The Instant Pot lets you program up to 24-hours in advance and has quite a few options pre-programmed for easy use.Įnergy Efficient: Like a slow-cooker the heat source is electric and built in so it doesn’t require a separate gas or electric stove and is more energy efficient. Since it cooks so quickly, I sometimes don’t need to start cooking a recipe as soon as I put it in the Instant Pot but I want to have it ready to go. Programmable: This is one advantage of the Instant Pot over regular pressure cookers and most slow-cookers. I found mine 50% off on sale here, and it has definitely already paid for itself in space and time savings. Good Price Point: While the Instant Pot does cost more than most single-use kitchen appliances like slow-cookers and rice-cookers, it is cost-effective if you use it to replace one or more of these other gadgets. This is tremendously helpful on days that we aren’t home during the day and I need to prepare a meal quickly at night (or days that I forget to defrost food until the afternoon or to put food in the slow-cooker in the morning). It can cook a slow-cooker recipe that takes 6-8 hours in just an hour and I can even prepare a roast for dinner in about 40 minutes. Time Saving: This is perhaps the biggest benefit I noticed right away with the Instant Pot. I could see an electric pressure cooker like this one being especially helpful for anyone with a small kitchen as it could replace several other kitchen appliances. Replace the Slow Cooker: The Instant Pot has largely replaced our slow-cooker and I’m considering even getting rid of the Crock-Pot completely since the Instant Pot works more quickly and often provides better results. I certainly can’t see the Instant Pot replacing my oven and stove, but it definitely could if I ever needed it to if one of those appliances broke. I’ve even had friends tell me that they now use the Instant Pot so often that they rarely use their stove and oven. Multi-Use: As a multi-use gadget it could conceivably replace a slow-cooker, rice-cooker, sauté-pan, and steamer. While parts of the exterior are plastic or other materials, these do not come in contact with the food and there is no Teflon or non-stick surface. Instant Pot: The ProsĪll Stainless Interior: Unlike most electric pressure cookers, the Instant Pot has a fully stainless-steel interior so this is the only part that touches the food. It has quickly become one of my favorite kitchen tools and now I use it often. The Instant Pot met my criteria of being multiple-use so I decided to give it a try. In my quest to simplify life, I decided to only keep kitchen appliances that serve more than one purpose. In essence, it is a fancy electric pressure cooker but it does this job exceptionally well. Instant Pot advertises that it is a single kitchen appliance that does the work of seven kitchen gadgets, including a rice-cooker, yogurt-maker, steamer and pressure cooker. Our family uses it mostly as a basic pressure cooker and I now make many of my slow-cooker recipes in the Instant Pot instead (…a fast cooker?). It definitely isn’t our grandparent’s stove-top pressure cooker!Īlthough I’ve had one for a while, I haven’t even tried all of the uses for it yet. In short, it is an electric, programmable pressure cooker with a lot of extra functionality. So, this review is for all of those “holdouts” because I promise you… it will change your life! What Is an Instant Pot? While it may feel like everyone in the world owns an Instant Pot now based on Instagram or social media, according to the most recent stats I could find (2018), only about 12% of households own one. One appliance that has definitely earned its place on the list is the Instant Pot.

In fact, our kitchen now has a simple assortment of unusual appliances and tools that we use every day. Over the last few years, I’ve been simplifying and reducing the tools and appliances in our kitchen and only keeping the ones we use often.

Instant pot