Precision

My parents like to cook, so they spend a fair bit of time working with recipes. My Mom likes to try new recipes, so it's not uncommon for her to decide to make a new recipe out of the blue. I've seen her make biriyani at home, for example. We don't have cultural roots in that part of the world, but she figured it'd be fun to make, so she tried her hand at it (I liked it well enough).

The interesting bit, though, is that they try to perfect certain recipes. Once they've tried it once or twice, they'll try to get the flavors and the textures just right. It often makes for some good meals, because these are people who care about how the food comes out. In general, that one fact tends to make the end result better.

The funny thing to me, though, has always been just how striving for perfection shows up in day-to-day life. Specifically, overhearing my parents talk about what they want to change for a particular dish leads to some comically precise discussions. My favorite example was when they were making some chicken dish, and they were discussing whether it should take seven minutes or eight minutes. Yeah, we're talking about 60 seconds, but there was a fairly passionate (in the "they were convinced it'd be better that way" sense, not in the "they yelled" sense) discussion about which was the correct cook time.

At the time, I just laughed about the whole thing and chalked it up to my parents' love for cooking. Well, there's a saying in Spanish: "no escupas al cielo porque a la cara te caera." It literally means, "don't spit at the heavens, lest it fall on your face," but the general gist of it is, "what goes around comes around."

Why is this relevant, you ask?

Because of this

You see, now that the Mild Wife and I own and frequently use an Instant Pot, we have to program in how long we want to cook things under pressure. In case you've never used a pressure cooker before, they cook items in less time than usual. The example we always give is you can cook beans in about 30 minutes, without even soaking them.

The compressed cook time is part of why we like the thing so much, but it also means that minutes matter. If we leave pot stickers in the Instant Pot for 4 minutes instead of 3 minutes, we get a different texture. It's noticeable enough where we have had actual discussions about how long to cook things in the Instant Pot.

I remember as we were legitimately having that discussion, I was reminded of my parents and their cook time discussions. I couldn't help but laugh at myself. No escupas al cielo, indeed.