How South Asians went from Pressure Cookers to the Instant Pot
Words by Nashwa Ansari
Welcome to the Brown History Newsletter. If you’re enjoying this labour of love, please do consider becoming a paid subscriber. Your contribution would help pay the writers and illustrators and support this weekly publication. If you like to submit a writing piece, please send me a pitch by email at brownhistory1947@gmail.com. Check out our Shop and our Podcast. You can also follow us on Instagram and Twitter.
How South Asians went from Pressure Cookers to the Instant Pot by Nashwa Ansari
The nostalgic hiss of the pressure cooker is a sound synonymous to many with the comfort of home cooking and an added instrument in the symphony of the hustle and bustle of a South Asian home. It is evidently one of the most used pieces of cookware in South Asian cooking and has been engrained in our memories as something our parents and grandparents used to make the food of our childhood in. While the pressure cooker is a French invention and is used around the world by millions, this kitchenware has become so entrenched within the culinary practices of the region that some recipes are synonymous with it. As culinary traditions move forward, newer generations are turning to the more efficient, modern, safer, and technologically advanced version of the pressure cooker – the Instant Pot. From Daal to Biryani, Haleem to Halwa, there is nothing that the newest generation (as well as some of the older generation) of South Asians don’t use the Instant Pot for. The adaptation of recipes has been rapid and seamless, with food influencers at the forefront of this change by transforming beloved South Asian recipes that were typically made in pressure cookers to the Instant Pot.
The first form of pressure cooking happened when French physicist Denis Papin invented the Steam Digester in 1679, his aim with the invention was to reduce the time needed to cook foods, soften bones, and provide nutrition to the poor. Papin published the details of his latest invention in 1681 and presented it to the Royal Society in London, instantly becoming the talk of the town. The Digester, however, was deemed to be too commercial for use in home kitchens, this was remedied by Alfred Vischer, a German who introduced the Flex-Seal Speed Cooker in 1938 as the first ‘saucepan style’ pressure cooker. The pressure cooker that caught the attention of home cooks, however, was the Pesto brand cooker showcased in the 1939 New York World’s Fair. It was this launch into the international market that allowed the popularity of the modern pressure cooker to spread to regions of Asia, where it is still popular to this day, however, a predecessor of the pressure cooker had been gaining popularity nearly 20 years earlier in Eastern India.
Indumadhab Mallick, a polymath from the Guptipara village in West Bengal invented the first steam cooker in 1910 known as the ICMIC Cooker, where food was stored in a tiffin container and steamed inside and elongated metal body using burning charcoal underneath it. Mallick’s inspiration came from his time on a pilgrimage in Puri’s Jagannath Temple as he watched Mahaprasad or offerings presented to the deities which contained 56 delicacies cooked in the temple kitchen. This food was also served to devotees, it was cooked in earthenware pots on firewood, for over 100,000 individuals and the seamlessness of the kitchen inspired Mallick to create the ICMIC Cooker. The ‘IC’ came from hygienic and ‘MIC’ from economic, and thus the ICMIC Cooker came into being, with the ability to separately stack different ingredients like daal, rice, vegetables, and various meats, its convenience was unmatched. The food was cooked using the steam generated from the charcoal underneath the tiffin-like container around which water was filled, making the ICMIC Cooker the first steam cooker and paving way for the pressure cooking so prevalent in South Asia since. Steam cookers became so popular that from the 1940s onwards brands like Santosh in Bombay and Rukmani in Madras started to sell their own versions, the popularity of the cookware spreading across the region.