Bad Design of Pressure Cooker Utensils, and a Design Solution

It must have been pure complacency/indifference on my part that I pulled myself to write this critique after seeing this for at least five decades. Stove-top pressure cookers became the disruptive cooking technology in India in the 1960s and that is when I recall my family acquired one as well. The cooker came with stackable stainless steel utensils, as shown stacked above that you could stack up to three tiers to contain different ingredients (such as rice, lentils, vegetables).

My epiphany from unloading our dishwasher this morning was that protrusion near the bottom of the utensil to seat it properly on top of another - causes a crevice on the inside that doesn't lend itself to cleaning. This is illustrated in the cross-sectional view below:

One design solution that can alleviate the problems in the above is shown below.

I am sure good mechanical engineers can come up with many more designs that combine human factors with manufacturability.