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One of the weirdest trends to emerge from the lockdown was a sudden obsession with banana bread and dalgona coffee.

People were baking more of it than any reasonable human being should consume in a lifetime.

While baking might be taking the edge off of isolation, however, the daily grind of preparing meals that don’t involve cake variants can get a little tedious.

Yes, takeaways are back here in South Africa, and we should support local restaurants as much as possible, but ordering in every night isn’t exactly cost-efficient.

This may account for why Mashable can’t stop raving about the Instant Pot.

Instant Pot (noun): The intelligent pressure cooker that can replace numerous kitchen appliances while cooking in a fraction of the time, and is quite possibly the most important technological advancement in recent history. SpaceX is a close second.

Congrats, Elon. You’ve been outranked by a kitchen appliance.

So why the Instant Pot instead of a slow cooker?

Instant Pots use 70 percent less energy than the average pressure cooker, but somehow cook food, as their title states, instantly — well, 2-10 times faster, but it’s the closest to instant you’re gonna get. But they’re also slow cookers. Crazy, right?

This means that dishes that traditionally need all night to cook can be ready in 20 minutes, which makes the torture of impatiently waiting to eat far less painful, and saves you from the “screw it, let’s get takeout” mindset after a long day.

You had me at “20 minutes”.

The Instant Pot comes in a range of models, and this is one of the most widely available models in South Africa:

Instant Pot 6L Duo 7-in-1 Multi-Cooker

Photo: GREENLEAF

It’s a pressure cooker, slow cooker, rice maker, steamer, sauté pan, warmer and yoghurt maker.

No, your eyes didn’t deceive you. It makes yoghurt.

The pot also comes with an app that will guide you through a range of recipes.

You can order one of these all-in-one cooking machines online here.

I’ll leave you with a video that explains everything you need to know about the humble, yet mighty, Instant Pot:

[source:mashable]