I can't remember a recent kitchen appliance trend more popular than the Instant Pot. But as far as practical kitchen items that real people purchase, Instant Pot is high on the list (w/the Air Fryer quickly on its tail - I'm sure I'll be reviewing that cookbook soon). "The Essential Instant Pot Cookbook" arrived on my doorstep for free via a promotional giveaway. It covers everything from the parts, process, preferred ingredients, tools, and actual recipes for every category of meal. It also contains a useful description for converting regular recipes to instant pot recipes.

On to the recipes...breakfast covers yummy recipes from lemon-poppy seed breakfast cake to Florentine omelet. I was pleasantly surprised to find the recipe for a honey-turmeric tonic the day I first picked up the book. My head cold had been killing meand this find was enough to keep me going. In addition to breakfast, there are sections on beans & gravy, soups & chilis, poultry, beef & pork, veggies & sides, dessert, and pantry. It is this last section that changed my mind from a 4 to a 5 star review. Having a soffrito, quick mayonnaise, or apple sauce ready at hand is a great way to take a semi-homemade meal to a fully homemade one.

In terms of quality of publication, the thick hard cover and heavy matte pages are perfect for a book in a well-used kitchen. While you could likely find many of the recipes or similar online. The utility of this one stop shop would be perfect as a holiday gift for the budding Instant Pot cook. ( )

For reasons that I won't go into, for the past year I have been living in a modern, but very small bedsit in a foreign city. My kitchen is a 2 metre wall at the end of my living room: fridge, sink, hob, with the microwave on my sofa end table. No prep area at all. No storage. Dine on the coffee table. To make serious cooking half-way possible, a few months ago I brought an Instant Pot Duo-60 back with me from a European trip. To use it I have had to disconnect the hob. So my Instant Pot and a very basic microwave are the extent of my heat sources.

I've not used a pressure cooker before, and I've been learning as I go, using the booklet of recipes that came with the Instant Pot supplemented with the multitude of recipes online. When Ten Speed offered me this new book to review, I jumped at the chance.

Well, I could have waited. Those who follow my cookbook reviews know that I value the pleasure of reading a cookbook as much as, or even more than the recipes themselves, and on this score, Ms Morante's book does not make the grade. I think I am going to put most of the blame on Ten Speed.

My introduction to the Instant Pot was Melissa Clark's January 2017 New York Times Cooking article, video, and link to a The Sweethome shopping comparison. Ms Clark discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the Instant Pot, calling in the pressure cooker expertise of writer Linda Sass. Ms Clark summarizes her discussion by saying that the Instant Pot is great for some things, particularly stews and fully cooked meats, but it will not, for example, replace her rice cooker. Positives are pork butt (the video), reduced broth, beets and artichokes, negatives are other vegetables, yogurt, and chicken.

This, I believe, is how an Instant Pot cookbook should be written. Present the strengths, present the weaknesses, show how to adapt recipes, and present practical tips. Begin by asking the fundamentals of who will be using the Instant Pot, where, and why.

With a quick trip online we learn that the Instant Pot is practically required hardware for campground camping, and that makes sense. Campground cooking space is restricted, the cook does not have access to a kitchen full of gear, and the cook does not want to be chained in the kitchen. So campers are sure to be one of the largest group of readers of our cookbook.

Who else cooks in restricted space and tools? College students and young people in tiny apartments that they might share.

Finally we have the proficient cooks working in an equipped kitchen who will use the Instant Pot as an additional heat source and time saver. Saving time is the main reason to use a pressure cooker in the first place. Around the world the primary use of pressure cooker is to cook beans. The electronic features of the new pots make them safer than manual pressure cookers, which appeals to me and to Ms Clark.

We can look too to the Crock Pot, the elderly cousin of the Instant Pot, to expand our book's scope. What is the glory of the Crock Pot? It's that we don't have to watch it. Thus the Instant Pot's self-timing functions are a big draw. Who doesn't want to tend the stove? Busy people and people who don't like to cook.

So with these simple questions we have the outlines of our book's core audience: people who are busy, don't want to tend the stove, and who also might be cooking in restricted spaces.

If we aim the text at these readers we are sure to have a hit. Yes the Instant Pot can do more than cook beans and stews, but I really ask who will bake cakes in an Instant Pot if they have an oven or access to a supermarket with a bakery counter? Will people really cook roasts in the Instant Pot and then finish them in the oven? Casseroles, the standard oven-to-table meal, if cooked in the tall round Instant Pot, are a nightmare to serve attractively.

Baking cakes, making yogurt and fermented foods, and the other tricks that are possible with the Instant Pot are interesting, but it is pointless to pretend that the Instant Pot will be the go-to appliance in a reasonably equipped kitchen.

Ms Morante and Ten Speed have not approached this cookbook this way, and what results is a stilted text that presents recipes in a dry style that is no different from online sources. Here is a recipe for this, here is a recipe for that, here is how to do this other thing. I see no reason to buy this book when the same information is available online at no cost.

Additionally, Ten Speed editors and art director have been able to bring the book to a high standard of text or art.

• The recipes are presented in weird semi-random order with porridge in Breakfast, not in Grains. Bolognaise sauce is in beef, not in the Chili section, which in itself seems a strange title for a chapter. I think I would have grouped the recipes following the Instant Pot pre-set functions: Slow Cook, Sauté, Stew, Poultry, etc.
• The inclusion of a peculiar tonic drink in Breakfast. (This isn't a health book.)
• Overuse of the word "pairing" to include adding anything from spices to hot sauce to a a recipe.
• I really don't like the photos. Everything looks overcooked and gummy.
• The dishes are served with short-grained rice that looks a lot like par-boiled packaged rice. I can taste the blandness just looking at it. But perhaps this is a function of the cooker itself, which Ms Clark reports performs less well than her rice cooker.
• The overuse of "aka" to present another name for something, aka a synonym.
• Momos are Tibetan, not Nepalese. They are common in Nepal now because of the refugees. The Momos Meatball recipe is not like any momos I have eaten anywhere, and I love momos.
• Gross unbrowned Italian meatballs. Ms Morente seems not to brown anything if the sauce is spicy, but elsewhere asks us to brown a whole chicken in the pot. Browning a whole chicken is always difficult and I would not try in the confined space of the Instant Pot. Melissa Clark singles out whole chicken in the Instant Pot as being particularly unsatisfactory.
• What's with the avocado oil in everything?

I received a review copy of "The Essential Instant Pot Cookbook: Fresh and Foolproof Recipes for Your Electric Pressure Cooker" by Coco Morante (Ten Speed) through NetGalley.com. ( )