Will the Instant Pot end up in the graveyard of kitchen fads?

July 19, 2023 by
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Air fryers are the kitchen gadget du jour, and the poor Instant Pot, which recently dominated Amazon Prime Day, is now relegated to second class status. Both appliances promise to tremendously streamline your cooking and reduce the amount of time and effort involved in meal prep, plus make it easier to eat a healthy diet. Claims like these are not new, however, and the “graveyard of kitchen fads” is filled with myriad other devices that made similar promises, as Susan Orleans explains in the New Yorker. (Hat tip to sir_ken_g for finding this story.)

Orleans tells us that ‘miracle’ appliances and gadgets had boom-and-bust histories like the Instant Pot, whose parent company recently filed for bankruptcy protection in the US and Canada. In the 1990s almost every household had a bread machine but now they are far less common, and the same holds true for the fondue pot which saw its heyday back in the 1960s and 70s. While these two items can still be purchased and have cornered a niche market, other devices have gone the way of the dodo such as the carrot sharpener and the hotdog slicer.

One appliance that bucks the boom-and-bust trend is the good ol’ microwave (or meek-ro-wah-vay, as Nigella Lawson would say). Despite many people noting that the only things they do with their microwave is reheat coffee or soften ice cream, nearly 90 percent of US households have one in the kitchen. While I no longer have a bread machine (ditched in the early 00s during a move) and have never owned a fondue pot, I do have a microwave and use it for a variety of tasks including melting chocolate, softening butter, reheating leftovers (and the occasional cup of coffee), toasting nuts, and a few other odds and ends. My Instant Pot, on the other hand, now mainly gathers dust. Air fryer aficionados, take note: cookbook author Melissa Clark feels that we may have reached “peak Air Fryer”.

The article provides a couple of predictions for what the next gadget du jour will be, including “mini waffle irons, an A.I. toaster oven, and a smart cutting board with a high-resolution screen (so you don’t have to lift your eyes to look at a recipe while dicing and slicing).” The cutting board idea is intriguing but it does not sound like a robust, long-lasting device.

Category: Antipasto

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23 Comments

  • FuzzyChef  on  July 20, 2023

    We rarely used our bread maker, and then we moved to a neighborhood without a good bakery. We dug it out of storage and use it weekly now.

  • cookbookaddict2020  on  July 20, 2023

    instant pot gets used every week in my house if only for hard boiled eggs that shrug their skins off like satin-lined parkas. in cold weather it’s used regularly for chicken soup and beans at the very least. I like my air fryer but wouldn’t mind living without it. Instant Pot is forever.

  • FJT  on  July 20, 2023

    My instant pot is used regularly – it’s the easiest way to cook rice and porridge, plus it gets used for stews and making stock. I’ve even made yoghurt in it and used it as a sous vide. I also have a stove top pressure cooker, but the instant pot can be left unattended and so gets used more (the pressure cooker is now mostly used as a large pan).

    The bread maker went to a friend – it was too big for my kitchen and you can now buy good gluten free bread, so it wasn’t used often. My tagine was similarly gifted to someone else as it took a lot of space and I have plenty of other things to cook tagines in. I also have several fondue pots … but I’ve lived in Switzerland and winter wasn’t winter without fondue!

    I think those that bought whatever the ‘in’ item was and never got it out of the box will move onto the next thing and say that the instant pot or whatever has had its day … but those of us who actually cook and have found it to be very useful will continue to use it and enthuse about it!

  • Indio32  on  July 20, 2023

    I think in years to come the Instant Pot will be remembered not so much because it was a fad but because it reintroduced many people to pressure cookers and also a new generation who only ever heard horror stories about them.

  • janecooksamiracle  on  July 20, 2023

    My prediction: next must-have.
    Ninja Creami , ice cream maker.

  • averythingcooks  on  July 20, 2023

    Even though I’m a confirmed cast iron pan & Dutch oven user (I have at least of 3 of each of those guys and love using all of them), we use our Instapot and air fryer for lots of different things. We did have a stove top pressure cooker that T used (and which terrified me) and he replaced it with the Instapot and became the house expert. He uses it for so many things including batches of yogurt, beans, hard boiled eggs, steel cut oats and potatoes for mashing when I need them. It’s amusing to me to compare these small appliances to true gadgets like the “carrot sharpener” & a “hot dog slicer”. Also one gadget that so many rave about it ( which I owned once years ago & quickly re-gifted) was a garlic press. Just a hard no….I also love my sharp knives.

  • LeilaD  on  July 20, 2023

    I have two crockpots (and have used both this week), a waffle maker, an ice cream maker, a blender, and a food processor- all neatly lined up on top of the cabinets because I have zero counter space. Rice takes 20 minutes on a back burner and zero effort, so I make it 3-4 nights a week in a standard 2 qt saucepan while I’m working on the entree. Hard boiled eggs are also zero effort back-burner while I’m working on something else. Porridge, especially hasty pudding, is on a front burner while the breakfast-meat-of-choice is in a skillet on the other front burner. I can do everything an instant pot can do with zero attention paid while working on something else. I guess I’m old-fashioned.

  • lean1  on  July 20, 2023

    I have had three different bread machines, and now I don’t use it at all. I still use my Cuisinart all the time and also use a mini chop.

    I have never had a reason to buy an instant pot.
    I love my Dutch oven and wok.

  • ltsuk  on  July 20, 2023

    It may not live on the counter but it sure as heck will stay in the kitchen. I love steel cut oats for breakfast and the IP makes it easy. It has also replaced the crock pot for slow cooking. It’s a worth having just for the multi-tasking of the 2 fad appliances in one place 😉 It will go on the shelf next to the bread machine. Hmmm, that cupboard looks to be the fad appliance retirement home. Appliances I use often enough to keep but not often enough to be on the valuable counter space.

  • Genscooking  on  July 20, 2023

    I’m living a parallel life to FJT apparently. My instant pot is regularly used for stews and stock. I also parted from my bread maker when I no longer needed to regularly make my own gluten-free bread. And I too own multiple fondue pots, because fondue became a treasured part of our winter meal scene after living in Switzerland.

    I think one benefit these appliances and gadgets can sometimes provide is to the home cook who may be getting tired of the routine meals, or feeling uninspired about cooking. A new kitchen toy might spark some enthusiasm for a bit, and maybe put some new dishes into the rotation.

  • Rinshin  on  July 20, 2023

    I hardly use instant pot. Maybe 2-3 times a year. Air fryer griddle combo, all the time. Bread maker for kneading dough for breads and pizzas often. Rice maker all the time. Ice cream maker every few years. No crockpot.

  • camtncook  on  July 20, 2023

    I bought our Instant Pot in 2016. We still use it frequently for rice, HB eggs, soup, etc. I have a number of Instant Pot cookbooks and I use them too. Short answer-I would replace my Instant Pot if it quit working and would buy the same basic model.

  • sayeater  on  July 20, 2023

    My 2 Instant pots ( 6 qt and 3 qt) are used almost daily for rice, oatmeal, grits/polenta, mashed potatoes, the-best-and-easiest-to-peel hard boiled eggs, curries, soups, chili, pots of beans to eat or use in other recipes (no canned beans for this bean snob). Pry the instant pots from my cold dead hands LOL. Oh and you can have my microwave, THAT I hardly use.

  • Fyretigger  on  July 21, 2023

    The multi-cooker is here to stay for the foreseeable future. Combining niche cooking device categories into one was just brilliant — slow cooker, pressure cooker, rice cooker, yogurt maker. Of course it captured imaginations and it took hold. And now there are multiple brands. And it will survive as a product category. And while there are Instant Pot cookbooks, they are unnecessary, as it is a slow cooker, pressure cooker, rice cooker, yogurt maker, etc., and all those cookbooks apply.

    But Instant Pot was never going to be a long term business concern, relying on a single product category. And I think the founders apparently knew that, selling out at the height of popularity.

    The irony here is that Instant Pot missed a market that could have become their bread and butter — the college dorm room market. Their smallest model is 3 quarts. If they made a 1 or 1.5 quart model, they could replace the hot pot as the dorm cooking tool of choice, with a fresh crop market of incoming freshmen every year. They might have spurred some office cooking as well.

  • GenieB  on  July 21, 2023

    Interesting how people cook so differently. I bought an Instant pot but didn’t use it so sold it to someone who appreciated it. My biggest problem with it was that it was so big. It just took up too much kitchen real estate in my small apartment kitchen for something that was not used much. Maybe a smaller one would work for me. I admit to being nervous about the pressure cooker aspect as I remember my mother blowing up one when I was a child.

    My latest purchase was a small rice cooker. I had to really look to find a small, simple to use rice cooker. I don’t need or want giant capacity or nine zillion settings. This one cooks white rice, brown rice, quinoa and steel cut oats. Makes enough for two meals for the two of us. One of my better purchases.

  • Zephyrness  on  July 21, 2023

    I love my Instant Pot and use it regularly. Hard boiled eggs and risotto of all kinds, but also soups and stews. We don’t have a microwave (not worth the counter space). I just recently bought an air fryer and am interested to see if it can replace my oven in the summer months. It is certainly fast and really really easy to clean. I’ve had a couple of food processors over the years, but they are not worth the space and cleaning, at least for me. A friend recently passed on a small version of a food processor and I shall see if the smaller sized makes it more useful and worthy of space in a small kitchen. Love how different folks have different tools to suit them.

  • Skamper  on  July 21, 2023

    I hope not! I love my IP and use it regularly for yogurt, beans, Indian dishes, all kinds of things.

  • racheljmorgan  on  July 22, 2023

    I think both will hang on for quite a while, especially in large cities with a real space crunch. We had a broken stove/oven for some time, and the air fryer/instant pot combo was adaptable to anything. It was a surprising experience. I feel now we could do without the big oven that takes up so much space in an apartment kitchen and just have more counter/storage. Maybe that will catch on- smaller appliances only.

  • sir_ken_g  on  July 22, 2023

    We use our IP at least weekly. More in this recent hot weather.
    Yogurt, grains , stews etc.
    We gave away the pressure cooker we had not used in years.
    As a techie I was unhappy with the lack of information about what those buttons actually mean and had to dig around the net for that information.

  • mcvl  on  July 28, 2023

    I use my Instant Pot to pressure-cook beans and super-hard grains like sorghum, and I store them in the Pot because my fridge is so, so small. Once a day I repressure the Pot for five minutes so nothing goes bad. This strategy has proved good for concerns about blood sugar; my A1C hasn’t been over 6 for more than a year, and I attribute it to all the beans.

  • robinswood  on  July 28, 2023

    I passed my instant pot off to my niece who is a busy grad student. With working from home now, it is no problem to make soups and stews the old fashioned way on the stove top or in the oven. Our keeper gadgets include microwave, toaster oven, electric kettle. We also have two fondue pots as our traditional family New Years Eve dinner is fondue and we really do it up with seafood, filet mignon, fancy breads and veggies. Finding fuel for them is becoming more of a trick in recent years so we’ll see how much longer we can keep that up.

  • CutCookEat  on  July 29, 2023

    I agree with janecooksamiracle – just waiting for Ninja Creami to get back in stock at Lakeland here in the UK

  • triciafitz2008  on  August 4, 2023

    Over the years I’ve grown to use my Instant Pot more for meal prep and less for complete meals. I use my Instant Pot every week for hard-boiled eggs, brown rice, and steel-cut oats. It’s great for quickly steaming chopped kale, cooking corn on the cob, cooking potatoes for mashing, and softening butternut squash enough to peel and chop.

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