Dinner Theatre Problem or a Sword-Cane Solution?
How to buy an Instant Pot in six months or longer.
A large percentage of last week’s post was about the movie Swingers. Sorry. What can I say? I was/am a man of my times. After all, in the early nineties, my favorite pair of pants were extra-baggy Marithé + François Girbaud khakis that had the clothing brand label sewn across the fly.
I’m just a middle-aged man who was shaped by the pop culture and fashion of his day. I am under no illusions that future Jeremy won’t be embarrassed by what I consume in 2021. I’m embarrassed by everything I consume in 2021.
As a middle-aged man in the waning days 2021, I find myself caring about three kitchen appliances that I had not heard of when Swingers came out in 1996. They are the sous vide circulator, the Instant Pot, and the air fryer. The Jeremy D. Nichols of 1996 would not give two shits about electrical appliances for cooking. I owned a wok and a soup pot as my only cooking vessels for years. I was a hardcore minimalist in my youth, unlike the begrudging maximalist I have become.
For those of you that don’t know, sous vide is a type of cooking where vacuum sealed food is submerged in a water bath and cooked at low, very precise temperatures by a special heated water circulator. In French sous vide means under vacuum. Until very recently it was a type of cooking rarely done at home. The first sous vide circulators or water ovens as they are also called were huge, expensive, and made for commercial kitchens. There were adventurous types that DIY’d sous vide rigs before affordable home models came about. My friend Craig made one several years ago that was disturbingly sparky. He has a very nice (and safe) home model now. His is manufactured by Anova Culinary, the company that really made home sous vide possible for the masses. They have Bluetooth and shit now. Very fancy.
Unlike the other appliances, I am not in the market for a new sous vide circulator. I already own a really good Anova knock-off that my brother-in-law bought me for Christmas a few years ago.
I use it for steak and, um. . .steak. I’m sure it’s good for other things, but it really makes steak sing.
One killer application is worth having an appliance. No matter what that p.o.s. Alton Brown says. “Don’t have unitaskers in your kitchen.” F-you, Alton! What about the guns that you love so much? Those are definitely unitaskers. What the fuck kind of word is “unitasker” anyway? A latinate prefix sloppily attached to an Old English root? Garbage. A pox on that Trump-loving creep.
One appliance that is definitely not a unitasker is the Instant Pot. From the flavor text on Amazon, Instant Pot will “Pressure Cook, Slow Cook, Air Fry, Roast, Steam, Sauté, Bake, Broil and Keep Warm” all in one stainless steel and plastic contraption. Nine different devices in one!
The origins of the Instant Pot are shrouded in mystery and I refuse to investigate its origin story further. I could not pin down a date when I first knew about the Instant Pot, but I think it was late 2016. One thing I do remember is that Instant Pot users had a kind of an internet fringe vibe about them. Beloved by keto enthusiasts and tradwife-types (and the Venn diagram that overlaps those two groups).
The early adopters in my friend set are not hardcore dieters and definitely not alt-right scum. They are also people I trust when it comes to food. Home cooks that enjoy cooking and have some skill with all manners of food prep. Their ardor for this product was very strong. So strong that if I had heard of the Instant Pot before October 8, 2016, I might have suggested to Jennifer that we put one on our wedding registry. Alas, by the time I had heard of the Instant Pot, and saw one for sale on Amazon on Black Friday 2016, Hillary had lost the election and we already owned a conventional pressure cooker. A really nice one. A wedding present even.
I use our pressure cooker rarely, and when I do, it is to make chicken stock quickly. I also cook the very occasional stew in the pressure cooker. So occasional that I forget when I last used it for that. But it makes really lovely chicken stock—so it is worth having. Again, one killer application makes the tool worth having.
So, why even get an Instant Pot? I realize that even with its many other cooking operations it is at root a fancified electric pressure cooker. How often am I going to make homemade yogurt after all?
Never. That’s how often.
Even if I only use the pressure cooking function, Instant Pots have one big advantage over a traditional pressure cookers.
I ain’t afraid of no Instant Pot.
They turn themselves off automatically and have a variety of other electronic and mechanical safety mechanisms. Whereas every time I use my pressure cooker I am certain that I will forget that it is cooking on the stove and cause an explosion. A steamy explosion that somehow renders me eyeless.
Modern pressure cookers are much safer than the ones our mothers and grandmothers used, but I’m still afraid every time I use it. Which is a damned shame. Because pressure cookers are very useful. For making chicken stock quickly. So, I guess I need an Instant Pot.
I’m from Texas and I love fried foods. I repeat myself. I love fried foods so much that I have owned not one, but two deep fryers. I still own one, but it has not left its box since Obama was still president.
The first deep fryer was an impulse purchase several years ago at Aldi. Only Aldi has appliances for so cheap that they can be considered an impulse buy. It was about $25-30. I bought it right before Christmas that year. I worked retail then and was unable to go back to Texas with my sister. I did not want to impose on anyone else’s Christmas dinner. So, to celebrate Christmas that year, I bought tons of snacks meant for deep frying (and a few that weren’t) and watched A Christmas Story around the clock. I would take naps, go out on the porch to smoke, and make little deep fried meals as the day and night went on. Honestly, it was one of the best Christmases ever.
I loved that deep fryer. I loved everything except for having to clean it and take care of the oil. Man, are they a pain in the ass to clean!
Nasty.
And getting rid of the degraded oil is a pain as well. Replacing the oil can be pretty expensive. And boy howdy are those things dangerous. Can anyone save us from the greasiness, danger and expense of the deep fryer?
Enter the air fryer. The air fryer is another appliance whose origins are a mystery, but that I also refuse to investigate further. Though in my shopping for one I have learned that they are basically very small convection ovens. Some people think that they make “healthier” food than frying does. Some people think that low-fat mayonnaise is “healthier”. Some people are “idiots”.
Until I was in Texas earlier in the year, where I regularly used my sister’s air fryer, I had been dubious of them. They seemed like a gimmick or a fad. Air fryers may very well be both of those things. But they are excellent for reheating breaded or fried foods (especially take-out French fries), they make outstanding Brussels Sprouts, and and air fryer is the only way to make a Pop-Tart, according to Mom and my sister Jessica.
When I came back to Chicago in June, I began looking for an air fryer and an Instant Pot, having also used Jessica’s a couple of times. I only know two ways to purchase things—on impulse, or after an exhaustive, tedious search. This was no different. Frustrated with trying to figure out what constitutes a good air fryer without spending a ton of money, I kind of put my search into low gear. Looking from time to time, but not in earnest. After a few months of looking around, I thought that I would wait for the Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals. That is when I learned of the combination Instant Pot w/Air Fryer lid.
I am always dubious of things that inexplicably combine two perfectly good things on their own and make them into something worse. The sushi burrito, for instance. Or the vehicular monstrosity the van truck.
I married someone that is funnier than me. Half of you should do the same. Jennifer has a perfect phrase for things that are less than the sum of their original good parts—a real dinner theatre of a <muddled concept or thing>.
How to use in a sentence:
“Cop Rock was a real dinner theatre of a t.v. show.”
“The Twix Peanut Butter is a real dinner theatre of a candy bar.”
“Jorts are a real dinner theatre of pants.”
By the way, Jennifer told me to hush my mouth about maligning Twix Peanut Butter. “I really love those things.”
Noted.
So, the other day when I was shopping at breakfast, I asked Jennifer what she thought about getting one of the combo Instant Pot/air fryers. I asked, “If we got the combination Instant Pot-Air Fryer is it gonna become a dinner theatre problem, or is it more of a sword-cane situation?”
I have a tweet handy to show the exchange.
Dinner theatre problem is Jennifer’s IP, but sword-cane solution is all mine. A sword-cane solution is where you take two good things and make something awesome—a goddamned sword-cane!
How to use in a sentence:
“Freddie Mercury and David Bowie combined to make Under Pressure, a total sword-cane of a song!”
I hemmed and hawed for a few more days, but then I bit. The Instant Pot/air fryer combo was only ten dollar more than a regular Instant Pot, so I said “Fuck it, dinner theatre problem or sword-cane situation be damned, for ten bucks difference, I’ll buy the combo.” In the few days since we got it, I have used the air fryer lid twice to middling results—I blame that on operator error and untrustworthy internet cooking advice. I have used the Instant Pot to make turkey stock—great turkey stock, really good mac and cheese, and good medium grain rice. So far, sword-cane is in the lead. I will let y’all know.
Thank you, as always, for reading.
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If you are a hard boiled egg eater, making eggs in the Instant Pot is the way to go. I own four Instant Pot cookbooks and the best one, by far, is "Dinner in an Instant" by Melissa Clark. The garlicky cuban pork and black beans with green chiles + cumin are the recipes I've made the most but everything in the book is great.
In 2016, after the election, I did some retail therapy and bought myself a sous vide and Instant Pot. I love both, and agree that the sous vide makes and AMAZING steak. It also makes fantastic prime rib, which my extended family is still talking about. I'm on the fence about the air fryer. As I understand it, it is like a small convection oven (I love convection ovens), and so I could just use my convection oven.