DO YOU REALLY NEED AN INSTANT POT in an Indian Household? Is the Instapot worth it?
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WHAT IS AN INSTANT POT?
Recently, the instant pot, or sometimes also called as the instapot, has been making a lot of waves in the cooking arena, so what is so great about an instant pot? Firstly, an instant pot is only an electric pressure cooker. That's it. There's really no magic to it as manufacturers have been recently advertising about it.
So, now that we know that it's only an electric pressure cooker, let's compare that with a regular pressure cooker to see if it's really worth buying an instant pot in an Indian household. We'll also compare it to the humble rice cooker, which many houses in India also use, so that we have an end-to-end comparison on where each of these stands and whether it is useful for us to buy it or not.
SUPERVISION
So, first, let's talk about how much supervision is required when you're using any of these products. With an instant pot, as well as a rice cooker, actually you can turn it on and forget about it; so, once the cooking is done, it will turn off by itself, and if you have left it to warm, it will keep the food warm. Compared to that, a pressure cooker, you need to be monitoring it, you need to make sure that once the necessary number of whistles are done, you will reduce the heat, and then after a while, you will turn it off, so there is some supervision required when you are using a pressure cooker compared to an instant pot or a rice cooker. It requires extremely minimal supervision.
KEEPING FOOD WARM
The second thing is whether the food is kept warm in these products or not. So, in an instant pot, you can keep the food warm for almost up to 10 hours. It is not recommended to keep it that long for certain food types like rice because it can go bad. Similarly, in a rice cooker you can keep it over two hours, but again, there also it is not recommended to keep it in the cooker for too long because it can go bad. In a regular cooker, it will stay hot as long as the pressure cooker stays hot, but subsequent to that, there is no special mechanism to keep the food warm in a regular pressure cooker as we all know.
YOGURT SETTING
Most instant pots have a yogurt setting; you can actually ferment your milk to create yogurt in an instant pot. You can do the same thing in a rice cooker as well. Traditionally we do not do that in a pressure cooker but, if you actually do warm your pressure cooker for some time and keep the milk over there for fermentation, it actually gives the same effect as a yogurt setting in an instant pot but, yes, it is a lot more manual, and trial and error, than what it is in an instant pot.
SAFETY
One of the biggest reasons the instant pot has become such a big hit is because of the safety features of the instant pot. We have all heard horror stories about pressure cookers bursting when the safety valve is not functional. That has been avoided with an instant pot. It has inbuilt mechanisms to cut off the pressure once it reaches a certain pressure point. And with the rice cooker, there is no really any safety issue because it does not pressure cook your food in a rice cooker.
So, from a safety point of view, an instant pot is a lot more safer than using a traditional pressure cooker.
SPACE
The next thing is about how much space does it occupy. An instant pot, as well as a rice cooker, will need to be kept on your countertop. It occupies about one foot by one foot space, based on the size that you do purchase. Add that with other things you have in your countertop, like the microwave or the mixer; it just adds a lot more clutter, whereas with the pressure cooker, once you're done with the cooking, you can just put it back inside.
SLOW COOKING
Now, let's talk about the cooking itself. Right? So, instant pots are really, really good at slow cooking. Typically, slow cooking is used for cooking non-veg items, also some vegetarian items, but more of non-veg items where you would want to cook the non-veg for a longer time to actually soak in all the spices itself. Instant pots are a speciality for this type of cooking which cannot be done either with a pressure cooker or a rice cooker.
The next thing is about shallow fry or sauteing, which we do for some vegetables like when we're making a biryani or something you would shallow fry your vegetables before you add rice and add water to actually cook it in the pressure cooker. In an instant pot, the shallow frying is not great; that is primarily because the vessel does not get heated as much as it would have done in a pressure cooker.
TYPE OF FOOD
Now let's talk about the type of food that you can cook. In general, almost everything that you can cook in a pressure cooker you can cook in an instant pot as well, whereas in a rice cooker you can predominantly cook rice and steamed vegetables and so on; pulses are not cooked so well in a rice cooker.
Now, coming to an instant pot, the cooking of some beans like rajma are quite inconsistent because the pressure in an instant pot is much lower than the pressure in a pressure cooker. In an instant pot, the pressure is about 12 PSI, and in a pressure cooker is about 15 PSI, which is ideal for cooking things like rajma, and chana, and so on. Yes, it can be done in an instant pot as well, but there is some amount of trial and error that you will need to do for cooking beans specifically in an instant pot.
TIME TAKEN
The next item is how much time does it take. Now, let's assume that you are making chana masala in both an instant pot as well as a pressure cooker. In an instant pot, it will take about 18 min to cook — I'm not talking about all of the pre-cooking that you need to do for the vegetables and the masala but just for cooking the chana itself; once everything else has been prepared, it takes about 18 min, and then there is some amount of time for releasing the pressure from the instant pot. Coming to a pressure cooker, when you're doing the same thing, you need about 10-12 min only — that's about 5-6 whistles for your chana to get completely cooked, and then, of course, the cooling-off or releasing the pressure period is there for the pressure cooker as well.
So, the time is slightly lower in a pressure cooker compared to an instant pot, but for some other dishes like rice dishes and so on, I'm told that the instant pot cooks a lot faster than the pressure cooker. I'm not comparing with a rice cooker primarily because you can mainly cook rice dishes in a rice cooker.
PRICE
And the last thing to compare is the price. I'm using a three-liter capacity as a reference. So, an instant pot at that capacity costs about ₹8,500 on Amazon, a pressure cooker of three-liter capacity costs about ₹2,300 or so, and a rice cooker of three-liter capacity costs about ₹2,100.
WHEN TO BUY AN INSTANT POT?
So, is it really useful to buy an instant pot? Let's talk about that right now.
From my point of view, it is useful only in three instances.
One, wen you want to cook your food with minimal supervision, or you want to set a timer so that the food is hot when you actually are eating it; that is when you would need an instant pot. For example, if you want your food to be hot when you are coming back home from the office, you may want to set the timer to, let's say, 6 PM, and by the time you are back from the office at around 7 PM the food would have been cooked, and it would be hot. If you were using a pressure cooker, you would have to come back home and then turn it on and then wait for another one-hour period for your food to be cooked, so that is one big benefit.
The second big reason for using an instant pot is if you are concerned about the safety of a pressure cooker. In general, in most Indian households, we are fairly comfortable using a pressure cooker, so I believe that this is more of a concern typically in western countries where they are not so comfortable using a pressure cooker. But if you have that concern, then an instant pot might be useful for you.
The third reason to buy an instant pot is if you want to slow cook your food, especially non-veg food. I'm told that it does the job really, really well. If your other alternative is to use a dutch oven for your cooking, then you might want to continue using that instead of using an instant pot.
The other time an instant pot is extremely useful is when you're traveling and you want to actually cook your own meals while traveling. It's extremely handy, and you can cook a variety of dishes using that.
Based on all of these considerations, I would not purchase an instant pot, mainly because I do not fit any of these three criteria that I mentioned; I don't really have a consideration for having my food hot as soon as I come back from the office because I primarily work at of home; secondly, I don't cook non-veg food in my house; and thirdly, I am fairly comfortable using a pressure cooker, so I will not purchase an instant pot, but will you? Drop me a comment and let me know your thoughts.
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