Instant Pot Duo 60 Review: The Best Pressure Cooker For The Price

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Instant Pot is not a random pressure cooker brand. In fact, this is the first name most people think of when they hear about this kind of cooking appliance. It was one of the first companies to come up with smart pressure cookers, and even many years have passed, and many other brands have joined this market, Instant Pot is still the gold standard with many good pressure cookers.

The Duo 60 has been Instant Pot's best-selling model for many years, and for a good reason. What is the secret behind the success of this mid-range pressure cooker? Let's find out now.

Overview

The Instant Pot Duo 60 is an upgrade over the cheaper pressure cookers in the Lux series but doesn't have many premium features in more expensive models in the Ultra, Max, and Duo Plus series.

Among many types of pressure cookers, Instant Pot wants to strike a sweet balance between budget and feature set with this multi-cooker for most customers with the Duo 60. The final result is a product that usually has a place in best pressure cooker reviews.

Pros

- Great value for the money

- Multiple features

- Excellent temperature control

- Reliable with a proven track record

- Easy to use

Cons

- Lack of some advanced features on premium lineups

Design

Pot

This electric pressure cooker retains the unique and iconic design that has made the name of Instant Pot.

Made from stainless steel, the large pot has a black lid while on the front, you can find the noticeable control panel with a red LED display. We can't count how many times this front face has been photographed and used as the standard look for a pressure cooker.

While newer top pressure cookers from competitors usually opt for a sleek, modern-looking LCD display that can provide more detail, Instant Pot seems to not want to jump into that train and still stick to its roots.

Controls

While this old-school design is not going to win a design award these days, you can be assured that it doesn't make running the Duo 60 less easy or intuitive. But if Instant Pot needs to improve anything, we wish it could make the buttons easier to read.

Lid

Like other models from Instant Pot, the lid is still the thing that receives the most complaints from customers. It has a silver pressure valve, which will only rise a little once the maximum pressure has been achieved. This makes it extremely difficult to see if your Duo 60 is releasing pressure when you don't stay near it but across the room.

On top of that, putting this lid into place is not a breeze like you might expect. There is a good chance it won't stay firmly on top of the pot the first time you put it on and will make some annoying high-pitched notes instead. These notes are supposed to tell you that the lid is in its correct position, but when you hear them, no matter how you're putting the lid on, they have become useless.

You can also hear another loud beep when the cooking is done. Even though Instant Pot at least allows you to disable these annoying sounds by holding a button on the control panel, this should not be the default alarm sound that most customers want.

But overall, the lid still doesn't affect the performance and functionality of the Duo 60 too much. It even has side handles that can fit perfectly into the handles of the cooker itself, so you don't need to find a place for the lid - a nice feature for those with a busy kitchen counter that runs out of space for a lid holder.



Features

Cooking Programs

This smart appliance provides 14 preset buttons: Pressure Cook, Pasteurization, Yogurt, Keep Warm, Slow Cook, Steam, Porridge, Multigrain, Sauté/Simmer, Rice. Poultry, Bean/Chili, Meat/Stew, and Soup/Broth. They are designed for different dishes and ingredients in mind, and you must consult the user manual to set the right cooking program and level.

The main benefit of those buttons is that they can remember the last settings you use, so each time you want to cook with the same mode, you don't need to read the manual and adjust settings again. Just press one button, and it will cook with your last settings. Instant Pot also allows you to clear those settings and revert to the default factory settings of a specific cooking program by holding the button of that mode.

Even though these predefined programs are sometimes a useful addition, if you know what you are doing with the manual mode, they don't provide many changes and benefits. You can just use the manual Pressure Cook to get the same results as most of these modes as well.

One of the rare cooking programs that we find extremely useful is the Yogurt mode. Just with one touch, you can get the whole process started with the correct temperature and time settings. Besides that, the Keep Warm mode is a great way to maintain the temperature of your cooked dishes for up to 10 hours.

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Delay Cooking

The delay function is another handy feature of the Duo 60, which lets you choose a later time to cook your dish. It's a godsend when you have already prepared everything but don't want to start cooking yet. The delay period is adjustable between 10 minutes and 24 hours.

Performance

Thanks to the pressure and temperature sensors, the Instant Pot Duo 60 delivers precise cooking results, especially if you compared to other models on the market.

Even a complicated function like the Yogurt program does what it's supposed to do, stopping the initial heating period at the right temperature. You won't need to use the Sauté mode to manually push the temperature to the optimal value.

Using the manual Pressure Cook program, you can make a huge variety of dishes, from bone broth, salmon, bread pudding, sausages, mushroom risotto, to steel-cut oats or hard-cooked eggs, each of which is perfectly cooked and tastes delicious.

In the Sauté cooking program, you can choose one in three temperature settings: Less, Normal, and More. While these words are a bit confusing, you can see that Instant Pot meant low, medium, and high. The highest mode works great with searing mushrooms and meat, while the medium setting is best at sautéing garlic and onions. And if these temperatures are too intense for you, just reduce them to the Less setting.

Even when you intentionally feed the right ingredients to this pressure cooker, such as with not enough water, it will still handle the situation well. The Duo 60 will give a warning message to prompt you to add more liquid before anything bad happens.



Cleaning

Like other quality pressure cookers, you can use your dishwasher to clean the pot, silicone ring, plastic tool, and the steamer rack. On top of that, the lid of this Instant Pot model is dishwasher safe as well, which makes the whole cleanup much faster. The only thing you can only dry-clean is the base, where all the electrical components stay.

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Final Verdict

If you have a chance to grab the highest-rated pressure cooker at a specific price point like the Instant Pot Duo 60, don't miss that.

It's a solid package of easy-to-use and smart functionality and impressive cooking results. With such an affordable price, especially when you can get a discount, this is a no-brainer if you're seeking a mid-range pressure cooker that can help you cook a wide variety of dishes without breaking the bank.

And what is the best pressure cooker if you want more premium features? The Instant Pot Duo Plus, another best-rated electric pressure cooker, is a worthwhile upgrade.