The Instant Pot electric pressure cooker first appeared on the culinary scene in 2009, and it’s since become a must-have kitchen device. The official Instant Pot Community group on Facebook has almost 600,000 members (more than 200,000 of whom joined this year) and the appliance was one of Amazon’s top sellers on this year’s Prime Day.
That’s been good news for Rockridge Press, whose 2016 title The Instant Pot Electric Pressure Cooker Cookbook by Laurel Randolph has sold more than 242,000 print copies. The company, which will release Indian Instant Pot Cooking by Urvashi Pitre in September, is one of several publishers promoting pressure cooker companion books this season. —D.L.
Dinner in an Instant by Melissa Clark (Clarkson Potter, Oct.)
Clark is the author or coauthor of several cookbooks, most recently Dinner: Changing the Game (Clarkson Potter, 2017), and writes a weekly cooking column for New York Times. The recipes in Clark’s book have a distinctly chef-y flair: think coconut yogurt, osso buco, and green Persian rice with tahdig. Doris Cooper, v-p and associate publisher at Clarkson Potter, says that, when culinary figures like Clark show enthusiasm for a gadget—she also mentions chef Hugh Acheson’s forthcoming The Chef and the Slow Cooker (Clarkson Potter, Oct.)—it counters the idea that such devices are for amateurs only.
The Instant Pot Miracle by the editors of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH, Oct.)
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s book is among those carrying the official Instant Pot imprimatur. “There’s a whole group of people who are just now, because of the Instant Pot, discovering pressure cooking,” says Deb Brody, v-p and editor-in-chief at HMH. “It’s not scary, like pressure cookers used to be.” As with other multicooker books, HMH’s highlights the machine’s various functions: slow cooker, rice maker, yogurt maker, sauté pan, and more. “It’s everything from hard-boiled eggs to steamed lobster tail,” Brody says.
The Essential Instant Pot Cookbook by Coco Morante (Ten Speed, Sept.)
A recipe developer who blogs at Lefty Spoon, Morante also operates the Facebook page Instant Pot Recipes, which has more than 178,000 followers. The book offers recipes for every meal of the day, many featuring big slabs of protein, such as a whole roasted chicken with mushroom sauce and braised pork loin with balsamic vinegar and caramelized onions.
Instant One-Pot Meals by Laura Arnold (Countryman, Nov.)
Arnold, a food stylist and recipe developer who works on the cooking show The Chew, offers recipes that are distinctly southern in flavor—brown sugar barbecue ribs, collared greens, and buttermilk yogurt with peaches among them—but that take considerably less time than traditional preparations.
The New Complete Pressure Cooker by Jennie Shapter (Lorenz, Sept.)
Shapter, who has written books on working with bread machines and clay pots, here offers instructions for an assortment of stove-top and electric pressure cookers, as well as advice on choosing the right vessel or appliance for one’s needs. The 120 recipes include savory dishes such as asparagus, mushroom, and barley risotto and sweets such as a chocolate and raspberry torte.
