(no subject)

[cblj_backup]

For Christmas this year, my parents wanted to buy me a slow-cooker, because mine is dreadful and also terrifyingly cheap. So we went shopping around for some slow-cookers on Black Friday, which was fascinating, and we found a slow-cooker. But not just a slow-cooker.

A seven in one slow cooker.

It has specific buttons for rice and porridge and yogurt. It can sautee! It possibly provides a gateway to a dimension of enlightenment. I don't even know what all it does. Why does it have a meat button AND a poultry button?

But the most interesting thing is that it is a pressure cooker, and it uses the pressure cooker to cook many other things. Like rice.

I am pressure-cooking rice.

This will definitely go well.

Comments

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I'd be cautious about pressure cooking - it destroys a lot of the nutritional value. For rice steaming is probably better.

[heather mccrillis (from livejournal.com)]

But what of fish and seafood?

[copperbadge.livejournal.com]

I'll have to check, but I THINK it has a fish button...

[sadbhyl.livejournal.com]

Sounds like you got a one-pot. They're all the rage in foodie circles. Can't wait to hear how you make out with it! I've been tempted by tales of it replacing multiple gadgets for people, but I'm not sure I buy the hype.

[copperbadge.livejournal.com]

Yep -- well, Instant Pot, but I think they're the same brand. No lie, when I got it and after I made sure it worked I was able to get rid of three separate appliances (rice cooker, slow cooker, yogurt machine). SO EXCITED TO MAKE YOGURT.

[yudinsoha.livejournal.com]

Imaginary Chicago tabloid:

BLOCK FLATTENED. FOODIE AT FAULT.

On Thursday, an entire block was demolished due in an astonishing chain of events that started with a simple early Christmas present. Sam Starbuck, who caused--and survived--the epicentre of the disaster struggled to explain the unlikely scenario.

"It was just a crockpot with some rice! Except the slow cooker was also a pressure cooker. So I pushed that button. Just to see what would happen, you know? It all seemed to be going so well. The rice smelled amazing. Then there was an enormous sound. I felt like the whole universe might have cracked open, and anything could be coming through. I don't remember much after that. When I woke up, there was rice everywhere. I have this strange sense that there was someone else there with me, and when I turn around, I'll think for an instant that I've remembered, but when I stop looking, I just have that same eerie feeling of forgetting something I should remember.

Mr. Starbuck, who works for a NPO as a professional stalker of the rich and famous, has had a series of inexplicable accidents, although to this point they've never harmed anyone else. Perhaps the wealthy are getting serious in their warnings to Sam to stop prying into their affairs. Perhaps this is a curse brought on by one of the strange masks with which he seems to have a longstanding and unhealthy fixation. Only time, obituaries, and the all-seeing eye in the crack of the universe will tell.

[brightly-woven.livejournal.com]

Oooh, is it a crack in time watching Sam? Was R there and Sam forgot? Is it The Silence?

Find out next time on The Adventures of Sam Starbuck: Foodie, Misfit, Spy

[bicrim.livejournal.com]

yes! This was just what I was thinking!

[copperbadge.livejournal.com]

LOL! I don't think even the powerful INSTANT POT can take out an entire block, but Chicago IS kind of fragile sometimes :D

[tabaqui]

Your enthusiasm in the face of a possible starchy death is delightful. :)

[copperbadge.livejournal.com]

Well, if you're gonna die, die weird, I think :D

[ranuel.livejournal.com]

I had no idea that these existed and now I want one!

Sam, do you have any idea what kind of power load these have? I can use the smaller size Fry Daddy, a regular crock pot, or a toaster oven fine but I have a large electric soup pot I can't use because it trips the breaker every time it heats up beyond a certain point.

[copperbadge.livejournal.com]

Looking at the specs, they have between a 900 and 1000 watt draw -- so about the same amount of power as a decent microwave. (Most newer microwaves are 1100 watts.) I would venture to guess you'd be okay, most toaster ovens are 1200 or 1400 watts. But I'd check your soup pot's wattage and base your load tolerance off that.

[ranuel.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, I'm going to debate this with myself for a bit to see if I can talk myself out of spending that much and if I still want it after Christmas we'll see. I cook in my slow cooker most weekends when it's cool but it is December 16th and it was 80 today. Something that will do the same without heating the house with steam AND does other stuff too would be useful. Thanks for checking! .

[copperbadge.livejournal.com]

If you're gonna buy, I'd wait for a sale -- they usually run in the $130 range, but I got mine for $70 on a Black Friday sale and there will probably be some in January too as they clean out back stock.

The slow-cooker function probably still puts out a good deal of heat, but there are a lot of things you can pressure-cook instead, and that's not only cooler, but also faster.