Review: Is Our Place Ripping Off the Instant Pot With Its Dream Cooker?
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Despite what lifestyle TikTokers may impress upon viewers, it’s noxiously unrealistic for every corner of a home to be aesthetically pleasing. The kitchen counter, for instance, is not meant to be flawlessly curated. Our Place’s Dream Cooker, upon first glance, appears designed for anal folks trying to achieve just that. It’s an Instant Pot with an enamel-coated facelift, but is it worth $250?
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It looks eerily similar to the infamous multicooker, minus a few design features that prioritize utility — a clear countdown display panel, buttons, and a large top handle. It’s designed for folks lacking in storage space who hate the look of stainless steel and black silicone trimming. Studio dwellers whose cabinet space is at a sky-high premium and appliances live permanently next to the sink.
After cooking with it in my spacious kitchen for a few weeks, not lacking in storage space, they succeeded in making an appliance that isn’t an eyesore. And, much like I was when I first bought an Instant Pot in 2018, I was impressed with its performance. It’s ostensibly the same machine but nice to look at.
Our Place Dream Cooker
This is a beautiful appliance that executes its core job of pressure cooking soups, stews, and braises very well. Everything I made in it — white chicken chili, a short rib, white rice — turned out well. Just as well as these recipes have faired in my 3-year-old Instant Pot. It heats up quickly and doesn’t shut off or burn anything. It’s easy to clean.
Using it is exactly like using a pressure cooker, except its control panel is more confusing. It’s a touchscreen and there are no buttons, presumably for aesthetic reasons. You turn it on at the bottom and set your cooking mode from the four options — Pressure Cook, Slow Cook, Saute/Sear, and Keep Warm — followed by the intensity and time. The panel won’t respond if you touch the buttons in the wrong order, and the countdown timer is harder to read than the Instant Pot because it’s white letters on a pale background. One of the darker colors, Char or Blue Salt, might be better for this, but the Spice color of my unit had me squinting to see when the tacos would be ready.
The Dream Cooker was intuitive to use because I’ve been, ostensibly, using this device for years. It’s a pressure cooker, so after setting the cooking mode and time, it seals itself off through a series of unnerving sloshing sounds as the steam heats up inside. It beeps intermittently through the cooking process, and after it’s done it blasts off spreading hot water vapor all over the ceiling.
This last step is where the Dream Cooker has its predecessor beat. Instead of asking the user to press the steam release button and get blasted in the face by boiling water, it auto-releases through a series of short blasts until the pressure seal is broken. I loved this feature since I typically dread that final step.
Pressure cookers are worth the hype, so if you’re one of the handful of humans left on earth who doesn’t own one, and you’re anal enough that your reasoning is the look, get the Dream Cooker. Everyone else? Save yourself some coins and pick up the Instant Pot Duo Plus.
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