As a lifelong fan of the seminal Crock-Pot, I’ve only became recently aware of the existence of the Instant Pot, a cooking utensil that is, well, practically instantaneous in cooking its meals. With plenty of multiple, mostly useless, functions including a yogurt maker, a rice steamer and the lazy ability to cook a frozen block of freezer-burned meat in minutes, you can say goodbye to thawing hot dogs in the sink all day.
That all sounds fine, mind you, but a few years ago I bought my slow, middling, can’t-cook-from-frozen Crock-Pot from Wal-Mart for $15.00, mostly because it was a display item in an open box, and I still feel like I’ve haven’t squeezed out all my money’s worth yet. I’ve made everything from Choctaw macaroni-stew to tender back-alley pork-ribs, all cooking in a period of 8 or 9 hours, which is so much more my speed; I want to take a nap and wake up to the smell of whatever I’ve got going on in there. It’s heaven.
This week, however, the Instant Pot has been coming up constantly in news and other web-media, with a special emphasis on Ree Drummond, the Pioneer Woman, who is releasing her own “affordable” line of the miracle steamers for the aforementioned Wal-Mart shelves. Drummond must seriously have one killer PR firm, because this press release has made the fluffiest of filler stories from PopSugar and Buzzfeed to Fox News and Yahoo, all acting as if this is the most important kitchen tool EVER. And it might be...
So what makes the Pioneer Woman’s Instant Pot so darn special?