A Japanese hot pot with an elevator inside is just what we need to make it through winter【Video】

A clever solution to one of the biggest hassles of eating hot pot.

When winter reaches out with its icy fingers to chill your bones and darken your mood, you’ll find few allies more reliable than some delicious Japanese-style hot pot. But while a meal of sukiyaki or chanko nabe can help you get full and warm, sometimes the path from pot to stomach isn’t so smooth.

First, let’s clear up exactly what makes hot pot different from other soups or stews. Generally, the key factor is that you cook hot pot at the table, plucking freshly cooked morsels to pop into your mouth just seconds after pulling them from the pot.

The problem, though, is that you can’t always easily find the type of morsel you want. Hot pots tend to have all sorts of ingredients; meats, seafood, vegetables, noodles. Sometimes what you’re craving for your next bite, though, has sunk to the bottom of the pot, so you have to wait and wait until you’ve eaten your way down there, but by that time the elusive piece of food might be overcooked.

So to solve that problem, Japanese cooking gadget company Thanko is offering a pot with an elevator inside of it.

Called the Electric Lift Grill Pot, the pot’s control panel doesn’t just allow you to adjust heat levels and cooking modes, but also to raise or lower the non-liquid portion of your hot pot. That way you can get to what you want, when you want it.

▼ The Electric Lift Grill Pot in action

As the “electric” part of the name indicates, there’s no sorcery involved here, just a very clever design. From the outside, the pot may look like a simple one-piece construction, but it’s actually made up of two components: a two-liter (68-ounce) pot and a colander inside of it. The colander is gripped by an arm that rises over the outside of the pot’s rim that lets you raise or lower it, bringing everything in the basket up closer to you while the broth strains through and stays in the pot.

The pot can be removed from the base for washing, and if you somehow get tired of hot pot, you can also use the device as a steamer, pasta pot, or rice cooker.

The Electric Lift Grill Pot is priced at 7,980 yen (US$77) and can be ordered through Thanko’s online store here.

Source: Thanko via IT Media
Images: Thanko
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