Milk Street Fast & Slow: Slow Cookers, Pressure Cookers, and Instant Pots

Milk Street Fast & Slow: Slow Cookers, Pressure Cookers, and Instant Pots by Christopher Kimball

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I've been blogging about the recipes I've been making from this cook book, so I figure it's time to review the actual cook book. No, I'm not getting paid to write this review. No, I'm not being compensated. No, I didn't get a free copy of the book. I saw it, I bought it, now I'm talking (gushing) about it.

This past year I fell down the rabbit hole known as Milk Street. I saw a couple episodes of Season 1 when it came out, but...didn't grab me. I wasn't engaged by Mr. Kimball going to some exotic location and being filmed while watching someone else cook. Season 2 they changed the format a bit and less obvious travel and more in kitchen discussion about what Milk Street found and brought back. Now that, interested me - show me how I can make Levantine rice and lentils with fried onions, with ingredients I can find in the middle of the States. Season 3, I was hooked - completely. As in binge watching Milk Street marathons on PBS. Even when Mr. Kimball was off in that exotic location again I was hooked. I'm not sure what changed.

A year or so ago I obtained an Instant Pot and I was using it for a handful of things but acknowledge that it was an under-utilized kitchen item. The recipes I was finding on-line were hit or miss and left me with more questions than not.

Until this cook book. I LOVE this cook book.

• Recipes are clearly written using ingredients I can mostly find (still struggling to find goguchang)
• Each recipe comes with a full page photo
• Each recipe comes with a description of the dish and tips
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• Each recipe comes with explicit directions on timing and "how to" (ie, using a towel for steaming rice)
• Each recipe offers a fast version using the pressure cook feature, or a slow version with the slow cooker. So far I've only cooked with the fast version.
• And I know all of these recipes were thoroughly tested and it shows in the results *I* get.
  

My only small complaint is - I would like to have had a chapter on just *basics*. Basic preparation for long grain white rice, short grain white rice, brown rice, wild rice (Calif and Minn); basic preparation for navy, pinto, garbanzo, black, kidney, canellinni beans, etc; basic preparation for all sorts of grains such as steel cut, farro, bulger, wheat berries and more. And tips on what not to do...

While the recipes I've tried so far - and I think I'm up to five or six in the last two weeks - have all worked spot on with terrific results, I'm still looking for a solid, tested, basic IP cook book.

While I wait for such a product, I will probably try and cook everything from the Milk Street Fast and Slow cook book. Because the recipes are That. Good. And they work. And I have lots of delicious leftovers.

Recommended if you have an Instant Pot and like to explore world cuisine.



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