Instant Pot Duo Plus 3-Quart 9-in-1 Electric Pressure Cooker

Instant Pot Duo Plus 3-quart pressure cooker is a 9-in-1 kitchen appliance – it can pressure cook, slow cook, rice cook, make yogurt, steam, sauté, make yogurt, sterilize and warm food.

Cooking with Instant Pot Duo Plus 3-Quart Pressure Cooker

For the past 5 years Instant pot has been market leader when it comes to pressure cookers and not without reason – they are affordable, versatile and cook great. Instant Pot Duo Plus 3-quart model is no exception. It cooks fast, food tastes great and it’s easy to use. In many cases you can just throw all the ingredients and the Instant Pot will do the rest. There is some learning curve but once you get past that results are perfect.

Instant Pot Duo Plus 3-quart pressure cooker has 14 cooking programs: soup/broth, meat/stew, bean/chili, cake, egg, sauté, slow cook, rice, multi-grain, porridge, steam, sterilize, yogurt and pressure cook.

Each program has 3 additional modes: “Less”, ”Normal” and ”More”. These modes do different things for each cooking programs (it’s explained in manual). For example when using “Rice” cooking program “Less” will produce Al dente white rice, “Normal” – normal texture white rice and “More” – softer texture white rice.

Inner cooking pot

Inner cooking pot is made of food-grade stainless steel. It doesn’t have nonstick coating like pots from some of the other manufacturers so it might be slightly harder to clean but at least you don’t have to worry about nonstick coating peeling off.

The 3 quart size is great to cook for 1 or 2 people, maybe more if you want smaller portions. For larger families you will likely want a larger model.

Pressure release

There are two ways you can release pressure with Instant Pot Duo Plus – natural and quick release.

Natural release is when pressure cooker automatically releases steam after it has finished cooking. This method is a bit time consuming as it can take 10 to 40 minutes for pressure to be released naturally. You will know the pressure has been released when float valve drops down.

If you don’t want to wait that long you can use Quick release. You can do this by turning steam release handle to the Venting position. Be careful as this releases very hot steam which can cause scalding. Make sure none of your body parts is within trajectory of steam release valve. Never pull out steam release handle untill al pressure and steam has been released.

Safety

Some people are afraid to use pressure cookers because they have heard horror stories from past when pressure cookers were often badly engineered without safety features. In the past decades the technology, safety standards and quality control has greatly improved.

Instant Pot Duo Plus 3-quart pressure cooker is particularly safe to use because it has more than 10 safety features including overheat protection and safe-locking lid.

Verdict

Instant Pot Duo Plus 3-quart pressure cooker is one of the best kitchen appliances you can buy however for some the larger 6-quart and 8-quart models will be more adequate.