1d ago

Pressure Cooker Failure

Went to the emergency room yesterday after the InstaPot blew up on me. Just 1st degree burns and some awesome drugs. Bandages off today, a little tender but not bad.

Burns are my belly and my arm wrist to elbow including my thumb.

Totally worth the $250 copay going in!

PS: My wife was making soup and said the lid was steaming from the sides a bit. The pressure release valve wasn't releasing pressure in either position and the lock plunger wasn't doing anything. I figured no pressure so I'd just tighten it right and boom. Scary for a bit and hurt like hell for an hour. Lucky me for sure!

All I kept thinking is my granddaughter would have been standing there if she was over. So we're getting rid of the pressure cooker. The risk isn't with the convenience.

34 comments

I don't exactly understand what went wrong here, and now I'm scared of this happening to me some day.
How was the pressure valve not releasing pressure in either position if the pot was pressurized?
What is a lock-plunger? My Instant Pot's locking mechanism is a physical barrier that prevents the lid from lifting upwards once you rotate the lid 45 degrees clockwise. If you don't engage this locking position the electronics will complain and refuse to start heating.
I'm guessing the pressure release valve must have been clogged (overfilled with soup?), but how was OP able to turn the lid at all while under pressure? It must have taken a lot of strength, unless the there was also an imperfect seal around the lid's gasket, in which case, oof.
Either way, glad there were no serious injuries.
- https://what-if.xkcd.com/40/
- All good questions, I've since looked closely at the InstaPot and everything looks fine. My wife may have over filled it but she isn't sure.
  It's about 8 years old and that might be part of it but if a device like this has a shelf life of reliable functionality there should be mechanisms in place to see least notify me if not prevent its use.
  My best guess at this point is my wife didn't have the lid on right and for some reason the InstaPot decided it was good enough and went with it and just touching the lid was enough for the pressure to overcome the faulty connection.
  Either way it sucks ass.
My mother's story of my great grandmother making split pea soup in a pressure cooker only for it to explode and take off the entire hood range means I avoid pressure everything for my entire life.
She now regrets that story cause it means I only do water bath canning and not pressure canning lol
- I just put my pressure cooker on the back deck when I use it. No worries if it blows up back there.
  
  That almost seems worse …… at least on the stove you are off to the side but now I’m picturing leaning down to pick it up and getting a face full of steel lid with a geyser of superheated split pea soup
  
  Until you are walking up to it when it goes off.
Even though this isn't dull I'll allow it because you're reporting a near miss, which is an important part of safety.
- Very much so, and thank you.
Pressure cookers have been blowing up for decades.
When the safety valve did nothing the thing to do was unplug it. My lab uses these pots as autoclaves for the last 6 years with no issues at all 2-3x a day.
- Yup, what I should have done.
Well that doesn’t sound dull at all.
- The end result is pretty dull, no scars. Looks like a mild sunburn on oddly specific areas.
Glad you knky ended up with minor burns, boiling water is scary stuff! Getting rid of the thing is probably the right call, I'm sure you can work around not having it.
- For sure, just time and a bit of planning with a crockpot.
  
  Always preferable to skin grafts
This is a user issue, not a failure of the pressure cooker.
- No, if the safety systems can fail like that for any reason it is the fault of the pressure cooker. Unless he intentionally broke the safety systems, or one of the systems was already known to be faulty and he continued to use it. It can never be acceptable for safety systems to fail.
  
  Safe procedure is to let the pressure cooker cool down before trying to open it. Especially if the “release valve wasn’t working in any position”.
  1000% on the user here
- A little of both, really. It shouldn’t have steam coming out of the sides and the release valves should release. I have one. It doesn’t seal well unless I push down on the lid for a bit. The float valve never seems to work properly.
  That said, if I saw steam coming out of the sides I would just unplug it and step away.
  
  What I should have done. But I wouldn't have this awesome story to share...
  Oh and I forgot the winner of the evening was Rosie, one of our dogs. She immediately went to clean up mode...
- I don't disagree...
Yeah I basically just use mine as a slow cooker and yogurt maker. Probably would have been better for me** to just get a dirt cheap crockpot that could be put on a dimmer.
EDIT: clarified that I wasn't telling OP what they should have done, I was saying what I probably should have done instead of getting an instapot.
- Sure, the solution is buy cheaper hardware.
- For sure and what we'll be doing going forward.

34 comments