Cookbook Writers Need Editors, Too

Instant Pot Mini Cookbook - Laurel Sanchez

If last year’s “must-have” holiday gift was the InstantPot cooker, then this year’s must have been a cookbook for the darned thing. Unfortunately, this probably isn’t the one you should get… here’s why:

Since there are just the two of us, we chose the small InstantPot cooker; the 3-quart size. Lo and behold, the recipe booklet packed with the cooker was for the 6-quart size (InstantPot "help"¹ took six weeks to explain to me that they didn't have recipes specifically for the mini). After a couple of abortive attempts to use the pressure cooker – we ended up having to dump everything into a saucepan and cook it on the stove – we relegated the Mini Lux to making rice on days we forgot to use our regular rice cooker.

With the new year, however, came a new book of recipes: the Instant Pot Mini Cookbook (300 Easy and Foolproof Instant Pot Mini Recipes for Your 3-Quart Models). According to the River, it’s “independently published.” The author may be Laurel Stevenson, but then again it may be Laurel Sanchez, Laurel Stewart, or even Laurel Randolph. Who knows?

Well, what I do know is this:

The 150-plus pages contain myriad editing errors, but zero photographs. The instructions frequently reference settings unavailable on most InstantPots (e.g., “Use Pressure Level button to set Pressure to *HIGH*”). Unlike most cookbooks, ingredients are listed randomly instead of in the order in which they’re used. Some ingredient lists include items not referenced in the instructions. Laurel Whoever seems to have copied recipes that are already available online (for free). More than one ingredient list contains a measurement without an ingredient, e.g. “½ cup      ” Many references to “minced,” “diced,” and “chopped” are followed by a randomly placed apostrophe, e.g. “1/4 cup chopped’ onion” or “3 teaspoons minced’ garlic.”

Those are mere irritations, however, alongside Laurel Whosis’s larger sins:

• Some of the recipes are clearly too big for a 3-quart cooker: a whole chicken? Two Cornish hens? A 6-pound top sirloin?
• Cooking times can be wildly inaccurate: we tried one recipe that said it would take 25 minutes, but it took almost two hours to complete from prep to plate. Even the total of the stated times for the brown, sauté, pressure cook, and sauce steps added up to 41 minutes. And that doesn’t even include preheating and pressure buildup!

Whatever Laurel’s intentions (making money, I assume, with as little effort as possible), her use of multiple surnames doesn't do much to endear her to potential buyers. Neither does the plethora of fake reviews at the River, nor does her dire warning on the title page:

“No part of this book may be reproduced in any form. You cannot offer this book for free or sell it. You do not have reselling legal rights [sic] to this book. This Book [sic] may not be recreated in any file format or physical format without having the expressed [sic] written approval of author [sic]. All Violators [sic] will be sued.”
It’s nice to know Laurel’s legal composition is as sloppy as her cookbook compilation. We have just one question for her: does, “You cannot offer this book for free…” mean Santa was in violation for giving it as a gift? Good luck going after the fat guy, Sanchez-Stevenson-Stewart-Randolph…

¹ I use the term "help" very loosely

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