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I got a pretty big shock earlier this year when I rolled into the office on a Monday morning, smugly telling my colleagues about my revolutionary new kitchen appliance. “It’s called a pressure cooker,” I boasted. “You probably haven’t heard of them but they’re a sensation over in the US. You can cook a whole chicken in half an hour!”
“Yes Jack,” they nodded, understandingly, pandiculating in their chairs. “They’ve been around for centuries. The electric kind, which you’re telling us about, was first sold two years before you were born.”
Oh.
It turns out pressure cookers aren’t quite the new phenomenon I thought they were, but they are gaining a cult following among a new generation, mostly thanks to the Instant Pot, a 7-in-1 slow cooker/pressure cooker combo device which made waves in 2016 after it became one of the top-selling products during Amazon’s Prime Day sales event. The Instant Pot has been a staple on the list ever since – and other pressure cooker manufacturers have been able to ride the wave for this deceptively old-school technology.
For time-starved workers and energy-drained parents, pressure cookers are perfect. Simply prepare your ingredients, throw them into the pot, close the lid, set a timer, and let the pressure do the rest.
Pressure cooking works by removing the air from the vessel, increasing the pressure. Because water can't boil in high pressure environments, it means food can get much hotter, much more quickly than in a traditional oven or on a pan. This means that you can cook basically anything (aside from dough, as pressure cooking traps steam, so a dough would go soggy) in very little time. A whole chicken which might take two hours in a conventional oven might only take 45 minutes in a pressure cooker.
The vast majority of pressure cookers take after Instant Pot in that they have a slow cooker function too, meaning you can set them off before you go to work and have a meal ready for you on your return.
I selected four of the most highly-rated pressure cookers available and put them head to head. All cooked the same dishes, at the same time. And honestly? The results were fairly hom*ogenous. All four cooked my food really well.In short, if you buy a pressure cooker on this list, you can be confident you’re getting a good one.
It became clear that the real difference would be in the bonus features and general usability. So I spent a few days cooking with each, to get a real sense of the differences. So which truly was the best pressure cooker?
1. Tefal All-In-One
What we like about it:The simple, easy-to-understand controls
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I was a bit surprised by how much I liked the Tefal All-In-One. With neither the viral popularity of the Instant Pot or the additional functionality of the Ninja Foodi (scroll down for reviews of both), and a decidedly middle-of-the-road price point, I thought I’d shrug it off. “Very good,” I’d write, “but just not quite as good as the other two.”
Lo and behold, here we are, with the All-In-One fending off it’s more well-known and powerful rivals to be my top choice.
From the moment I got it out of the box, I was impressed. I think it’s fair to say that electric pressure cookers are hardly the most aesthetically pleasing of devices, but Tefal have worked hard to ensure the All-In-One does its best to keep things as clutter free and easy to read as possible. The lid looks great, with a rounded handle and a nice button to release pressure.
On first play, it takes a while to work out what you're doing – a common complaint among users, looking around at reviews left on retailers' websites. It probably took me 20 minutes to get going, but once I'd figured it out, I actually thoughtthe All-In-One was the easiest to control of those I tested. The settings are just more obvious than the others. Just tap a button to choose the pressure level, set the timer just as you'd set a microwave and you're done.eThose initial 20 minutes are worth the pain.
The pressure cooking itself is fantastic. And ideal for cooking meats. The inner vessel is just about big enough for a whole roast chicken, I’d say (although it is admittedly a more comfortable fit in the Ninja Foodi.) Pressure cooking is great for this kind of thing because it works by trapping the steam inside the cooker, ensuring your chicken comes out really tender. This also makes it handy for cooking cheaper, tougher cuts of meats, so penny-pinching home economists will appreciate that.
As well as doing the pressure cooking and slow cooking that you’d expect, the All-In-One can also be used without the lid. When you do that, it basically becomes an extra hob. The idea, I think, is that you can cook something through with the pressure cooker, then simmer off the liquid with the lid open. However, I triedcooking pasta in it and that worked just fine.
I also appreciated the delay start function. This allows you to set a time when you want your food to be cooked (when you’re getting home from work, for example) and leave the cooker to handle it. It only switches on in time to have your food perfectly cooked, so that makes it energy efficient too. The Instant Pot is also capable of doing this, but Ninja Foodi and My Pot cannot do it.
The obvious downside is that the All-In-One is a big gadget which takes up a significant portion of kitchen real estate. But, pressure cookers tend to be big. Best make your peace now if you intend to buy one.
2. Instant Pot 7-in-1
What we like about it:The wealth of perfectly calibrated recipes you can find online
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And so to the pot that started it all – or rebranded it all, depending on your point of view. The Instant Pot is the Daddy of pressure cooking 2.0, the type of product you might see if you turn on the shopping channel at 2:30pm on a Tuesday. And in many ways, it lives up to its hype.
I had a tonne of fun using it and the seven functions (pressure cooking, slow cooking, rice cooking, sautéing/browning, yoghurt making, steaming and warming) all work very well. It cooks food quickly and resolutely – although, as I mentioned above, the same can be said for all the pressure cookers I tried out.
One of the great things about the Instant Pot is the level of support for users online. There's a community of advocates out there, sharing recipes andYouTube tutorials. That doesn't happen for the other products in this list, so it's a real feather in the Instant Pot's cap: you'll never run out of ideas, and all recipesare perfectly calibrated to take advantage of this one particular device.
There are some wrinkles, however.I found the controls confusing at times, to the point where I'd put in a set of instructions and the pressure cooker just wouldn't respond. Teething problems, perhaps, but given thatthe Tefal All-In-One is more intuitive and cheaper, those problems ultimately put me off choosing the Instant Pot as my favourite.
If you’ve just bought an Instant Pot based on the hype, don’t worry. The differences between the two are vanishingly small – and you can make yoghurt with this one (I reallyenjoyed making yoghurt). Just be prepared to spend an extra 10 minutes looking at the instructions when you first take it out of the box.
3. Ninja Foodi
Why we like it: The air fryer functionality means this one can replace every cookingdevice you have
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The Ninja Foodi is a big brute. It’s chunky, it’s heavy, and, at a glance, it looks seriously complicated. Open the box and you’ll find the device itself, then all manner of grills and bowls and other contraptions next to it.
But don't be put off: the great selling point of the Ninja Foodi is that it's an entirely standalone unit. Buy one of these and you’ll never need your oven or hob again. It’s a pressure cooker, it’s a slow cooker, and it’s an air-fryer all in one.
What does that mean? Well, imagine you’re cooking that aforementioned roast chicken. You can use the pressure cooker function to cook it all the way through in about half the time it'd take in an oven (45 minutes is a good estimate). Nowswap over from the pressure lid to the crisping lid and use the air fryer to crisp up the skin. It does a really good job of this on cooked meats – as good as Mum's legendary Sunday roasts, no less.
During the time I spent using the Ninja Foodi, I also realised it does a great job with things like chips and chicken nuggets (homemade and frozen alike), so I started to use my oven significantly less.
The pause function is useful so you can check on your food while it crisps and then continue if necessary, without disrupting the cooking.
Somewhat unusually for these devices, the Foodi’s controls are actually self-explanatory, which is a good job because the instruction manual is poor. This is an area where Foodi’s size helps: since the buttons are less clustered together, it feels easier to see and understand what you’re doing with it.
There’s also basically just two settings for pressure: high and low. This is in stark contrast to other models which have a different setting for each meat and vegetable you might put in there. LEDs also reveal when it is coming up to pressure, while others make you guess, which helps estimate cooking times slightly more easily.
However, the device does come with a pretty massive downside which is that it is… well, pretty massive. The whole thing is 43cm x 36cm x 32cm, soit’ll take up a fair amount of space on your kitchen work surfaces, and if you choose not to have it out all the time, it may even be too big to fit under the sink.
At just under 12kg, it’s also pretty heavy and difficult to manoeuvre. Clearly it’s designed to be kept out at all times.
The other negative point is the wealth of accessories. The multi-function nature of the device is it’s biggest selling point, but one can’t help but feel it might also be the Foodi’s biggest problem. There are different lids for different functions; and afrying rack that you need to put in/take out in so many configurations it’s almost comical. It adds some stress to proceedings.
For my money, the Foodi was the most versatile of the devices I used, allowing me to create the widest range of dishes, mostly down to the air-fryer functionality. For those with limited options or a small kitchen, it might just offer enough functionality to replace your hob and even your oven (mostly). Just beware its size, and accessories.
4. Morphy Richards MyPot
What we like about it:The eye-catching design
![The best pressure cookers,tried and tested in a kitchen (4) The best pressure cookers,tried and tested in a kitchen (4)](https://i0.wp.com/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/recommended/2019/07/17/Morphy-Richards-MyPot_best-electric-pressure-cookers_secondary_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqqVzuuqpFlyLIwiB6NTmJwfSVWeZ_vEN7c6bHu2jJnT8.png?imwidth=350)
The smallest and cheapest of electric pressure cookers I tried,the Morphy Richards My Pot is also by far the best looking of the bunch. Throwing out the dull and clinical stainless steel in favour of a black, white and lime plastic exterior, the MyPot is certainly eye-catching. My partner remarked that it looked almost space age when he first saw me cooking in this neat little sphere.
It’s also the cheapest of the devices I tried (I expect ditching the stainless steel exterior helped in keeping costs down) though don’t take that to mean it’s necessarily any less powerful than the other options I explored here.
Again, I must state that this really was a best-of-the-best battle royale, so don’t read into the MyPot’s last place too much, it’s still a fantastic device, with services basically akin to the All-In-One and Instant Pot offerings (still no Air Fryer like the Foodi though.)
Why did I rate it behind the rest? Simply because it has a smaller capacity (though smaller families or couples might rate that as a bonus) and the controls are that bit more fiddly. There are less buttons so consulting the manual is a must;you can’t muddle through without it.
If you want to spend a little less and don’t mind fiddly tech, this one is definitely the pressure cooker for you.
Frequently asked questions about pressure cookers:
How do you use a pressure cooker?
Simply prepare your ingredients, throw them in, set the pressure, lock the lid, then leave your pressure cooker to do its thing for the allotted amount of time. Every pressure cooker I tested came with a guide which tells you exactly how long you need to cook most common foods for, and at what pressure level. To be honest though, there’s a fair bit of trial and error involved, but if you get your food out too early then just close the lid, repressurise and give it another 10 minutes.
Are pressure cookers energy efficient?
Yes they are, especially in comparison to cooking with a conventional oven. For starters, they will cook your food much more quickly meaning you’ll have to have them turned on for much less time. I couldn’t find results for the other brands, but Instant Pot publish that their electric pressure cooker uses around 70pc less energy compared to conventional cooking with an oven or stovetop setup. That should be reasonably consistent across other brands too.
How do pressure cookers work?
Once you seal the lid, the pressure cooker starts to expel air from the vessel while trapping any steam from your food. This raises the pressure inside the cooker. Liquids can’t boil at high pressures which allows the temperature inside the cooker to heat up to well over 100 degree celsius, without the food drying out. After your food has finished cooking, you release the steam which reduces the pressure, allowing you to open the lid.
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