Instant Pot has become a sensation in many households and is pretty quickly replacing the slow cooker.
The first time I heard of this smart pressure cooker was from my Toastmaster friend Jim Bowen who gave a speech praising the miraculous functions of this kitchen appliance. He said, “Fear not! This is not your grandmother’s deadly pot.”
His words instantly took me back to my home in Taiwan where as a child, I was sent immediately out of the kitchen as the pressure cooker rumbled and sharply whistled. The urgency in my mother’s voice was something equivalent to a call to hide from an air raid.
As I looked into the story of this invention, “in 2009, Robert Wang, Yi Qin, Dongjun Wang, and one other friend, all former employees of Nortel in Ottawa, Canada, started working on designs for the Instant Pot.[2] Robert Wang is credited as the inventor of the Instant Pot.” According to How a laid-off dad built the ‘Instant Pot,’ one of the internet’s favorite cooking tools Robert Wang explained how Instant Pot gave a healthier alternative to the fast food habit. To me, this was far more than a safer cooking device.
Wang had overcome not only a safety barrier but also an ocean-crossing distance.
What the article didn’t know how to address was the homesickness for traditional cooking, such as simmering stews, thick multi-grain and bean porridges, and steamed buns that slow cookers couldn’t do and no Asian American family could get without a live in granny. Also, the enticing mini-cook book that came with the pot promised far more than the typical chilli. It had pictures of authentic, hometown Indian and Chinese dishes, that many East Asian and South Asian families crave.
During this holiday season, many traditional feast foods are tooting out of the Instant Pot announced by its cheerful tone, which even has developed a Pavlovian effect in some households. For busy families, this smart pressure cooker makes ox tail stew, chicken biryani, fasolakia, tamales and many otherwise time consuming dishes simple and safe to program.
Although it may seem just a matter of a home cooked meal vs. eating out, I predict that the Instant Pot has potentially brought people closer to their traditional cultural dishes than the slow cooker or the microwave oven. As we know food connections create fond childhood memories, the Instant Pot may have just brought the world closer together by using the same pot.
Happy feasting this holiday season!
