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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MNHQ

@HoppingPavlova That's big! I’m looking at 7.5l , and was wondering if that’s too large . I’m confused as to what is considered ‘family size ‘ 4.5l seems to be coming up…

@Asparagusluvva no idea how that works for a family. I got a 10L one initially, unpacked it and immediately realised it would struggle to fit a pigeon let alone a family sized chook and the diameter of a pizza would need to be the size of your hand. No way it could have fitted a standard size cake tin etc. So, it went straight back in the box and has been stored in case someone has a use for it one day.

I think the smaller ones are fine if you are only cooking beige foods such as a handful of chicken nuggets and chips for young kids or reheating a few individual frozen pies etc. They don’t seem to be useful if you are actually cooking proper food in them.

I wish people would stop saying this about pressure cookers as it's rubbish! To cook a chicken it takes 15 mins to get to pressure, 25 to cook and then 20 to naturally release. Yes quicker than an oven but not quick! that’s only half true though.

I roast a whole chicken in mine. 10 minutes to get to pressure, 20 minutes on pressure then quick release which takes about a minute. Then cook for 20 minutes on roast, all in all a roast chicken takes about 50 minutes.

And it uses virtually no electricity

Equally a risotto takes probably about the same amount of time as on the hob but the benefits are that it comes out that much nicer, the meat is much more tender and the rice doesn’t stick as it seems to in a saucepan. Plus you don’t have to stand over it, so I can do other things e.g. clear up the kitchen while the dinner is cooking and still end up with the same results.

TBH though I think that all these appliances tend to give off a vibe of being so much better. E.g. a poster said just now that she cooks toast in her air frier. Absolutely ridiculous given that it takes 2 minutes in the toaster as opposed to 5 in the air frier.

I don’t actually find cooking sausages in the air frier much quicker. all the decent recipes say to cook for about 15 minutes if you want them to be decently cooked. That’s less than the oven but not than the grill but the air frier is better because the fat drips off and it’s less of a faff than the grill.

I have an optigrill for cooking things like burgers, steak, chicken etc and again all the fat runs down, but although it has a setting for sausages tey really don’t cook well in it because they don’t cook properly. Equally bacon is too thin to trigger the sensors and cook properly so I cook that in the air frier as well.

Every appliance has it’s pros and cons, but because people love it for one think they tend to lose sight of some of the less helpful things.

Ultimately its a combination you need. It’s 100% not possible to cook everything in an air frier unless you eat a lot of baked food. You can’t cook from scratch in one because of the sauté etc required.

With an instant pot you can sauté and pressure cook or slow cook, but you can’t e.g. cook a cottage pie in it because you have to do all that first and then put it together etc so you would need to add in other cooking methods etc.

I have an optigrill and an instant pot duo crisp, and I use my oven much less. But if you cook from scratch it’s not possible to not use it at all. If I want to make lasagne or fish pie or cottage pie I need the hob to do so because I can’t make the bolognese sauce and the white sauce or the mince and the mashed potato in the instant pot and then bake it, it’s actually quicker and more efficient to do it on the hob/in the oven.

But risotto’s, casseroles, chips and grilled steak etc can be done.

I recently got an Instant Pot duo evo plus. it's brilliant and I can't believe I haven't had one before now! it has 8 functions. now considering an air fryer too.

I was given a pressure cooker as a wedding present 25 years ago, it was useful but I never really liked it, this is an on the hob type. As veg needed different times I found it a pita to keep opening it. It was good for making ham then in a glorious event I forgot to put water in it and effectively blew it up, I damaged it behind repair.

I love my slow cooker and use it to make soups and stews. It also makes extremely good chicken porridge which is a Cantonese dish. I was given a small air fryer as a Christmas gift and I do like it but it’s not really big enough so I am going to buy a bigger better one. I cook English food for DH a couple of times a week so I chucked pork chops marinaded in rosemary and maple syrup last night in the air fryer for about 10 mins. Most days I use my rice cooker and my wok.

We have always had a pressure cooker (old-school!) - in the winter we use this several times a week and make large amounts of soup very quickly - it's fabulous to fry and onion then add all the other veg and a bit of water, stick the lid on and it's cooked within 10 mins (sometimes less depending on the veg) and all you need to do is whizz it up.

We also cook oranges for marmalade in it, and cook the Christmas pudding every year.

we are considering an air fryer...

@AffIt I use it for loads of vegetarian meals, and it cooks dried pulses well so saves money. We have the Instant Pot Duo Plus and I use it a couple of times a week at least.

for example:
www.cookincanuck.com/instant-pot-lentil-dal-recipe/
spicecravings.com/rajma-masala-kidney-beans-curry

It cooks perfect brown basmati rice so nicely that we’ve swapped from white rice.(1 cup rice, 1 cup boiling water, 22 minutes high pressure. Takes 3 minutes to reach pressure and 5 before you can quick pressure release, but you can just leave it on warm until you are ready to eat.)

Chickpeas cooked in the Instant Pot are much nicer than tinned and a fraction of the cost.

The main benefit aside from cost is that you can walk away and ignore it - no standing at the hob stirring etc.

Having joint problems, this is a lifesaver for me.

@InsertPunHere Thank you! Those are great links. 😀

@AffIt - glad to help. If you like grains and pulses, an Instant Pot is very useful.

I have an ninja dual zone air fryer, I cook everything in it from roast dinner to bread and cakes!
It's saves time, therefore saves money on electric.
It's been a massive game changer.

I've cooked the best roast beef and lamb in this!

Pressure cooker all the time. Never used one until I moved to Italy years ago when I found out that nearly everyone uses them and they rarely use their ovens. I live in an apartment block and you can smell the steam on the staircase, usually braised beef or or minestrone. Nearly everyone does the Italian version 'Roast beef' in a pressure cooker here, but for me that's an oven job.

Yes - slow cooker for soups, stocks, poached whole chickens, braised beef and curries mainly. Airfryer for anything quick like nuggets / fine fingers, chips, and veggies

Thanks @GhostFromTheOtherSide I think I had sort of reached a similar conclusion. There seems to have been a big push for these gadgets as they use less energy, but I wasn't convinced by how evangelical people seem to be about their usage. If you're realistic about how you cook, you can see the limitations.

I don't think a pressure cooker will revolutionise our meals, but seem more versatile and a better choice than a slow cooker. I cook a lot slow and low during the cold, but probably peaking at 3 hours, I don't think I'm organised enough to slow cook 8hrs ahead and I don't like anything that inhibits flavour.

I went and looked at a few today and I've gone for a knock off Instant Pot from John Lewis. The main difference and my only concession is that the inner bowl is not Stainless Steel but at less than half the price and having been in possession of a £50 JL voucher I'm going to give it a go! The description is a bit deceptive as says 4L but the bowl is actually 5.7L like the Instant Pot, the 4L is the max fill line in the inner bowl. If I find we get on with it, I'll consider investing in a proper branded one that perhaps also does air-frying.

I've ruled out the standalone air fryer, based on what we eat it wouldn't see much usage so would take a long time to recoup the cost in savings.

The JL one looks remarkably like the Amazon own brand one too, but I've found JL guarantee to be honoured without issue.

I'm a vegetarian. The instant pot saves me a fortune on buying kefir. I buy a pot of kefir and a box of UHT milk, and use two tablespoons of the kefir to make an entire litre of kefir for the price of a box of UHT milk. Then I use the last couple of tablespoons from that pint of kefir mixed into another 1L box of UHT milk in the instant pot, and that gives me another litre of kefir. You could probably keep on doing that for years (the way everyone used to do before you could buy yogurt in the shops) but I invest in a new pot of kefir every month or so, just to ensure that my home made stuff has all the good bacteria.

I'd had the instant pot for at least 6 years before my grocery delivery arrived without yogurt during the pandemic, and I suddenly remembered that there was a button on the instant pot for making yogurt. I had to google for the instructions on how to do it, couldn't find anything in the manual, but it is actually dead easy.
Just mix a bit of the old yogurt with a litre of UHT milk, press the yogurt button and wait 8 hours for a pan full of yogurt. I stir it a bit, then pour it through a funnel into a lidded, glass milk jug that fits inside the fridge door.

It is also a game changer when making risotto. No need to stand stirring for twenty minutes adding small quantities of stock as the rice absorbs the liquid. Just use the sauté function to toast the rice and other ingredients, measure the exact amount of liquid to rice, close the lid and wait for it to beep. Creamy perfect risotto every time. I just recently discovered the surprising deliciousness of pearl barley risotto, after the Zoe project software told me that pearl barley is much better for my metabolism than quinoa, rice, pasta or cous cous. I thought it would be "worthy" but the recipe I used included wild mushrooms, red wine and sour cream, and it was even better than my usual mushroom risotto made with proper Italian risotto rice.

Another thing that quickly pays for the initial purchase price is cooking dried pulses instead of buying them in cans. I cook the entire 500g box of chick peas, dried beans or split peas in one go, and then weigh out the surplus into freezer bags, 250g in each bag, which is a bit more than the drained weight of a tin of beans. Instead of paying a fortune for shop bought hummus I throw a bag of frozen chick peas into the blender with a few spoonfuls of tahini and whatever flavourings I fancy, perfect hummus every time with no weird additives.

Now that autumn is looming ever closer I shall soon be dusting off my recipes for borscht, leek and potato and thick mixed vegetable soup with pearl barley. Cooking up a big batch and freezing it in 500ml containers. I have learnt to label the containers after being forced to play freezer roulette and not getting what I'd been expecting. I use a roll of masking tape and a felt tip pen, because the masking tape is easy to remove when you reuse the container.

The air fryer is superb for cooking things that you want crispy. When I make big baked potatoes I nuke them first in the microwave for 6 minutes, then put them into the air fryer to finish off. It's great for roasting other vegetables too, and for cooking sausages and things in breadcrumbs. Mine is too small to fit in a pizza and everything has to be lifted out with tongs, so it's not all that good for fiddly things that are a bit fragile and need to be lifted with a spatula. I still use my halogen oven for pizzas and most baking. I bought a new cooker in 2019 and only use the hob, still haven't used either of the ovens, except as storage space for pans and oven dishes. The halogen oven is so much easier to see, heats up faster, is cheaper to run and doesn't require bending over to access the food.