Buy Instant Pot Pressure Cooker Australia
While our mothers and grandmothers were comfortable using a stovetop pressure cooker, most women of this generation are intimidated by the hissing and potential safety issues. Because of this, pressure cooking fell out of favor for a while. All that has changed with the arrival of the Instant Pot.
buy instant pot pressure cooker australia
Traditional pressure cookers have safety features built in, but the newest generation of electric pressure cookers, like the Instant Pot, are designed with a slew of self-regulating safety features that make them safer to use than ever.
The Instant Pot Crisp adds the air fryer functionality to the Instant Pot pressure cooker, so you can do both with just one appliance. There are actually 4 different models available for the Crisp, which I think might be going away soon.
Check out our sister site, A Pressure Cooker Kitchen, for all things Instant Pot. We help you find easy-to-make, delicious Instant Pot recipes to get the most out of your pressure cooker. See our recipes, guides, and information to help you get started.
I cooked a beef stew with baby carrots, onions, mushrooms, and beef shin, putting all of the ingredients in the pot along with spices, a can of beef broth, and a bottle of dark lager. I twisted the lid on, entered my cooking preferences (one hour and 30 minutes cooking at high pressure, then pulse venting), and set it to cook. The Instant Pot turned on with a beep and spent about 20 minutes preheating and reaching the right pressure level before the timer began. 90 minutes later, the cooking stopped and it began to vent in loud, hissing bursts that startled my cat. The sound is normal for quickly venting pressure cookers, even if Pixel (my cat) hates it. The stew came out perfectly.
After I clamped the lid on, I set the Instant Pot to pressure cook for an hour and 30 minutes and then to vent with natural venting. Again, it took about 20 minutes to reach the correct temperature and pressure, then another 90 minutes to cook. Naturally venting took another 20 minutes or so; I let the air leak out slowly through the valve instead of fully opening it. A soft mechanical pop indicated that the process was complete. The chili turned out just as well as the stew, and the result was comparable with a non-smart Instant Pot and a slow cooker that requires a longer cooking time.
Start by considering the different cooking methods offered by the best Instant Pots and multi-cookers, and the dishes you prepare most. While some offer a handful of cooking modes including pressure cooking and slow cooking, others including the Instant Pot Duo Evo Plus have as many as 48 different ways of cooking and can do everything including proving bread and making yogurt.
As the name suggests, multi cookers excel at more than one kind of cooking. You can use them as slow cookers or pressure cookers, as soup makers or rice cookers, as yogurt makers or steamers. Some can even do ultra-slow sous-vide cooking, while others have smart lids which mean you can use them as air fryers too.
Whatever your culinary needs might be, we've tested a variety of multi cookers, pressure cookers and the best instant pots to determine which ones are most worth your money and will suit your needs. Below you'll find a variety of suggestions with numerous applications and which will appeal to a variety of budgets, so there's sure to be a perfect fit for you to discover.
Instant Pot's entry-level multi-cooker is just as effective when pressure cooking, slow cooking, steaming or making yogurt as the more expensive Instant Pot models, but with a more affordable price. With this being the case, it's not only our pick for the best Instant Pot for those on a budget but the best Instant Pot, period.
More compact and lightweight than other Instant Pots, the Duo V2 7-in-1 electric pressure cooker has 13 cooking modes, and true to its name, the Instant Pot speeds up lengthy cooking times (although not quite as quickly as some of its older siblings). The hotter or higher pressure that you cook food at, the longer you'll need to wait for the pressure to reduce in the pan.
The pressure cooker and slow cooker have three settings (less, normal and more) allowing you to adjust the degree of cooking, but it may require a bit of trial and error. In fact, all the smart programs have three temperature settings.
We assess the performance of multi-cookers by cooking chilli shredded beef and lamb shanks on both slow and pressure cooker settings. We look for good flavour development, rich and fully flavoured sauce, tender beans and meat that falls apart. We also cook rice using the pressure cook function.
The Max's design also eliminates the need to fiddle with a manual steam valve on the pressure cooker's lid. The Max's valve system is fully automatic, which means it will adjust itself based on which option you select to release steam:
It might just be putting food into glass jars, but home canning can get complicated. Instant Pot wants to help you out with the addition of the Max's Canning program. But there has been some disparity between recommendations from the USDA and Instant Pot about whether electric pressure cookers can get hot enough (between 240 and 250 degrees Fahrenheit) to destroy potentially deadly bacteria inside canned food. This is especially important when you can low-acid foods like fresh vegetables and meat.
During testing, we didn't see the faster cooking times that the Max's higher pressure was supposed to bring. In fact, the Max's overall cook times were longer than we've seen with other electric pressure cookers. It also took longer to cool down and lower its internal pressure through natural release.
The good news is that the Max needed only 60 minutes of pressurized cook time to properly handle my 2.8-pound hunk of brisket flat. The bad news is that the Max had to cool down for 40 minutes and 23 seconds until pressure inside the pot dissipated completely. This, plus a preheat time of a little less than 11 minutes, brought the total cook time to one hour and 49 minutes. That's not much faster than what the $100 Black & Decker 6 Quart pressure cooker required to pull off the same feat (one hour, 56 minutes).
Unfortunately, the beans weren't completely cooked during any of the tests. The 30-minute test had the most favorable results, but the total time these beans spent in the cooker (which includes preheat, cooking and natural pressure release) came to 1 hour and 11 minutes.
Cooking rice in the Instant Pot Max went well enough. After 32 minutes of total cook time (including 13 minutes for natural release), our 2 cups of long grain white rice were ready. We opted for our usual (and Instant Pot-recommended) water to rice ratio of 1:1, and the texture was just sticky enough with a pleasing amount of chew. That's comparable to results from other pressure cooker models such as the Duo 6 Quart and the Lux 6-in-1.
The Instant Pot made tasty chili thanks to its stainless-steel pot and high temperatures that help bring out the flavor in cooked meats. Our test recipe isn't complex -- just kidney beans, supermarket ground chuck, onions, garlic, tomatoes and spices. The Max doesn't have a dedicated chili preset cooking mode like the Crock-Pot Express pressure cooker, so we once again had to use the manual "pressure cook" setting. Still, after a total cook time of 1 hour and 43 minutes, the batch of chili we made was outstanding. Deep, rich and full of flavor, it almost made us forgive the Max for spending 43 minutes in natural release mode.
The Instant Pot Max had a lot of promise thanks to new features we hadn't previously seen on other electric pressure cookers from Instant Pot and other manufacturers. The automatic pressure release valve is a smart addition, as is the Max's easy-to-use control panel. But the bright sides are few and far between when you consider all that the Max promised and failed to do, especially when you consider its $200 price. The Max took longer to cook basic foods. It's missing some helpful preset cooking modes. And two features that could have been standouts -- the sous vide and canning functions -- weren't as reliable as we needed them to be. Rather than the Max, you'd be better off buying a cheaper, older Instant Pot model.
Senior staff writer Lesley Stockton and staff writer Anna Perling have seven years of combined experience covering electric pressure cookers. Lesley has worked in professional kitchens for over 20 years and has reviewed more than 20 electric pressure cookers and stovetop pressure cookers for Wirecutter since 2016. Anna updated the pressure cooker guide in 2019 with an additional 20 hours of testing and has covered kitchen gear for Wirecutter for three years. 041b061a72