One of the few professional chefs who admits to having an Instant Pot in his restaurant is Jonny Hunter of the Madison, Wisc.-based Underground Food Collective.  In fact, he has five. Hunter is a fan of the compressed cook times and precision that the device offers.

"Traditionally, it takes about 40 days to make black garlic," he says, referring to the intensely sticky Asian flavoring. "I can do it in six hours." 

Most dishes can't be sped up so rapidly by the Instant Pot, but Hunter argues that even modest time savings will add up for a busy cook. Take hard-boiled eggs, for example: "It takes you eight minutes in an Instant Pot; the regular way takes 12 minutes," he says. "Chefs say, 'Who cares about that difference?' But I save four minutes each time, and they're perfectly cooked."

Garrison Price, of New York's il Buco Alimentari, routinely does 250 covers a night, yet he still finds the low-yielding appliance useful for making goat-milk yogurt. He serves it as an accompaniment to leg of lamb with wild watercress and anchovies, as well as spice-roasted spring carrots with green almonds. Making yogurt the traditional way is "tricky," Price says. "You don't have to baby sit yogurt you're making in an Instant Pot."

Price believes chefs don't use the Instant Pot because of the message they associate with it. "I think it's the infomercial-ness," he says.

In Houston, James Beard award-winning chef Chris Shepherd  is experimenting with an Instant Pot to create batches of pho "dressing" for a carpaccio dish at his upcoming 80-seat restaurant, UB Preserve. "I got the idea from my manicurist; she's a big Instant Pot fan," says Shepherd. He first used one at a previous restaurant when he ran out of Korean-braised goat and dumplings. "My cook said: 'We should bust out that Instant Pot we have in storage.' We had more goat ready in 45 minutes." 

At the Latin restaurant Público in St. Louis, Mike Randolph cooks almost everything on an open hearth. Yet his Instant Pot has been used to produce items ranging from vegan chorizo stock to dulce de leche. Randolph agrees that a drawback for some chefs is perception. "There's a hesitation in having a brand name like that in your kitchen. A lot of chefs want to keep things more traditional, with a stovetop," says Randolph.