Whether you like to admit it or not, the days of being able to get away with a ‘normal’ lunch at work are long gone.
Now, instead of being able to enjoy your humble ham sandwich, you’re almost ashamed to admit that’s all you’ve brought in, especially when you see Janice from accounts and her delicious Thai vegetable soup, filling the air of the work kitchen as it comes out of the microwave.
Or in the case of me and everyone else who works at rova, left wishing we were sharing The Rock Drive’s Jay Reeve’s lunch.
That’s because Jay cooks steak, pork belly, sausages, and more on an outside camp cooker he’s brought in for the sole purpose of cooking delicious lunches.
But watching Jay cut into his perfectly cooked medium-rare steak made me think we should all step up our work-lunch game.
We should move past having something ‘quick and easy’ to get back to work. Instead, I should make something that not only myself but my entire team can look forward to as the clock hits lunchtime.
To do this all we need is the humble yet mighty, multi-cooker.
With the help of the team at Instant who let me try their Instant Pot® Rio™ Wide Multi-Cooker 7.1L, I put the idea of cooking a stand-out lunch for 14 people to the test.
When they named the Instant Pot® Rio™ ‘wide’ they weren’t kidding. I was almost worried it wouldn't fit on my kitchen bench when I first opened it due to the size of the box. Picture the size of the box your microwave would’ve come in, and then double it…
But after using the Rio for a week at home before taking it to work, I surprisingly came to enjoy the extra cooking space compared to my current ‘tall and skinny’ pressure cooker.
I was able to cook an entire butterfly chicken inside it because I thought if they were going to use that meal as the main image on the box, of course I had to try it.
Being a multi-cooker, there are many functions on the Rio to help cook a range of meals. The ‘rice’, ‘Meat’, ‘soup’ and others all worked as they should, with no real difference to what you’d expect from any other multi-cooker.
But where I felt the Rio jumped into a league of its own was when I used the ‘Saute’ function.
Being able to sear your meat before setting it to slow cook was a game changer. Normally I’d have to heat up a pan, add the oil, sear the beef, and then struggle to get it out of the pan and up into the pressure cooker without it going everywhere.
Now I was able to do it all at once and felt this was where Instant’s description of ‘ultimate one pot magic!’ stood out the most.
It was also the function that meant the Rio was perfect for making the all-important delicious team lunch.
And here’s where I introduce you to Maddy from our Digital team. Maddy has also talked a big game about how her birria tacos were the best, “even better than Broke Boys Tacos” I vividly remember her saying.
So armed with the Rio, Maddy ( and myself as sous-chef) got to work on the team lunch.
We both start at 6.30 am so were able to start the day by searing off the beef with the saute function and after 15 minutes, switch it over to slow cook, letting it cook away until it came time to eat at 12pm.
All was great until disaster seemed to strike when we checked on the progress at 11.30 am.
That was when we realised our mistake.
We’d bought brisket, a meat that took much longer to cook than we’d originally planned when setting our slow-cook timer. The meat had hardly cooked at all and thinking on our feet, we decided to change the setting to ‘pressure cook’ for 30 minutes.
With our fingers crossed, we hoped the Rio would work that ‘one pot Magic!’ for us one more time.
As the hungry heads in our digital team started to turn towards the clock ticking past 12 pm, Maddy and I were nervous to check again but as it turned out, we had nothing to worry about.
Changing to ‘pressure cooker’ had done exactly what we’d hoped, cooking the meat perfectly and with the extra size of the Rio, meant we had more than enough birria to go around our entire digital team.
“10/10” was the group consensus, and productivity shot straight up as we all joyfully went back to work with our full and happy tummies!
- that’s the part you can copy and paste when you try convincing your boss to go buy a multi-cooker.
If you’re in the market for a new multi-cooker, getting the Instant Pot® Rio™ Wide Multi-Cooker 7.1L comes down to your situation.
Personally, only cooking for two and having a smaller kitchen at home, the added size and capacity of 7.1L didn’t fit my needs but I do think it is a perfect option if you've got a bigger family or flat that you’re cooking for ( and the bench space to house it…)
And I 100% recommend talking to your boss about getting a multi-cooker added to the work kitchen alongside the microwave, and sandwich press.
… sweet-talking them with some birria tacos should do the trick.
Instant Brands provided Ricky with an Instant Pot® Rio™ Wide Multi-Cooker 7.1L for this review.
