There is also the pressure cooker option. That's where our household gets the most mileage out of it. Pressure cooking is easy. Instant Pot pressure cooking is automagic.

Pressure cooking itself is magical but the InstantPot is like a level one mage casting magical missile. Even the “high pressure” setting is pretty low compared to a real pressure cooker.

Thankfully most meals have low HP.

Yes, you might not use it as an industrial broaster, which requires a significant amount of pressure. But for most home use, InstaPot is painless. And the cleanup is really easy.

Instant Pot sold a model called the Max which went up to the full pressure of stovetop pressure cookers. It didn’t sell. The problem is that it took so much longer to reach the highest pressure. The main limitation? North American household 110V 15-amp circuits max out at 1650W (and typical appliances max out around 1350W to leave margin).

If we had European 240V circuits we could have an Instant Pot designed for well over 2000W and it wouldn’t be an issue.

The same story goes for electric kettles. Alec of Technology Connections [1] went into extensive detail about it!

[1] https://youtu.be/_yMMTVVJI4c

My instant pot (the “ultra” model) only draws a maximum of 700w. It’s very annoying that they seemingly cheaped out on the heating element, it makes it take way too long to get up to pressure.

Yup. I have an EU version, the heating element draws exactly 1000W during the pressurization cycle. It takes pretty much the same time to pressurize as the US version does.

Pressure cooking is magic. Your dhal is reliably done after 30 minutes, even with an old batch of beans. Before, I might have waited 2 hours, and dinner was till not ready because the beans were too old.

For me, culinarily, it is basically a slow cooker that produces acceptable results, and also isn't necessarily slow either. We do ribs a lot in the instant pot and while I disagree with just about every recipe on the internet and add 10-15 more minutes than they specify, it is still faster than conventional methods because the extra heat does matter. We also use it as a rice cooker a lot; whether or not it is faster it is convenient, and, you know, we have one, which makes it cheaper than buying a dedicated rice cooker.

Regarding the set it and forget it, I can reliably steam to perfection any of the vegetables we regularly eat just by setting the pressure cook time to one minute. I don't have to constantly monitor the firmness, worry about the pot running out of water, or have uneven results. The device is worth it for that alone.