In-depth with the Instant Pot

Few appliances have taken the world by storm as much as the Instant Pot, which has rocketed to kitchen superstardom. It’s hard to believe the appliance is less than a decade old. If you’re curious about the history (short as it is) of the IP, as fans often call it, head over to the New York Times, which takes you to the Canadian home of the miracle appliance. 

The Instant Pot is the brainchild of Robert Wang, a former computer engineer. After Wang was laid off from his dotcom job in 2008, Wang tried to form his own tech company. When those plans fizzled, he turned to an area that was ripe for an infusion of technology: home appliances. 

Wang enlisted the help of a few former colleagues and invested a substantial amount of his own money into product development. Once the product went to market, Wang realized the potential of social media to market the Instant Pot without the need for a huge outlay of cash. He shipped about 200 machines to influential chefs, cooking instructors, and bloggers. After bloggers like Nom Nom Paleo sang the IP’s praises, its popularity snowballed.

Amazon also helped fuel the rise of the Instant Pot, which has millions of fans worldwide. The IP Facebook group has over 850,000 members, and Wang says that over 1,500 Instant Pot cookbooks have been released. We can’t verify that number, but there are 37 cookbooks with “Instant Pot” in the title in the EYB Library, and several of them are indexed or will be soon. Don’t forget about our giveaway (US & Canada) for your chance to win a copy Instant Pot Miracle (three copies of the book plus a grand prize of an  Instant Pot IP-DUO Plus60. 

Fans will be happy to know that Wang intends to modernize other “legacy appliances” as well. He also shared a secret: in every official photograph of the Instant Pot, the time is set to 5:20. When that sequence of numbers is read out loud, it sounds like “I love you” in his native Mandarin. “It’s a subliminal message,” he said. “It shows how much we care about our customers.”