GARLICKY CUBAN PULLED PORK IN THE INSTANT POT OR NOT.

2 WAYS TO MAKE GARLICKY CUBAN PULLED PORK

My mother never met a labor-saving device she didn’t love. And if there were any time-savings to be had, she would be first in line to buy it.  She was especially fond of anything that kept her out of her least favorite room in the house, the kitchen.  So of course, she bought a Pressure Cooker.  I vividly remember an ugly aluminum pot with what’s called a “Jiggler” valve on its top.  I also distinctly remember wild rattling and hissing sounds coming out of the kitchen whenever the Pressure Cooker was in use.  I don’t think we ever had a complete explosion of the Pressure Cooker. But we came close.  The problem lay in the fact that my mother would abandon the Pressure Cooker on the stove for Martinis in the Living Room. The only timer she seemed to use was when the noise became almost earth-shattering. Innumerable times she actually burned things in the Pressure Cooker.  It was not an appliance I had a lot of affection for.

THE PRESSURE COOKER IS PRACTICALLY ANCIENT.

Until I was writing this, I had no idea that the Pressure Cooker is practically ancient. It was invented in France in 1679.  One Denis Papin, a physicist, invented what was called the Steam Digester.  It was an airtight cooker that used steam pressure to raise water’s boiling point thereby cooking food faster. There was no commercial application of M. Papin’s Steam Digester and it was considered a scientific experiment without a practical application. Much later, in 1864, in Stuttgart, George Gutbrod began making cast iron pressure cookers.  In 1920s Spain, Jose Alix Martinez patented the “Olla Express” which literally means “Express Cooking Pot”. He was so enthusiastic about his invention that he wrote a cookbook featuring 360 recipes solely for use in a pressure cooker.  In this country, a man named Alfred Vischer presented his “Flex-Seal Speed Cooker” in 1938, the first pressure cooker designed for home use.  And then, at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, which my mother attended, the National Pressure Cooker Company, later known as National Presto Industries, introduced its own Presto Pressure Cooker.

IT’S HARD TO IMAGINE MY MOTHER ‘DISCOVERING’ THE PRESSURE COOKER ON HER VISIT TO THE WORLD’S FAIR

It’s hard to imagine her having any interest in any kitchen appliance at the World’s Fair or anywhere else.  The War intervened. Both my parents left Canada to serve in WW2.  The Pressure Cooker I remember likely made its way into our house in the 50s.  That’s likely why, when the Instant Pot appeared last year, I didn’t rush to buy one.  But suddenly, I began to feel like the last person to buy a Cuisinart, completely out of it. People I admire tremendously waxed on about how incredible their Instant Pots were. How they can use them daily and save hours.  How versatile they are…cooking rice, making yogurt and porridge in a flash. How they ‘convert’ to slow cookers with the hit of a button.  One of my gurus, Melissa Clark was rhapsodic in The New York Times. And she did provide today’s excellent recipe for Pulled Pork in or out of the Instant Pot.  But I think the thing that sent me to Amazon Prime was the fact that the Instant Pot is as Canadian as my family is.  There’s a Horatio Alger quality to the story of its invention by a Chinese Canadian called Robert Wang.

MY INSTANT POT ARRIVED LAST FALL. 

Now you may wonder why, when you write a Food Blog, in the weeks since its arrival, I haven’t posted a single dish made in my Instant Pot. Is it because the Instant Pot takes up a huge piece of real estate in our New York City kitchen, a space a little bigger than a breadbox?  No.  It’s because I am singularly unimpressed with my Instant Pot.  First of all, let’s talk about the time-saving component.  I don’t think there is one. The amount of time waiting for the steam to build up and then waiting for it to escape is staggering. Any idea that you’ll have dinner on the table in no time is fiction. But let’s start at the beginning.  I was pleased to see that there is a Sauté function which slow cookers do not have which is why I rarely use a slow cooker. Sauteeing meat at 8:00 in the morning for the evening meal is not my idea of a good idea. Unfortunately, the sauté function on Instant Pot is hard to control. With just three settings, you have nowhere near the range of temperatures you have on a gas stove top.  Then there’s the terrific disappointment I’ve had every time I’ve opened the Instant Pot after the steam is finally released.  The contents of the pot are awash in way too much liquid.  This requires cranking up that Sauté function again to reduce the water-y overload to something resembling a sauce which often takes a very long time…

What else?  Rice has been a dried-out disaster.  The Slow Cooker feature is a bust.  Andrew and I went out to the movies, leaving it on only to come home to discover the unit had switched off, heaven knows when.  Another instance of waiting and waiting for the food to cook followed.

Finally, when you’ve reduced your sauces, when your meat has been tenderized and your dish served, is there any difference whatsoever between it and something cooked in a Dutch Oven over low heat?  No. That by the way is the reason I’ve included one of Melissa Clark’s Instant Pot recipes. Because the result was the only thing I’ve cooked that was really good. But I can’t help thinking I could have just as easily hauled out the Le Creuset and gotten the same results with a little more patience than the most diehard fan of the Instant Pot needs.

Here’s the recipe: And if you don’t have an Instant Pot, don’t worry.  You can cook this a little longer on the top of the stove and have  Garlicky Cuban Pulled Pork that’s a perfect filling for Tacos or Pulled Pork Sandwiches.

Pulled Pork that is drenched in citrus flavor, cumin-scented and garlic laced.  The citrus seems to lighten the whole dish.  I chose to serve it as a taco filling with soft flour tortillas, and their usual accompaniments—tomato salsa, avocado, sour cream and cheese.