Had a family bbq the other day (mid autumn festival) and needed to make mashed potatoes, ran out of stove space to boil a bag of potatoes.

... But guests arriving within an hour and still need to light up the charcoal grill 🫠

"Why don't you use the rice cooker?"

The Tatung electric cooker is a kitchen appliance from the 1960s, it has one switch but it has a million use cases, not just rice. No smart recipe buttons, no fans, no thermal sensors, no gaskets or valves, the appliance just an electric heating element controlled by a resistor wrapped around stainless steel. It is arguably the most versatile appliance in any Taiwanese Kitchen, built to last decades.

Chucked in a couple handfuls of rinsed potatoes into a large bowl that could fit, set the bowl onto wire stand off, poured 550ml water to the outer bowl. Turned on the 20 year old 1000W appliance and forgot it, by the time I came back the switch had popped off for quite some time, the potatoes were still hot and steamed perfectly, could mash the potatoes straight in the bowl using only a fork, some warm milk and butter, salt/pepper, toasted garlic, took more time overall than boiling but it came out great 😋

These days the tatung electronic cooker may not seem so impressive, despite having no microcontrollers it is still a piece of precision engineering. Steam time is determined by the amount of water that is added to the outer bowl, and the time is consistent because the lid keeps circulating heat in and let's out steam evenly (latent heat vaporization)

perhaps the smart appliances are the dumb ones 🤭

Grab one today for about ~275,000 sats. In the past this appliance was one of Taiwan's greatest exports, comparable to ASICs today