Instant Pot Cooking For Two Covers Spark Outrage

The Instant Pot phenomenon continues to spread like wildfire, and for good reason. It's an exceptionally user-friendly pressure cooker/slow-cooker that has ensnared home cooks for its simple interface and greatly reduced accident risk factor. And everyone wants a piece of the action, whether they're qualified or not. The Daily Mail reports that a wave of largely self-published Instant Pot for Two cookbooks on Amazon feature covers with the same scene: a woman getting a fun, romantic cooking lesson from a man.

Sorry, I feel like the sarcasm didn't come through there. The covers depict some dude mansplaining pepper-cutting to a lady even though he himself clearly does not know how. Also, the lady might only be pretending to enjoy how close he is to her, regardless of whether she has a knife.

OR, some dude mansplaining pepper-cutting to a lady even though he doesn't know how, because she's holding a knife and he realized after the fact that he'd said some things in the car that could maybe be interpreted as casually sexist but decided to say nothing and juuust wants to make sure they're cool. Also he would like stuffed peppers for dinner, please.

OR, some dude mansplaining pepper-cutting to a lady even though he doesn't know how in spite of the fact that she's holding a knife because women can hold anything they want. Right? Amiright? Up top. (High-five).

OR, some dude mansplaining pepper-cutting to a lady even though he doesn't know how in hopes that he might demonstrate his value, as seen in the DENNIS system.

OR, some dude mansplaining pepper-cutting to a lady even though he doesn't know how because the cover stylist's grandma thought it was a cute idea and he wanted to make her happy. This possibility makes me less mad, because I generally like grandmas even if I don't always agree with their views on modern gender stereotyping.

OR, some dude mansplaining pepper-cutting to a lady even though he doesn't know how because that counts as helping even though it's not on the list of things she's asked for help with, like getting that thing down from the top shelf because it's heavy and she hates the stepladder and can we please get a new stepladder? They're not expensive.

Now that we've all gotten that out of our systems, I can honestly say that none of the approximately 73 Instant Pot cookbooks we've gotten in the past year or so — most of which ended up in the "thanks, but no thanks" pile — have featured this particular oddity. We don't get a lot of self-published books at FR HQ, and I can't imagine a publicist would allow something like that to make it into a padded envelope.

Furthermore, I wildly speculate that all those books have a recipe for Instant Pot meatballs in grape jelly sauce, which is nowhere near a sexy dish to eat with your extremely wise cooking person who's behind you, guiding your hands as you learn to cut peppers.