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.