Indian Cooks Embrace the Instant Pot

When the cookbook author and food editor Chandra Ram was a child visiting relatives in India, the sounds coming from the kitchen would make her jump.

There she’d be in the sitting room, snuggled up with a Hanuman comic book, “and it would come out of nowhere, this high-pitched shriek,” she said — a periodic wail like an oncoming train crossed with a gym teacher’s whistle and a mating cat.

This was the sound of the traditional stovetop pressure cooker, a fixture in Indian kitchens for decades.

The electric pressure cooker that Ms. Ram was using on a recent evening to sauté onions and green chile in her Chicago apartment, on the other hand, would be a much calmer experience. It cooks more evenly and efficiently, without the stovetop pot’s noisy need to let off steam.

Ms. Ram was making shrimp biryani. After the rice and shrimp had cooked for a mere three minutes, Ms. Ram twisted the vent, which sent forth a rush of spicy vapor with a companionable whoosh. Scented with turmeric, ginger and fresh curry leaves, the biryani was far more complex and fragrant than anything you might ever hope to make in under half an hour on a weeknight. And yet she had.

The recipe is from Ms. Ram’s forthcoming book, “The Complete Indian Instant Pot Cookbook” (Robert Rose, 2018). Hers is one of nearly a dozen Indian cookbooks geared toward the electric pressure cooker that have appeared in the last year. The first one, “Indian Instant Pot” by Urvashi Pitre (creator of a viral butter chicken recipe), has sold over 100,000 copies.