Is The Instant Pot Worth It? | Gear Heads

i'm just gonna make it sing a little song for me [Music] for decades slow cookers have been a staple in our kitchens acting like little automated grandmas cooking in the background over the course of a few hours however if you've been on the internet anytime in the last five years you've probably heard of instant pot the wildly popular multi-cooker that can pressure cook slow cook sear and more the question is do you really need one of these fancy shiny new instant pots or will the little old grandma slow cooker still do just fine hannah and i are going to cook the same recipe in our winning instant pot and our winning slow cooker so you can decide for yourself i'll go first let's check out the slow cooker [Music] slow cookers are basically electric pots some have heating elements around the outside some have heating elements underneath they can be really nice and cozy you know there's something very satisfying i still remember a ski trip where my friend threw a bunch of ingredients in the crock pot before we went out we got back and there was like homemade warm chili and it was like the most satisfying thing so they can be really cool in that way we went into our testing with a couple parameters we love glass lids that's one thing it was a must-have on our list every time you lift the lid of a slow cooker you release heat and you slow down the cooking progress these things already take a long time to cook so with a glass lid you can just peek through to check the status you don't need to worry about releasing heat slowing everything down a glass lid will keep you nice and true to your recipe times which is always useful the other parameter was an oval shape we love an oval shape it's a capacity thing you know you can lay rib racks down you can do whole chickens you can just do more in an oval shape than you can in a round shape the third criteria was size we like six to seven quart models and that is also a capacity thing we've also tested mini and small slow cookers and those are great too but we think if you're just going to choose one a six to seven quart size gives you the most flexibility in what you can make with those parameters in mind we found eight models priced from 40 bucks all the way up to 140 we cooked super delicate boneless skinless chicken breasts which is something you know they could take like an hour and a half and then we cooked bone whole turkey breasts which is sort of a mid-range thing something around four hours and then we also did big pot roasts you know which is something that can cook for seven to eight hours some of the models we tested were not good not at all you know some of them cooked really unevenly some of them had hot spots cold spots others really heated up too hot and boiled the food so our winter here got food within the safe temperature range within two hours which is great it heated it up quickly enough for safety but then it didn't go too far it didn't heat beyond that into boiling the food and a couple of the models did you know you can really get uh tough meats um when you overcook things like that our winner here kept things at a braze so well for two reasons one it had insulation inside you know some of these were just very thin walls but this one is relatively low powered with insulation so it was able to cook nice and gently and evenly that insulation helped keep the heat in and it didn't have to be super powerful to get that nice brace the second thing was an intelligent temperature sensor so this thing has basically a second layer of brains in there that keeps the temperature in check it keeps it from going too hot so you weren't we weren't boiling things if it gets too hot you know it'll shut it off and it'll keep it below a certain limit they had a couple other features that we really liked i mean if you look at this interface here it's so simple it is telling you exactly what it's doing you know i cook you know i can select low high start enter the time it's very clean very clear you know exactly what's going on slow cooking is an exercise in delayed gratification this has been cooking for like five hours but i've been off doing other things you know i've been cleaning my house i've been working and meanwhile grandma over here has been cooking away my house smells amazing this pork looks like it's about done but i really started this project hours ago i cut up pork into two inch chunks i had some orange peels more zest and some orange juice cut an onion in half and a bunch of herbs and spices tossed it all together and i really just started this which was so easy so turn it on power select the temperature low medium or high and then i set the amount of time you know and this took about it's about five hours now so super easy very different than an instant pot and multi-cookers in general they often have literally 20 to 30 buttons and we're talking dials and arrows there's a lot going on they do a lot so there's a lot of controls this is a simple machine it's slow cooked i think it's ready so i'm gonna take a look at the pork there is a bit of variation in slow cooker so you always want to make sure you know try it first before you call it done um but here we go beautiful absolutely fork tender it's gonna make delicious tacos but i'm curious to see how lisa is doing over there with our winning instant pot let's check it out so instant pots or multi-cookers are basically electric pressure cookers there's two kinds of pressure cookers one that goes on your stovetop and then there's this one which is a self-contained unit stovetop pressure cookers your grandmother used to be great grandmother used them but newer models are really safe they have lots of valves that release pressure if there's any kind of problem they will shut down basically because it's a tightly sealed pot when it's heated up the boiling point actually rises above 212 degrees fahrenheit so you can go up to 250 degrees for high pressure and that actually just makes the food cook faster and because it's a sealed pot you're not boiling an open stockpot or something there's much less evaporation so you use a little bit less liquid and it all stays in the pot flavors concentrate everything cooks very quickly meat tenderizes grains and beans cook very very fast and very evenly and really it's a great system for cooking because you get results much quicker we recently tested a bunch of new models of instant pot and all its many rivals we tested 13 models and they priced from about 77 to about 250 each we've looked at two sizes eight quart and six quart and we actually came to the conclusion that our favorite pot was this one by instant pot it's the duo evo plus i have the six quart size here in front of me we found that you can do most recipes in the six quart size as well as the eight quart size although we slightly prefer an eight quart six is fine so we've done several rounds of testing of multi cookers over the years i think i did the first one about 10 years ago and we've updated ever since this one is our favorite and it really represents a step forward for the multi-cooker device because it has a few functions that we really love one is this one can actually slow cook a lot of the older ones were fine on pressure cooking they weren't that good at slow cooking this one does a great job at both slow cooking and pressure cooking so it's kind of an all-in-one you don't really need that slow cooker hannah the other thing it does really well is that it reaches its high pressure temperature a little faster than all the other ones this one came in at least five minutes faster than the second fastest multi-cooker which is great because it means it's going to get to the point of pressure cooking sooner we also found that the display was really easy to read and understand it was very clear and that's helpful because some of these have like a thousand buttons and it's not really clear what they want you to do or what they're doing and they weren't easy to customize for your own recipes so they had some presets but say you wanted to follow a recipe that you found that calls for specific time or temperature or pressure setting this lets you do that it also keeps the food warm afterward the other things that we really love about it is that it has this great switch on the top for releasing pressure in the past you always had to like push on the device where the steam is coming out either with your hand or a spoon or something this keeps the steam and your hand a little bit separate which is always a good thing it has a stainless steel pot inside which we love because no nonstick to worry about you don't have to worry about that wearing off or chipping or peeling away um it's not going to change and degrade over time so as the appliance lasts so does the pot this one as you could also see had handles that is a big deal most of these pots in the past are little thin aluminum pots with non-stick no handles they're set down in the cooker and when you go to take them out say you're going to take the food out there was almost nothing to grab with potholders and they would spin around while you're stirring and sauteing in them these handles are locked in place they're sticking out of the pot they're covered with silicone and they're nice and cool even when the pot is hot so all of these things represent some nice steps forward in multi-cooker land and this is the instant pot duo evo plus so you want to look for those words duo evo plus there is a duo pot by instant pot it's not the same one it's not as good as this one the one thing that we were a little bit disappointed with this pot was that the sous-vide function was not very accurate it was off just enough so that we actually overcooked things a little bit and that was not satisfying to us so we think you still need a separate sous-vide advice but in in everything else we loved this cooker and it was really a step forward hannah and i both made our recipe for shredded pork soft tacos she did it in her slow cooker i did it in the instant pot our winner um this is really quick in the instant pot i mean you're cubing up the pork and then you're just adding some flavorings like two halves of an onion orange juice an orange zest oregano a bay leaf it's very quick it's a dump and stir kind of recipe you put it all in there you turn it on you set it for high pressure for 25 minutes 25 minutes not four hours not six hours not 9 hours 25 minutes at the end of 25 minutes which goes by is pretty fast um this basically will start out preheating and it indicates right here it'll say preheating in the front and then when it clicks over to press full pressure um you'll see a few things one the steam that's gently rising out of the steam valve here on top will disappear and the little red indicator valve that the high pressure is on will go up and it will switch over to cooking and the timer that you set whatever amount of time you need i had 25 minutes will start counting down and you basically will it will cook for the 25 minutes once it's hit full pressure and then it will stop and it will switch over to keep warm now you have two options with a pressure cooker at that point you can either quick release the pressure which just means letting out all the steam at that point and stopping the pressure in the pot or you could do what's called a natural release where you just leave it and it will over about 15 or 20 minutes gradually cool down and the pressure will release itself naturally so quick release you stop the cooking natural release you beat it this natural releases for 15 minutes and then you quick release any pressure that's left which just means you're flipping this little switch on the top the last little bit of steam will go out the indicator will drop down and that means you can open your pot and take out your food now at that point in this recipe you see chunks of pork they're very very tender they're very moist and they're simmering in a sauce that basically is created from a very small amount of liquid that you've added and the juices from the pork and you're going to let this cook down you see you switch over to the saute function and it will just simmer and reduce and concentrate that that liquid until it's coating the pork and it's all in there and it's really delicious and then you're just going to toss it around and saute it a little bit on the bottom of the pot just to brown up little edges and crisp it up at that point it's tender it's moist it's shreddable and you're done and it's all happened within you know 40 minutes maybe stop start to finish you're not spending hours waiting for that meat to tenderize it's beautiful moist fall apart tender and just flakes it's amazing so right now it's it's sitting here on on warm and i'm going to open it up the little song kills me this is amazing and beautiful it's shredded apart into gorgeous meat that is just flavorful and tender and wow so i'm going to plate some tortillas i have them in our favorite tortilla warmer by emusa i made these from scratch and kept them warm in here it's great because it's insulated and keeps them just the right texture and there it is beautiful soft tacos with shredded pork from our book multi cooker perfection and the recipe is given both for slow cookers and also for multi-cookers so you can decide if you want to cook it fast or slow i'm a big fan of these things i love this instant pot and i like the ability to cook things quickly and really flavorfully as we've shown our winning slow cooker made you know delicious pulled pork it does a really good job it's got that big heavy duty ceramic crock that heats very gently and evenly it's got a really clean interface it's super simple to operate it tells you exactly what it's doing all the time it's got nice audible alerts we love that about it but overall if you're in the market for a new piece of equipment we do think that you should get an instant pot you know we've tested multi-cookers or electric pressure cookers for a long time almost a decade and really in the past they never really could do the slow cooking it was always something that they just fell down on the pressure cooking aspect you know we love basically we love that it has uses very little liquid it seals the pot and it's very intensely flavored um and very easy and very fast you don't have to think six or seven hours ahead the way you do with the slow cooker you can really do a whole meal and something that would take many hours in just about an hour so that's always a great thing this latest model though really nailed the slow cooking and that really made it great because you know you don't need two separate appliances anymore yeah it's really the next generation of them and i have to say the ability to sear in the pot then seal it up and cook i mean it's amazing how many dishes that saves and you know i think you can really get burnt out on cooking especially right now and these times and this really um it's like a little sous chef for me in my kitchen i the fewer dishes that i have to do the better and i think a good multi-cooker like our winning instant pot really really helps there we both know slow cookers have a few things going for them they're great at parties you can put them out on a buffet with some meatballs or keep your mashed potatoes warm on the holidays but you know for me i like the speed i like the convenience of the pressure cooker a little bit more and now that they can also slow cook i'm moving on yeah i am too so for more information about all the equipment we talked about check out the links below and make sure to ask us all of your instant pot multi-cooker slow cooker questions in the comments and hit that subscribe button

Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 534,779

Keywords: americas test kitchen, cooks country, cooks illustrated, equipment reviews, gear heads, how to, insta pot, instant pot, instant pot cooking, instant pot for beginners, instant pot recipe, instant pot recipes, instant pot tips, kitchen equipment, lisa childs, multicooker, pressure cooker, pressure cooking, six sisters instant pot, slow cooker, slow cooker recipes, tried tested and true

Id: dGLX40ge4zQ

Length: 16min 44sec (1004 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 11 2020