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?
Well…it comes in two “vintage” floral designs, so that’s something, right? Featuring the same push-button convenience as just about every other Instant Pot on the market, Drummond said that the main reason to get this cooker is to help you cook and peel hard-boiled eggs.
Yep, hard-boiled eggs. From delish.com:
“It's impossible to hard-boil eggs in an Instant Pot and not have them peel perfectly,” she says. “Twenty-plus years after I started cooking professionally, I still struggle with hard-boiled eggs. I get road rage trying to peel them sometimes…I have yet to make a batch with the Instant Pot and not be super excited.”
Super excited, guys. And as for that “affordable” price-point, get ready to shell out a cool $100 on WalMart.com, as of this writing. Of course, you can get basically the same thing—in gunmetal grey, sadly—for about $60.00 on the same site. But if you think your hard-boiled eggs will taste so much better with the Pioneer Woman’s name all over them, then by all means. It’s your money Ree’s money.
Meanwhile, I got a few more years on my dirty ol’ Crock-Pot. Who wants some charro beans and cornbread?
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Follow Louis on Twitter at @LouisFowler and Instagram at @louisfowler78.
