It turns out that the whole “set it and forget it” style chafes at my preference to taste, meddle, and stir. Plus, a cutting board and an eight-quart Instant Pot is a big ask of my counter space. So the Instant Pot lives on the very highest shelf, dusty with disuse.
I've been on the receiving end of Instant Pot proselytizing for years from my family now. When I moved out of Seattle, my roommates kept most of the kitchen tools and I got to purchase a handful of tools myself. A nice big vegetable cleaver, an induction wok setup, a big enameled dutch oven, and a nice rice/porridge cooker. All of these go a long way to producing basically every meal I eat now. I would like a new frying pan but lately I've just been pan frying in the dutch oven.
Most of my Recipes are built to be meddled with, to be changed, and adulterated as they proceed. Maybe I don't have an intuition of seasoning or salt as well as folks who have to do it up front, but my experience says otherwise. 😉
You'll cook more (i already do, it's fun to cook fresh veg with friends)! You'll eat more healthy (i already eat more veggies and beans and less meat)! Meal prep is easier (it already is easy to make a big batch of beans or sauce or a braise that'll last days)! I really am of the opinion that a large dutch oven is more useful and fun than the Instant Pot for most folks.
Eating doesn't need to be a chore! Cooking is allowed to be fun! Food can be entertaining and a bonding experience with others! I don't need a thousand specialized gadgets to get us back to the couch ASAP.
Once I part with it, I won’t be replacing it with an air fryer, no matter how much everyone online wants to persuade me of its benefits. The next time I try to buy a solution, I’ll think a bit harder about whether I actually have a problem in need of solving.
That said, I would like fast reliably decent, home made yogurt maybe. I don't eat a lot of dairy these days, though.