Description
- RETHINK THE WAY YOU COOK WITH THE INSTANT POT DUO PLUS WHISPERQUIET – step away from the hob and cook smarter with the Whisper Quiet. The easiest pressure cooker to use yet: cook faster and easier.
- ANY MEAL, COOK FAST OR COOK SLOW – perfect porridge and boiled eggs in 4 minutes, one pot pastas and soups in 5 minutes, stews slow cooked all day or pressure cooked fast – and so much more.
- HANDS-OFF COOKING – Choose a function and set the time, press start, and let the Instant Pot do all the work for you, with handy alerts and progress bar letting you know when your meal is ready.
- ULTIMATE ONE POT MEALS IN ONE HANDY APPLIANCE – Say goodbye to saucepans, frying pans and other cooking dishes, and do all the steps in your Instant Pot which is easy to clean and dishwasher safe.
- TAKE ALL THE WORRY AWAY FROM PRESSURE COOKING – our easiest smart cooker with seal locking lid and remote switch for a whisper quiet steam release.
- SIMPLE TO USE – choose from 25 smart customisable cooking programs, with step-by-step instructions and cooking progress bar letting you know exactly what’s going on in the pot.
- FEED UP TO 6 PEOPLE WITH ITS SPECIOUS 6-PORTION CAPACITY – perfect for easy weekday meals, family dinners, entertaining and meal prepping with an abundance of recipes to chose from on the Instant app.
| Model | 112-3079-01-UK |
| Color | Black |
| Release Date | 2023-09-30T00:00:01Z |
| Size | 5.7 Litres |
ClockworkSatan –
“Sooo… These Instant Pot things… Are they really as good as everyone says they are? Do they really cook things much more quickly than ‘normal’ cooking does, and are they safe?”
If the words above sum up how you’re feeling at the moment and you’re reading review after review from Instant Pot owners (mostly) saying that they’re the bees knees and have revolutionised their kitchen, but still need some convincing – come along with me and I’ll lead you skipping and grinning down the path to Instant Pot ownership. Well, ok, you don’t have to skip or grin – I’m not gonna pressure you.
I only just became the proud new owner of an Instant Pot on Monday and cooked my first meal in it yesterday, which has been an absolute revelation – and I’ll tell you why; it’s all about the motherflippin’ LENTILS, baby! You know how it can take an absolute age for lentils to get soft when they’re boiled in a conventional pot-on-hob situation? Well, I was looking through recipes to try in my Instant Pot and discovered that it was apparently possible to make a lentil dhal in just 20 minutes in one of them – so that was me utterly convinced that I needed to give it a shot.
Now, before I go any further, I should explain that until yesterday I’d never once cooked anything in a pressure cooker so I was totally in uncharted territory. I’d always read that pressure cookers were noisy, dangerous and terrifying things, so it was not without a little trepidation that I followed the instructions to do the first pressure test to make sure my IP was working as it should. This simply involved popping some water into the inner pot, closing the pressure valve and turning the gadget on for a few minutes. As the pressure built inside the pot, it obviously started to make some noise – there’s a valve on the lid that closes once enough pressure has built up, and until it does that there’s some hissing noise (which I found mildly unsettling initially), but once it closes, all you can hear is a gentle bubbling noise from inside the pot. Now, the most unsettling thing to a noob pressure cooker user is that in order to get to the culinary delights cooking inside the Instant Pot, you need to release the pressure via the valve on the top of its lid. This causes a fair bit of noise and clouds of super-hot steam to erupt from the valve so you need to be careful – thankfully, you get a couple of utensils (a small spoon/ladle and a rice paddle) with the IP that have holes in their handles that can be used to open the valve safely.
Back to those lentils, I set about following that recipe to make the dhal, and used the IP’s handy saute function to fry up the onions and garlic, and it was then a simple case of adding the lentils, spices and seasoning to the pot with some water to make the steam, and to then turn it on at high pressure for ten minutes. In some recipes it will ask you to do a NPR (natural pressure release) for a length of time, and in this case, I left it for ten minutes before opening the valve. What I ended up with was the most delicious home-made dhal I’ve ever had – waaay better than any I’ve attempted in the past – and cooked far more quickly than I would ever have thought possible.
I attempted another recipe for a Brocolli pasta concoction last night which went a wee bit squiffy – which was my own fault for deviating from the recipe instructions, leaving me with a pot full of mostly uncooked pasta. A quick blast in the microwave fixed that, but the pasta sauce was delicious. The interesting thing about cooking with the IP is that the food from it seems to be far more intensely flavoured than usual – and this has a lot to do with the fact that cooking via pressure causes the flavours to permeate right through everything. Another good plus is that food retains far more of its nutritious value as it doesn’t escape via the steam as per conventional cooking.
The only downside I’m probably going to find – as with any new cooking gadget – is that there may be a few culinary disasters before I crack the techniques of cooking under pressure, but that’s to be expected and won’t be any fault of the pot itself.
Summing up, I’d say that I’m completely bowled away by the Instant Pot. The high praise for it is not unwarranted, and I’m desperately excited about trying out more stuff in it – you can cook cheesecakes, dried beans and pulses cook ridiculously quickly (no more soaking for hours, yay!) and it seemingly makes cooking these days with our busy lives far more convenient as you can use one pot to do everything. Of course, it doesn’t completely replace the oven and hob – you can’t bake, fry or grill in it – but there are a heap of accessories for it that will make making soups, stews and all sorts of other things in it quick, simple and mess-free.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner.
>>>UPDATE
I’ve had a few more bashes at cooking recipes in my IP and the results have been mostly good, but I’ve hit a few problems; but these are all part of the learning process. The problem I’ve had is getting the food to water balance right; if there’s not enough water or the consistency of the liquid in the pot is too thick, it will display ‘BURN’ once it has come to pressure as the temperature sensors on the bottom of the pot detect that it’s became too hot. This effectively cancels the cooking process, so I’ve had to release the pressure, add more water and then try again. I have however managed to cook a saag aloo, a beautiful butternut squash pasta recipe and last night I cooked an amazingly tasty lentil chilli. Two out of those three ended up displaying the ‘Burn’ message at some point.
This exemplifies the learning curve with the Instant Pot, but don’t let that put you off – when things go right it utterly outstanding!
>>>ANOTHER UPDATE
I’ve now had my Instant Pot for nearly a year now and it’s probably fair to say that I’m definitely getting the hang of it. One of the most useful aspects of the Instant Pot is that it makes cooking large batches of food really simple a quick. Every Sunday now, I end up cooking a huge amount of butternut squash and cauliflower curry to have for lunch for the whole week, and I’ve absolutely cracked the process now. I cook up a big batch of brown rice first, which cooks in 22 minutes, put it to one side and then cook the curry before dumping the rice into it. It seriously makes food prep simple as I can chop up all of the ingredients for the curry while the rice is cooking – so it feels super-efficient.
User –
does the job perfectly, important to have that size. slight improvement if the pot is completely stick free; but it is doing very well for a non coated (still easy to clean).
Swedenmom –
My 80 year old Pop loves the size and function on this model. Led is white so he can see it! Wonderful for one person cooking.!
Customer –
I’ve only had this pressure cooker for a couple of weeks, but have fallen in love with it. As long as you use it for the right things, it’s absolutely great.
Do be aware that the cooking timings quoted do not include the time taken to come to pressure. For example, cooking 2kg of potatoes for mashing took a total of 32 minutes from start to finish on an 8 minute programme. I did use a little more water than was necessary so I could knocked of a couple of minutes.
The sauté function actually works really well, which I did not expect given the low-ish 1kW power rating. I’m a fan of gas cooking and like the instant fierce heat available, but frying off the onions for a corned beef hash worked well. The corned beef hash was a little quicker than cooking on the stove and massively more convenient. Boiling the water for the stock and putting it into an already hot pot meant it came to pressure very quickly and cooked the potatoes though in 5 minute.
One thing that can bite you in the bum is a thick sauce — I tried a chicken chasseur using the pressure function but the sauce was too thick and and the cycle stopped with the message BURNT on the display. I salvaged the situation by switching to slow-cook.
Cooking rice is interesting. My method on the stove is one part rice to just under two parts water and it always works, at least for white basmati. The methods for pressure cooking rice call for a 1:1 or 1:1.25 rice:water ratio which seemed to me to be insane … but it works.
I haven’t even got round to cooking chickpeas, which is one of the main reasons I bought it. I nailed a really nice Chana Curry recipe on the stove, but it takes six hours to cook. The only reason I haven’t tried it yet is because I understand that the the silicone gasket can absorb strong flavours.
All in all very impressed and wish I bought one years ago!
hase4711 –
trigger warning: I am an engineer, That shapes my perspective on things and life.
I love this thing (got the 3l “mini” version).
It is super practical because of the timer functions: preparing, coocking and eating can be separated. That alone would be well worth the buy.
Also it is super versatile. Why some cheaper remakes of this idea do not have the slow cook and yoghurt functions I will never understand.
But what drives me from “satisfied customer” to “loving it” is the details.
The “smart” programs have timer functions and settings. And the electronic controller simply remembers the last settings used (for each program separately).
That is a wonderful detail, with pretty much any other device you will need to go throug the same settings every time you use it (e.g. set the timer).
This detail alone tells me: there was a product designer who actually /thought/ about the product and how it will be used. And the manufacturer decided not to skimp out on the firmware development but spend the extra few bucks to make it /nice/ instead of barely functional (which seems to be the rule nowadays).
Practical, well designed – love it.
The basic principle of a pressure cooker with an integrated heating element and separates pressure vessel and coocking pot is a nice take on the pressure cooker theme: the pot can be (and is) much lighter than a pot designed for 2bar pressure would have to be (like my mums pressure cooking pot).
Zephora –
Vraiment pratique et bien conçu. J’utilise un cocotte minute depuis des années et notre vieux modèle commençait à être un peu trop grande et lourde. J’ai lu des revues et recherché les recettes et des clips – que des bons avis. Donc j’ai passé le commande. Livraison pile poil à l’heure. Emballage bien solide. L’Instant Pot passe ses premières tests … mise en route facile, utilisation facile, nettoyage facile, cuisson vraiment bien. Oui – que du bonheur. Je vous conseille fortement cet cocotte qui remplace plusieurs outils … slow cooker, cuisseur de riz, mijoteur, cocotte minute. Ce taille est parfaite pour deux personnes voir trois. Si vous êtes plus nombreux, prenez un taille au dessus q il y en a plusieurs.
Renata –
Tenía un par de años ojeando esta olla. Como era costosa decidí comprar una Cecotec de las más básicas. Aquella olla me ha costado unos 30 euros y solo me ha durado un año. Mi vida estaba de nuevo vacía, sin olla para cocinar todo y que no me pusiera la cocina caliente durante el verano caluroso de Valencia. Así que finalmente en Diciembre 2019 he decidido que es hora de comprar la Instant Pot más pequeña que estuviese disponible porque en casa somos solo dos y el espacio en la cocina es muy valioso.
Ha llegado (creo que) el 23 de diciembre como si Papá Noel la hubiese dejado para mi y no la he parado de usar desde entonces. He hecho alubias secas que no hacía desde hace unos 4 años porque llevan mucho rato en la estufa normal, he hecho un estofado de redondo, he hecho arroz guarnición, he hecho maíz al vapor, he hecho un arroz con leche y también un dulce de leche directo de una lata de leche condensada. Y ya tengo planes para más recetas porque te vuelve el trabajo muy simple.
Amo esta olla, es muy simple de usar y hay muchas recetas (la mayoría en inglés) disponibles en la web para cualquier cosa que se te ocurra que quieres preparar.