

A poll of our readers revealed that 93 percent of more than 200 respondents use their multicooker primarily for pressure cooking. Pressure-Cooking in a MulticookerĪ multicooker has many functions, but the most important one is arguably pressure cooking. In each model, we pressure- and slow-cooked beef stew and Boston baked beans and made white rice. We included both 8-quart and 6-quart models because our multicooker recipes work equally well in both sizes. To find out, we selected a range of multicookers, including our previous winners. The Instant Pot may have a lock on the market, but with so many new and updated models-including two from Instant Pot-now available, we wondered if the Zavor and GoWISE models were still the best. While exact sales figures are not made public, the company’s founder, Robert Wang, told CNBC that unit sales have doubled every year since 2011. What hasn’t changed? The fervor of the Instant Pot’s fan base. The amount of recipes created specifically for multicookers as well as product-specific cookbooks has exploded some innovative bloggers have even found ways to make wine and bake bread in their multicookers. For starters, manufacturers have added more features to boost the "multi" aspect of this small appliance’s name, with some products purporting to sous vide, ferment, and even adjust their capabilities to accommodate cooking at high altitudes. Over the past few years, though, multicookers in general have undergone some big changes. Instead, we named the Zavor LUX LCD 8 QT Multicooker and the GoWISE USA 8-Quart 10-in-1 Electric Pressure Cooker / Slow Cooker our favorites they were adept at both pressure- and slow-cooking food, they seared food well, and they were easy to use. The model we included in our lineup, the Instant Pot Duo 7-in-1 Multi-Use Programmable Pressure Cooker, excelled at pressure cooking, but its slow-cooked beef stew was still chewy 11 hours later. However, it wasn’t our top pick when we tested multicookers a few years ago.

If you’ve been on the internet sometime in the past five years, you’ve probably heard of the Instant Pot, the wildly popular multicooker that can pressure-cook, slow-cook, sear, and more.
