I eat plain white rice every day and always use a Japanese rice cooker ($150). For years I have wanted to try the famous Japanese 'Pressure' rice cooker ($450), but could not bring myself to spend that much on just plain white rice (how good can plain rice be that is worth $450?). I bought this one because it is a pressure rice cooker and could do other dishes like a regular pressure cooker (I figure if the rice coming from this pressure cooker does not taste better than my regular cooker, at least, I can use it as a regular pressure cooker, so no waste here.). The pros of this cooker are:
1. As a regular pressure cooker, it is much better than the conventional stove-top one. Very easy to use. Seals very well, no food smells before you open the lid. Turn off automatically, so if you forget and leave the house before it is done, there will be no explosion.
2. As a pressure rice cooker, this cooker is better than my $150 regular rice cooker. The white rice coming out of this cooker definitely is stickier than that from the regular cooker. It tastes as if you mixed sticky sweet rice into regular white rice. If anyone has tried the $450 Japanese pressure rice cooker (Zojirushi Induction Heating Pressure rice cooker), I still want to know if there is a difference (if there are people willing to spend $450 on a rice cooker, there must be a good reason.).
I would have given this cooker 5 stars if I had not found out the following:
The white rice cooked by this cooker looks grey. It seems that there is something coming off the stainless steel pot. You would not notice it unless you cook something white, like white rice. I have no prior experience on stainless steel pots. I am not sure if the problem is universal to all stainless steel pots.Read more ?
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335 of 345 people found the following review helpful
***Update*** May 19, 2013...we've now had the unit for a year and a half, and it still works perfectly. Virtually no issues at all. Cheers!
Purchased 2/2012, so as of this writing, we've had this for eight months, and it works phenomenally well.
I cannot say enough about the Instant Pot. My wife and I owned another unit from a different company, but it's pot was made of aluminum (tied to Alzheimer's issues) and had a non-stick coating on it besides. We wanted a stainless steel pot to avoid all this...enter Instant Pot.
This unit works awesome, and we are fully qualified to say so. Not only do we have an 'Amazon Verified Purchase' label on our review, but we use the Instant Pot 4-5x a week, literally. Probably 7-8x if you count making baked/sweet potatoes for lunches too. (Just a note...always look for 'Amazon Verified Purchase' on reviews, and if you don't see it, take the review with a grain of salt. Very few reviews of the Instant Pot were negative, and almost all of them didn't buy the unit, so their reviews are nonsense.)
My wife and I have chosen to make almost all of our dinners with the Instant Pot...it is easy to clean, easy to use, and requires virtually NO oversight. It is inexpensive to use as well...when using your stove and/or oven, you will notice a marked increase in the temperature of your kitchen, and with the oven, it will be very noticeable indeed. The Instant Pot doesn't do this because it operates in a sealed environment, thus using far less energy as well. Because you can saute in this newest model, you can do almost all the cooking in this one pot, thus making cleanup far easier, as the inner stainless steel pot (but NOT the unit or it's lid) are dishwasher safe.Read more ?
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620 of 646 people found the following review helpful
Pressure cooker veteran here - thumbs up on this one!
I have owned 8 different pressure cookers over the years, including an earlier version of the Instant Pot as well as the now-ancient oval (90 degree insert inside, pull up, turn back and clip-lock) lid with weight back in Europe in the 70's.
This, so far, is the best pressure cooker I have yet seen.
It functions as a slow cooker, as an above-average quality rice cooker and -let's not forget- a really good pressure cooker.
Disclaimer: we do still use our trusted Zojirushi rice cooker when a lot of things are cooking at the same time (and as far as stand-alone rice cookers go, Zojirushi makes the best, btw.)
Back to the pressure cooker... Some of the software limitations of the previous Instant Pot were fixed (namely, having to push the button for each and every minute, with only a 60 minute maximum timer - that was maddening). This control panel lets you click&hold and very quickly fly through the times, up until 120 minutes. It does fly through 0, so you can go up or down the shortest path to your desired time.
Pluses of this particular pressure cooker:
Much, much, MUCH more convenient to use than the 'manual' type pressure cookers where you have to stand by until you hear the pressure has built up, then start the counter, then turn it off when it is done. This thing does everything on it's own. Put the food in, set the desired cooking time, press start. Leave for work, come home and it is done (with stand-by heat so as to avoid spoilage).
Quality, pretty thick stainless steel pot (stay away from coated pots, aluminum pots, etc.Read more ?
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