Then I came home to a box approximately the size of the Chrysler building. You guys, I could fit a field's worth of artichokes in this thing. Those Amazon thumbnails offer no indication of the Brobdingnagian scale of an 8-quart Instant Pot. Do you think I am exaggerating because I am a person occasionally given to exaggeration? Behold:
(Why am I running in that picture, you ask? Because the thing could house a live allosaurus, that's why, and I am uncertain about what might be wrestling the lid off from the inside even as I type these words of warning.)
So yeah, go ahead and buy an Instant Pot, because it will fill your unmet need to make congee with the push of a button like nothing else on the market. (My 17yo: "It makes Japanese characters appear with the push of a button?" I'd never realized that congee and kanji were homophones, but so they are.) Just be aware that you might need to give up one of the spots in your garage if you plan to store it on your property.
My slow cooker and pressure cooker sit cheek by jowl on the bottom shelf of our shallow pantry, tucked in with the waffle irons and the enameled cast-iron pot. But I don't think I will be able to close the door on the hulking girth of the Instant Pot. Right now it is on my music room floor while I contemplate the mysteries of the owner's manual. Between the outer box, the inner box, and the pot itself, there isn't much floor space left in our little music room.
Tonight at dinner we were talking about credit scores. My teen said (oh so sweetly), "You should write a book." "That would be a boring book," I told him, "because it would say 'Pay your bills on time every month, the end.'" He added, "And probably it would say, 'Don't buy stupid things.'"
My husband gave me some serious side-eye at that point. "I...am not feeling qualified to write that chapter of the book today," I said sheepishly.
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