Instant Pot Duo Plus Multi-Cooker review

It’s a pressure cooker, slow cooker, rice cooker, yoghurt maker and more. The Instant Pot Multi-Cooker combines many appliances into one single unit designed to save you time and benchtop real estate.

We have used our fair share of appliances in the Australian Women’s Weekly’s Test Kitchen (not to mention our own homes), and we were eager to see how the Instant Pot performed. So, with the Instant Pot Duo Plus 9-in-1 Multi-Cooker 5.7L on hand, we put the pressure cooker and slow cooker functions to the test, cooking pulled pork, massaman beef curry, porridge and risotto.

Here’s how we found it.

Instant Pot Duo Plus 9-in-1 Multi-Cooker (5.7L) review verdict

GOOD FOR: A family of four to six wanting an appliance with multiple functions. It’s versatile and saves you time in the kitchen. Less hands-on cooking and less washing up!

What we love

It’s easy to use, versatile, and the pressure cooker function is a real time saver.
Pressure cooking can be a nerve wracking experience for a beginner. There are some good safety features here, including the handy visual guide to sealing the lid.
We love the sturdy handles which double as a lid holder. This is helpful for resting the hot dripping lid.

What you need to know

When using sauté on high, the inner pot gets very hot, so you need to keep an eye on the food to ensure it doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pot.
The Instant Pot pressure cooker does take time to pre-heat and pressurise, so you need to factor in additional time for this.
The lid gets very hot when pressure cooking. Follow the safety instructions and monitor children near the bench.

What’s good about the Instant Pot Duo Plus Multi-Cooker?

This multi-cooker combines the functions of multiple appliances into one versatile machine. Get dinner on the table fast using the pressure cooker function. Or set a curry to cook low and slow on the weekend for a batch cook up. It’s that versatile – plus all the other functions! Then there’s the clean up, and in the case of the Instant Pot, the stainless steel inner pot and lid can go in the dishwasher, making tidy up a breeze.
Women’s Weekly Food team

Functions include pressure cooking, slow cooking, rice cooking and yoghurt making. It can also be used as a sous vide machine.
The sauté function can be used for any browning needed as an initial step for pressure cooker or slow cooker recipes. It can also be used to reduce sauces or crisp up meat at the conclusion of cooking.
There are 13 preset, “smart programs” including Soup/Broth, Cake, Egg, Rice, Bean/Grain, Porridge/Oatmeal and Sterilise.
The instruction manual explains the steps for pressure cooking well, which is important as you must follow a strict process when pressure cooking, for safety reasons. The safety features and reminders on the actual device are also really helpful.
The status bar on the control panel make it easy to see what part of the process the Instant Pot is up to when pressure cooking, moving from pre-heating to cooking to warming.
There’s also an Instant Connect app produced by Instant Pot with recipes specifically for the machine.

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The Instant Pot Duo Plus Multi-Cooker materials and size

The Instant Pot Duo Plus 9-in-1 Multi-Cooker (5.7L) includes an inner pot, spare silicone sealing ring and trivet/steaming rack. The trivet is used to hold food or heat-proof containers housing food off the bottom of the inner pot, keeping them out of the liquid. It has two handles which make it easier to get things into the inner pot.
The inner pot and trivet are made from stainless steel.
The inner pot, trivet and lid are dishwasher safe.
We road tested the 5.7L Instant Pot. There’s also a larger 8L size.

How to use the Instant Pot Multi-Cooker

Many of the Instant Pot Multi-Cooker’s features are devoted to the pressure cooker function. It’s essential to read the instruction booklet that comes with the appliance before using the product and to follow all steps and safety instructions. This covers how to safely release steam at the end of cooking, when to use natural release versus quick release, how you know when it’s safe to open the lid, and the settings required to start pressure cooking.

Porridge made in the Instant Pot as part of our hands-on review. — We used the Pressure Cooker function to make porridge, placing water in the Inner Pot, then placing a heatproof bowl in using the trivet.

Here are a few insights and tips from our hands-on test of this Instant Pot:

If using the sauté function as an early step in a recipe, keep an eye on the food. The inner pot is deep but not very wide, so there’s not a lot of surface area. This meant we had to brown the meat for our slow cooked curry in small batches. The temperature can also get very hot, so you really need to keep an eye on the food and move it around the pot to ensure it doesn’t stick.
Some pressure cooking recipes will cook straight in the inner pot. Others will require liquid in the base of the inner pot and the food either on the trivet or in a heat proof bowl sitting on the trivet. When making porridge, for example, we added water to the bottom of the inner pot, then used the trivet to lower the heat proof bowl with the oats and milk into it.
During depressurisation food continues to cook. There are two ways to steam release: natural release and quick release. Recipes should indicate which produces a better end result for the dish being cooked, for example, Instant Pot recommends a 10-minute natural release when cooking rice for the best end result, then a quick release if needed to completely de-pressurise the pot. Consult the instruction manual for the safest way to release the Instant Pot’s pressure.
The presets or “smart programs” are a helpful guide, and a good reminder of all the different things the multi-cooker can do. These set the pressure (low or high) and a default time for each function, which can be adjusted up or down for the specific recipe.
The Keep Warm function is enabled by default, so you may want to turn it off depending on what you’re cooking.
We found that the lid retained some cooking odours during testing. Instant Pot recommends keeping the Quick Release Switch in the vent position when not in use.

Results from our Instant Pot tests

Making risotto in the Instant Pot didn't require any stirring. — We used the Sauté and Pressure Cooker functions to make this risotto.

We used the pressure cooker function of this Instant Pot multi-cooker to make creamy porridge for breakfast and a basic risotto for lunch, with no stirring required. We also tried a delicious pulled pork recipe from the Instant Pot cookbook, which we had on the table in just over an hour.

The benefit of pressure cooking is that the food, liquid and resulting steam sealed within the pressure cooker during cooking time reach a very high temperature which softens the fibres in the food, resulting in flavoursome, tender meat (in this case).

We used the slow cooker function to make our reader-favourite massaman beef curry, using the sauté function to brown the gravy beef. We followed this slow cooker recipe’s instructions to the letter and this long and slow cook produced a flavoursome curry with tender meat.

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Is the Instant Pot Duo Plus worth it?

A pressure cooker is great tool for a time poor cook. Throw in a few other functions, and this Instant Pot Multi-Cooker really starts working hard for its place on the benchtop. The fact that you can both slow cook and pressure cook, plus all the other functions, makes this a very handy space-saving appliance.

A product that can be used for breakfast, lunch and dinner is every cook’s dream! If only it could do the shopping too!
Women’s Weekly Food team

We were impressed during our hands-on testing of the Instant Pot Duo Plus 9-in-1 Multi-Cooker, so it’s no surprise to us that it’s a best-seller on Amazon. In fact, it’s been ranked number one in the “electric pressure cookers” category. It also has over 500 five star ratings from customers around the world, with one customer in Australia sharing that it was “a game-changer in my kitchen!”

“I’ve used it for a variety of dishes – from hearty stews to flavorful rice – and it never disappoints. It’s become my go-to for saving time without sacrificing taste,” they wrote.