An electric pressure cooker brand (I've never heard of, but I don't like in Canada/US which seems to be the prime market) took over the electric pressure cooker market by adding buttons instead of a twist-dial timer where you manually set the desired time (my electric pressure cooker, which came free with by fridge years ago, and may be part of the reference to scaring people about exploding... they don't... they have cut-off devices if the wrong time is dialed) and a bunch of links and given some Googling what appears to be discount codes to incentivise bloggers.
Quite an amazing success. Smart targeting of an old-tech.
The Instant Pot does not run for a fixed time. It has a pressure sensor and only starts the timer when it has reached sufficient pressure. This means you can do things like cook frozen vegetables perfectly without weighing them, because they will condense the steam and keep the pressure below the starting threshold until they are defrosted.
I'm not aware of any previous pressure cooker that had Instant Pot level automation.
> The Instant Pot does not run for a fixed time. It has a pressure sensor and only starts the timer when it has reached sufficient pressure.
Yes, this is exactly what my pressure cooker does. There's a dial, which has indicative minutes, and a picture of what's cooked under certain minutes around the dial, for example a small icon of a bunch of beans appears under the 40 minute dial, similar for other items. But total cooking time rarely ends up at 40 minutes (for beans, indicated at 40 minutes for example when starting from cold water and unsoaked beans) because it pre-heats to starting temperature and then kicks-off. The heating plate heats pretty quickly, which also makes sense when seeing recipe examples for browning meat before starting the pressure cooking.
Seems identical, just analogue control. Just a standard modern pressure cooker without a bit of marketing a dial in-place of buttons.
I also have a pressure cooker for the gas stove, significantly larger, and while that takes manual timing it has a release valve if steam pressure gets too high.
I don't even know if they've done that much; I've got an old "Wolfgang Puck" branded electric pressure cooker with digital controls that I got for free, and it appears to be pretty much the same thing, as far as I can tell.
Seems like their real achievement here is successfully marketing a good version of an already-existing product with the "I made this" angle to a market that wasn't aware of it. And more power to them - pressure cooking is a great technique to have in your culinary arsenal. Still, it just seems odd to me when someone "invents" a thing that already exists and manages to generate tons of press for doing so. Reminds me of the Soylent guy.
An electric pressure cooker brand (I've never heard of, but I don't like in Canada/US which seems to be the prime market) took over the electric pressure cooker market by adding buttons instead of a twist-dial timer where you manually set the desired time (my electric pressure cooker, which came free with by fridge years ago, and may be part of the reference to scaring people about exploding... they don't... they have cut-off devices if the wrong time is dialed) and a bunch of links and given some Googling what appears to be discount codes to incentivise bloggers.
Quite an amazing success. Smart targeting of an old-tech.