I had an eye-opening experience with my Instant Pot. My sister recently surprised us with one. I had been sheltering with my mother for company and to save family bandwidth for exams. We use every spec with our youngest in first year nursing, two others pursuing post-degree specializations and working on Zoom, and their father, now last in the pecking order, bless his heart, pivoting to run his business at home. All led to my migration.
In a recent Small Farm Canada news item my colleague Ray Douglas, reported on a claim to use Instant Pot to germinate seeds. It sounded like an intriguing idea. Instant Pot as many of you may know is a pressure-slow cooker hybrid, that became popular, even before lock down.
A series of events made me start to question the idea of using the Instant Pot for alternate purposes though, the most defining being trying the Instant Pot for the first time. Just to be clear, I used it to cook food and not for germinating seeds and it worked like a charm. I followed all instructions at set-up and voila yummy ribs cooked to perfection in no time.
Here comes the eye-opening part - after supper while cleaning up, the kitchen faucet gave up the ghost. I decided to let the inner pot from the Instant Pot cool off over night until I could fix the faucet. The cooking pot was still inside the unit with the lid off. The electronic reading on the unit also said โoffโ although the unit was plugged in. Overnight even with the lid off, the residual heat continued to cook and lightly caramelize the brazing liquids (containing a touch of brown sugar) at the bottom of the pot by the next morning.
I now conclude that when it comes to germinating tools, most seeds cannot stand the heat so the Instant Pot should stay unplugged while not in use, in the farm kitchen.