Do you actually use your Slow/Pressure Cooker or Air Fryer?

[DrPhilYourGuts]

Yes, I am easily led, but I keep seeing how fabulously energy saving these kitchen gadgets are. Many seem to have rave reviews, but are they actually worth having?

I've seen you can get combination 'multi' cookers, which are all three but not sure if these are jack of all trades and masters of none.

If you have one, do you recommend? DH seems to think they can only make 'slop', but some have bake and roast functions so surely not only wet food?

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Yep, I do loads in both my Air Fryer and also my Instant Pot pressure cooker, none of which is slop.
Air fryer is basically a tiny oven.
Instant Pot is great for cooking rice, stews, pushes, meatballs in sauce etc. etc. I've also made cakes in mine, they were 😙🤌

You'll need to asses your cooking needs before selecting which gadget to buy. I have and use a pressure cooker a lot. It will cook a pan full of meat based sauce enough for 5-4 portions (with pasta/potatoes or pastry) in 20 or so minutes. Vegetables such as potatoes also cook quickly so save energy. I also have a Remouska (from Lakeland) into which I place chicken portions, then on the rack prepared roasties, mashed swede, carrots and parsnips for a roast dinner in less time than it takes for the oven to heat up. I don't have an air fryer, but it does seem to me that, apart from the bigger models, it will only cook one thing at a time which will mean there's a lot of planning involved. I'm sure someone will come along to tell me this isn't so....

Slow cooker , yes I do.

Interesting! To make sauces, does this mean they allow you to sauté too? Did you use any special recipe books or is adjustment not required?

Is there and advantage to pressure cooker over a standard slow cooker?

I'm a competent but not particularly enthusiastic cook so always a bit wary of new kitchen gadget. I only remember being terrified of my granny's pressure cooker on the hob after it exploded once, never actually used one myself due to the trauma.

We used the air fryer a lot until it broke but we tended to do a lot of single person "beige" meals which is very wasteful in an oven.

I use the slow cooker about once a week, it is really for things that have a sauce - spag bol, chilli, curry, stew are the most common things I make in it although can do others. It's useful for moving the prep time from a busy time of day to an empty one, and for flexible serving times since you can make it X hours before and it's ready basically anywhere within about a 2 hour window.

I also have a rice cooker which I use 1-2 times a week. It has increased the amount we eat rice because it's foolproof.

Slow cooker will do in ~8 hours what the pressure cooker does in 20 minutes. The modern ones don't explode, as far as I know. Maybe avoid the weird no-brand ones from amazon just in case!

Air fryer is very good for beige meals. Chips, fish fingers, chicken nuggets all nicer. Also it says an 8. Year old can use it so gets the kids involved in helping. I use my slow cooker for meat and for soup. Time saving but in a different way. Like can prep the night before and put on in the morning or just whenever suits really if doing batch cooking.

I have the Instant Pot and use it very regularly on the pressure cooker setting - you sauté your onions, meat etc before hand and then stick the lid on to cook. I don't find the slow cooker setting very good, though I haven't put effort into figuring it out. I do all my casseroles in it - you just have to reduce the amount of water in a recipe.

It's handy now for the more expensive energy at peak times, so I have it finished cooking before 5, let the steam release gradually and leave it on keep warm if needed - very useful when we're eating at different times.

I've recently bought a 14 in 1 ninja

And I use it everyday, pressure cooker is very safe and cooks cheaper cuts of meat in 20 minutes instead of 1.5 hours on the hob

Kids chips etc takes 15 min

My electric bill was £14 last month!! I haven't used to my electric oven for weeks now

Air fryer almost every day. Slow cooker when I remember it exists and then I do like two weeks of using it lots and then forget about it for six months.

This is so useful. Seems like air fryer might not be worth it for us. DH is a gym fiend so our (my) beige foods are normally frozen pizza, which won't fit or by means of Drive-thru! Good to know it isn't worth paying extra for the air fryer feature.

So if I wanted to do something like leg of lamb or short ribs, that I'd normally do slow and low in a dutch pot, would you pressure cook or use the slow cook function do get tender/falling off the bone meat?

£14 is amazingly low, at this rate we will be doing that daily come November.

Air fryer is just a mini more efficient oven essentially so if you use oven a lot you'll probably use an air fryer a lot, if you don't then you won't. It doesn't have to be just beige stuff, you can just do whatever you would do in an oven and it cooks a lot faster.

I am intrigued by pressure cookers but not sure we would use that much.

I use my slow cooker for rice pudding, chicken and beef stew, chilli.

i use my huge saucepan for lobscouse. That cannot be done in an hour. Takes 3 hours on slow. I will not change that. Its my granny’s recipe and its a slow cook.

im going to buy a ninja in a few weeks

We have an Instant Pot which we use a lot (only the pressure cooker setting, and saute to sweat vegetables/brown mince etc before bringing to pressure). It's great for cooking a gammon or beef brisket as well as things like chilli or curry, pulses, also works really well for boiled eggs that peel easily.

We have just moved to a house with a shitty electric hob so it's getting used even more these days, although I've used pressure cookers for years.

Have also recently bought a Ninja Dual air fryer which is really being put to work, it's incredibly useful and no pre-heating needed.

A pressure cooker will cook a whole chicken in 15 minutes whereas the air fryer takes about 50 minutes, but the latter comes out like a chicken roasted in the oven and the former is great for easily picking the meat off to use for something else like a mountain of sandwiches.

I have a slow cooker & will definitely be using it more this Autumn

I have a slow cooker but rarely use it. Mainly because it's too big (I should buy a smaller one), it doesn't live on the worktop so I tend to forget about it but mostly because it's really big so i tend to use it when I've got visitors and then it's handy to have on and not be spending loads of time in the kitchen. I've found that I don't have time to prep / brown things in a morning to leave it on while i'm at work all day.

Definitely think about what you eat and then decide what works for you.

Ribs could be done in a pressure cooker or a slow cooker - but you'd need to brown them after. I'll probably do some in the slow cooker tomorrow then a fast grill or hot oven for a few minutes when I'm ready to eat. Just need to remind myself of how I do it as haven't done it for ages!

I don't use a pressure cooker because when I do things like stews/casseroles I use the slow cooker because it allows me to cook at a more convenient time. On the other hand, growing up my mum used a pressure cooker a LOT because she had limited time in the evenings to cook and we ate a lot of stews etc because they were cheap.

My air fryer is new but already proving its worth because we have a fair number of things that are small and for which the oven is a waste and/or takes too long. So for example, in the last 2 weeks or so I've done: frozen croissants in 10 minutes when we were rushing out the door; sausages for everyone to have in different ways as we were eating at different times; roasted tomatoes for lunch for me and DH; chicken nuggets and chips (in 10 minutes) for DD's dinner; boneless chicken thighs for DD's dinner and then sandwiches for the rest of us. Today I'm going to try putting some slices of aubergine in it.

Yup. I have a pressure king pro which gets loads of use especially in winter and my slow cooker is on right now making a stew for tea tonight. I love doing pulled pork or ribs in it too. So versatile though I am yet to try roast potatoes in it. They are meant to be the best you can ever have.

@DrPhilYourGuts Pressure cooking makes meat deliciously tender (as does my Remouska to be fair) A pressure cooker is best used when something needs tenderising (such as cheaper tougher cuts of meat, even chicken will do really quickly but won't be browned) or long slow cooking (Christmas puddings, sticky toffee pudding etc). You wouldn't need to use it for things that only take minutes such as fish or stewing fruit. I would say if you're not sure, think carefully about the meals you like to eat regularly, not those that you'd only eat occasionally. It might make your cooking more adventurous but probably only for a while.

I have a pressure cooker which is used most weeks, probably more in winter once we start soups again

use the big oven about once a week - bake bread and chips at the same time

No microwave , slow cooker or air fryer

I WFH and so do have time to cook, and although I don't particularly enjoy it, I am flavour focused. Seems from this thread and some other reading I've done, a pressure cooker that can sauté is the way to go, even better if it has the slow cooker settings but not essential.

This article may be of interest to @Hugasauras or anyone like me trying to understand a bit more.

I might trial a cheaper, compact air fryer at a later date. Would change how we cook, as while I use the oven regularly, I LOVE a traybake, which I can't see working with an air fryer.

I have an air fryer but it’s quite large, a smaller one would be useless for us. It fits a whole large pizza (I home make them), cooks rotisserie meats such as large chook or other large pieces of suitable meats but of course you could also do these in it in a baking tray with veg underneath. Cooks chips well in the rotisserie basket. I also have a kebab rotisserie thing for it so you can make 8 or 10 (can’t recall) kebabs and cook in it at once, could be veg or meat or seafood. Cooks stuff like homemade chicken schnitzels well and quickly. I also bake a lot in it, full size cakes, deserts and so forth.

Also have a slow cooker which gets quite a bit of use in our house for curries, stroganoff, soups, homemade stock etc.

Should have added, my slow cooker sautés as well which I find essential to avoid the browning on the stovetop bit. Much easier to do it all with the one appliance.

I bought a Ninja almost 4yrs ago. I can count on one hand the number of times I've used my oven since.