HomeBad Ass AsiansThe Chinese Canadian Inventor Behind One of the Season's Hottest Gifts
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The Chinese Canadian Inventor Behind One of the Season’s Hottest Gifts

Robert Wang
Instant Pot lifestyle shoot in Ottawa April 7, 2017. Photograph by Blair Gable | www.blairgable.com
The Instant Pot is living up to all the hype.

Business Insider reports the pressure cooker was among the top five selling items on Black Friday on Amazon. According to CBC News, only Amazon’s own products topped Instant Pot sales on Friday.

This follows the phenomenal sales figures generated on Prime Day in July when the online giant sold 250,000 Instant Pots–making it Amazon’s number 1 seller that day.

Instant Pot is the creation of Chinese Canadian Robert Wang who invented the product in 2008.  Seven years after first coming to the market, word of mouth and high praise by food bloggers have created this season’s buzz.

“It’s like that saying about when the time for an idea has arrived, nothing can stop  it,” said Wang to CBC News. “That’s our objective, putting an Instant Pot in every kitchen.”

The Instant Pot can put on quite a show. On Thanksgiving, our sister-in-law proclaimed to everyone that she was about to cook mac N cheese in four minutes. Suddenly a fast moving stream of steam shot out of her Instant Pot. Within minutes, the mac n cheese was done and ready for tasting.

The kids loved it. The grown up loved it. My wife was so impressed she went on line and purchased one that evening.

“I use it mostly for bone broth and chicken thighs, ” said KC DelPlato who recently took an Instant Pot cooking class. “I came to the class looking for new things to try with it,” she told the  Inquirer.

Skeptical me wondered if the Instant Pot was safe. That shot of steam out of the pot came with quite a lot of intense heat. I’m not the only one that has thought that.

“People think pressure cookers will explode,” says Ian Knauer, who runs the cooking school where DelPlato took her class. “The only way it will explode is if you put dynamite in it.”

Clearly owners of Instant Pot are fanatical. There are 750,000 followers on a Facebook Instant Pot page.

“They are obsessed,” claims Carole Nelson Brown who also runs an Instant Pot cooking class. “They don’t use their stove anymore, they don’t use their microwave anymore, they don’t use anything else. If someone comes in and says ‘I’m not loving it, I tried a few things, they didn’t really work out’, these people go insane at the thought that someone might not love their Instant Pot as much as they do.”

“Many kitchen appliances were designed for the lifestyle of our parents, of our grandparents,” says Wang. “Now our generation lives a different lifestyle, so we need to rethink those legacy devices and make sure they adapt.”
 
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