The Best Pressure Cookers and Multi-Cookers of 2023

Electric Vs. Stovetop Cookers

Function 
Stovetop 
Electric 

Searing 
Winner. Stovetop cookers sear as well as any decent pan in your kitchen. You can pump up the heat as high as your stove will go. 
Electric pressure cookers’ searing ability is limited by the output of their electric heating elements. The best will sear reasonably well, though they can’t compete with the output of a true cooktop. The worst will steam your food instead of searing it. 

Size 
Winner. Stovetop cookers come in a wide range of sizes.
Most countertop cookers come in a range of five to eight quarts. Both of our picks are around the six-quart mark, which is large enough to make food for a family of four, with leftovers. 

Versatility 
Stovetop pressure cookers offer only rudimentary temperature control (i.e., they are as accurate as your burners). They’re good at getting hot and cooking fast, and that’s about it. 
Winner. Multi-cookers will pressure-cook, steam, and slow-cook. Some will also hold steady low temperatures for yogurt-making. Most also have adjustable pressure levels.

Pressure 
Winner. Stovetop pressure cookers typically reach a pressure level of 15 psi, allowing the contents to reach a full 250°F (121°C). 
Electric pressure cookers max out at 12 to 12.5 psi, giving you a cooking temperature of around 245°F (118°C). This small change in temperature means that foods do take a little bit longer to cook in an electric pressure cooker than in a stovetop one, but not significantly so. 

Ease of Use 
Stovetop pressure cookers require you to manually adjust the heat of your burner to maintain the right pressure. This can be tedious; you have to wait until it has come to pressure, then make tiny adjustments with your heat knob until you hit just the right position. You also need to manually stop the cooking when time is up. 
Winner. This is the real advantage of electric pressure cookers. Either use a preset or set the pressure and the time, then let the machine do the work. No fiddling with knobs; no worrying about timers. With models that include automatic pressure release, you have true set-it-and-forget-it ease. 

Slow-Cooking 
N/A 
Winner, sort of. The slow-cooker functions on most multi-cookers work just fine, though they don’t allow as much liquid to evaporate as a regular slow cooker will, which means that the already-bland food that comes out of a standard slow cooker is even blander coming out of a multi-cooker. The real answer here is that with these slow-cooker functions, there are no winners. 

Cleaning 
Winner. You can clean most stovetop pressure cookers by hand and some are dishwasher-safe. That means you can scrub them and clean them just like any other pot or pan.
Countertop pressure cookers all have removable cooking inserts that are typically very easy to clean. The lids are another story. Most are not dishwasher-safe, and I also found that countertop cookers universally absorbed odors more than stovetop ones. I could smell caramelized onions every time I opened one up for weeks after cooking them. 

The Criteria: What To Look for in a Stovetop Multi-Cooker and Countertop Pressure Cooker

What to Look for in a Stovetop Multi-Cooker

A good stovetop pressure cooker should have a thick, sturdy base that distributes heat evenly. It should have construction that gives us confidence that it will not explode or otherwise be a danger in the kitchen. We want it to have a lid that locks on securely and easily, without having to fiddle around.

Pressure gauges come in two distinct forms these days. The old-fashioned method uses a jiggler—a weight that sits over the end of a pressure-release tube that runs through the lid of the cooker. As the pressure inside builds, it eventually has enough force to lift the jiggler and emit a puff of steam, regulating the temperature and the pressure inside. The problem with jigglers is that each time they vent steam, the contents of the pot boil a bit, something that ideally shouldn’t happen inside a pressure cooker. Moreover, the only way you can monitor internal temperature is by adjusting the heat until the jiggler releases steam at a bare hiss, indicating you’ve achieved and maintained good pressure inside.

More modern cookers have spring-loaded release valves that rise and fall with the pressure inside but don’t actually vent steam until a fixed safety point is reached. This allows you to adjust the flame without actually venting any steam or causing boiling or other internal disturbances. I much prefer this style of stovetop cooker, though it can be pricier.

Regarding safety features, I need to see an automatic safety release valve—something that will vent pressure if the main valve somehow gets blocked or stuck. Luckily, any modern pressure cooker will have this feature. The direction in which the steam vents is also important. Most pressure cookers vent steam straight up in a jet. The steam in that jet is hot, and you can burn yourself if you put your hand or face in its way. Our favorite stovetop cooker vents steam from under a shield in all directions, reducing the chances that you burn yourself.

Efficiency is also a consideration. Depending on body design and materials, different pressure cookers heat and maintain their internal temperatures more or less efficiently than others. I tested efficiency by seeing where I needed to set my heat dial in order to maintain high pressure in each cooker. The higher I had to set it, the more energy was being wasted, and the less efficient the cooker.

What to Look for in a Countertop Pressure Cooker

Nearly all countertop pressure cookers are multi-cookers that also have slow-cooker functions; searing functions; sautéing, simmering, reducing, steaming, and, in some models, yogurt-making functions.

I want to be able to sear and sauté powerfully (and in a reasonable amount of time) in the same vessel. I want the cooker to come up to pressure and maintain that pressure with no monitoring. The more automation, the better. I’d like to get the thing running with an intuitive interface that gives me maximum control with minimal button presses. I want to be able to manually adjust timing and pressure, both at the start of cooking and on the fly. I also want a pressure cooker that’s easy to clean. Some models I tested had internal pots that would not sit still—they’d rotate around and around as I tried to stir, making cooking in them difficult and tedious. Others had lids that were difficult to align or lock down.

The biggest problem in most pressure cookers was with the interface: confusing panels with no hierarchy, often coupled with display panels that offered too little information. This might just be the Luddite in me, but I need to see an indication that the machine is actually cooking when it’s supposed to be. “Is it really on?” I’d ask myself, sometimes coming back after half an hour to see that, nope, it wasn’t actually running.

I’m less interested in the slow-cooking function in most multi-cookers, but I tested these out anyway.

The Testing

To test the pressure cookers, I cooked up a variety of foods with both short and long cooking times: a quick Pressure Cooker Corn Soup and Pressure Cooker Mushroom Risotto, beans in the form of Pressure Cooker Black Beans With Chorizo, and longer-cooking Pressure Cooker Texas-Style Chile Con Carne. I also cooked up batches of rice and other grains, as well as Pressure Cooker Caramelized Onions to see how long strong aromas would linger. For the electric multi-cookers with slow-cooker settings, I made a batch of slow-cooked Italian-American red sauce.

The Results

Every single pressure cooker, whether stovetop or electric, from the least expensive to the priciest, made good food in a fraction of the time it would take to make the same dish in a standard pot. That said, many multi-cookers, in particular, had interfaces or design flaws that detracted from the overall experience.

Here are the ones that stood out above their peers.

This model pressurized the quickest and offered the best searing and sautéing experience, with a stable, non-spinning pot. The ability to use the stainless steel inner pot on an electric, induction, or ceramic stovetops was welcome, as it gives the user greater flexibility and control. Releasing the steam feels straightforward and safe because of its separate push-button release and the plastic cover around the steam valve.

Serious Eats / Vicky Wasik

The control panel is easy to navigate with a mixture of buttons and a dial. We also liked the handles on its cooking pot, which made it easier to lift the pot up and out of the Instant Pot’s base.

The only downsides are it’s pretty expensive—about $130 (at the time of testing). Also, while the sous vide function works, it isn’t nearly as reliable as an immersion circulator. 

Price at time of publish: $150.

Key Specs

• Dimensions: 14.5 by 14 by 14 inches
• Weight: 16 pounds
• Capacity: 8 quarts
• Wattage: 1200 watts

Serious Eats / Vicky Wasik

The Breville Fast Slow Pro is a feature-packed model that puts users in the driver’s seat, but it comes at a high price. The biggest advantage the Fast Slow offers is manual control over both pressure and timing, with a simple-to-use, completely intuitive interface. Just turn the knobs and press them to select from a number of presets, or adjust the timer and the pressure manually at intervals of 0.5 psi from 1.5 to 12 psi. It offers a level of control that you don’t get even with stovetop cookers (though whether most people need such fined-tuned levels of control is a valid question).

Like other electric models, it also offers a range of presets for things like beans, rice, stock, and meat, though I usually select a preset and then tinker with the settings from there (I suppose I am one of those people who does benefit from having so much control).

Serious Eats / J. Kenji Lopez-Alt

Most pressure cookers gauge internal pressure via a temperature probe at the base of the unit. The Breville Fast Slow has dual sensors, one at the base and one in the lid, which gives it a much more accurate picture of what’s going on inside the pot, allowing it to adjust heating and, in emergencies, vent steam to reduce internal pressure.

Serious Eats / J. Kenji Lopez-Alt

I really enjoy the blue/orange LCD screen, which gives you clear indications of whether the machine is actively cooking or whether you’re still adjusting settings. If that screen turns orange, the cooker is engaged, and it’s safe to walk away.

Two more great features: automatic adjustment for cooking at altitude and automatic pressure release. The former is important for folks who live high above sea level. A pressure cooker maintains its pressure at a certain level above the ambient air pressure, so, as that air pressure drops when you travel up into the mountains, the pressure inside a pressure cooker will drop correspondingly. But not in the Breville.

As for automatic pressure release, this is the feature that makes this cooker truly set-it-and-forget-it. Every other cooker on the market requires you to vent steam manually when you hear the “time’s up!” chime ring or leave it to cool down on its own so that the pressure drops naturally. The Breville will automatically release steam at a rate you determine via a few presets (either all at once or in a series of short bursts). You can also set it to not vent steam at all, for a natural cool-down (in which case it will let out a chime to let you know when the pressure has fully dropped), or ask it to keep your food warm right from the start of cooking, so that all you have to do is show up at dinnertime.

Compared with other models, the heating and searing functions on the Breville performed similarly to its closest competitors, browning meats and reaching high pressure within a minute or two of each other. I typically prefer stainless steel for searing, but the Breville’s ceramic coating produced nice dark sears in a reasonable amount of time. The cooking pot also sits firmly in the outer chamber, preventing it from spinning around as you stir.

Serious Eats / J. Kenji Lopez-Alt

As with other electric models, the slow-cook function works reasonably well, but it will not behave exactly like a standard slow cooker. Liquids do not evaporate as fast, so you end up with more liquid at the end. You can solve this problem by replacing the built-in lid with an appropriately sized pot lid. But, to be honest, once you have a pressure cooker, there’s not really any reason to use a slow cooker, so the functionality becomes largely redundant.

Serious Eats / J. Kenji Lopez-Alt

For ease of cleaning, the Breville also has an advantage, since the ceramic coating makes wiping it out a snap. The Breville also has a very wide lip under the gasket at the top, making wiping it out simple. In every other countertop model, getting a sponge into the cramped space under the lid locks was a pain in the butt, if not outright impossible.

Serious Eats / J. Kenji Lopez-Alt

I do have a couple of gripes, though. The first is the lid placement. The lid is fixed to the body of the cooker on a hinge. When open, it sits upright. This can get in the way of your elbow when you’re stirring or tasting, especially if you’re right-handed. That said, it does eliminate the frustration I have with other cookers of having to ensure that the marks are perfectly lined up in order to close the lid.

Serious Eats / J. Kenji Lopez-Alt

The other is the lid’s safety-locking pin, which engages when the cooker becomes pressurized to prevent the explosive risk of such rapid depressurization. When the lid is closed and set to its locking position, it’s easy to position it such that the pin isn’t aligned with its hole. If it’s not properly aligned, the pin won’t rise and lock the lid and the cooker won’t properly pressurize. It’s clearly a problem because there’s even a warning on the lid to visually confirm the pin’s alignment; a better design would guarantee proper alignment when the lid is in its locked position, which is how the Instant Pot works.

Price at time of publish: $280.

Serious Eats / J. Kenji Lopez-Alt

Key Specs

• Dimensions: 12.5 by 13.5 by 14 inches
• Weight: 14 pounds
• Capacity: 6 quarts
• Wattage: 700 watts

The Best Stovetop Pressure Cooker

Kuhn Rikon Stovetop Pressure Cooker

Amazon

View On Amazon

The Kuhn Rikon Duromatic Pressure Cooker is as pretty to look at as it is effective. It’s a second-generation cooker, which means improved safety features (like an automatic pressure-release valve) and a spring-loaded pressure gauge rather than a jiggler.

Some stovetop cookers have various switches, levers, or valves to toggle between low pressure, high pressure, and release settings. The Kuhn Rikon combines them all into one elegant solution. The valve is in the center of the conical lid. As pressure builds up inside, an indicator rod slowly rises up in the center, revealing red lines. One red line means you’re at low pressure, while two red lines mean you’re at high. Let it keep heating and, eventually, it will start venting steam to prevent an explosion.

Serious Eats / Vicky Wasik

To release pressure, you use the exact same rod. Just push it down, and steam gets released evenly around from under a shield, reducing the chances of a burn. The valves and rods are also easy enough to remove and clean, which is important to maintain proper function. I like the fact that the valve is an all-metal construction. It gives me peace of mind that the moving parts here are designed to last.

Serious Eats / Vicky Wasik

Though it may vary with the exact setup of your cooktop, I found that the Duromatic was the most efficient pressure cooker of the bunch. Once I got it up to temperature, it required very little added heat to keep it there during cooking. This is in line with what our friends at Hip Pressure Cooking found, which indicates to me that it’s not specific to my cooking arrangement.

Kuhn Rikon offers a range of Duromatic models in a variety of shapes and sizes, all with the same basic features and build. We think the 6.3-quart model (linked to below) is the best size for most families, making meals that can feed about 4 to 6 people.

We’re also very big fans of its 8.5-quart, 11-inch-wide model. Instead of the taller, narrower stock-pot shape that most pressure cookers have, this one is wider and slightly shorter, which is great for stews and braises since there’s more surface area on the bottom of the pot for browning foods. That increased surface area also means you can reduce liquids faster when the lid is off. That said, it’s a big investment, which may make it off-limits for most folks.

Price at time of publish: $219.

Key Specs

• Materials: Stainless steel
• Dimensions: 11.4 by 11.2 by 10.3 inches
• Capacity: 6.3 quarts
• Weight: 8 pounds

Serious Eats / Vicky Wasik

Want to start pressure-cooking on a real budget? I’d recommend the Presto 8-Quart Pressure Cooker. There are no bells and whistles here, just a sturdy stainless steel pot and a lid with a safety valve and a jiggler for maintaining pressure. (It operates only at high pressure—15psi, though, of course, you can sort of eyeball lower pressure by adjusting your flame accordingly.) I used this guy for many years before upgrading to the Kuhn Rikon, so I can tell you that it is a tank that will last and last.

Aside from the old-school pressure-regulation mechanism, the main drawback is that the jiggler is completely separate from the rest of the pot. More than once, I thought I’d lost it, only to hear it clattering when I turned on the garbage disposal in the sink. I also once dropped it onto a hot burner, causing the plastic to melt.

Price at time of publish: $100.

Key Specs

• Materials: Stainless steel
• Dimensions: 11 by 17.5 by 10.5 inches
• Capacity: 8 quarts
• Weight: 9 pounds

FAQs

Is an Instant Pot with a sous vide function worth it?

After testing, we found that the Instant Pot’s sous vide function can work, but it’s not super reliable. If you’re interested in sous vide, we still suggest you go with a stand-alone immersion circulator.

What can I make in an Instant Pot or stovetop pressure cooker?

We have a collection of multi-cooker and pressure cooker-compatible recipes that you can check out here.

Can I slow cook in a multi-cooker?

You can, but we don’t recommend it. (You can read why here.) Multi-cookers like Instant Pots really excel at pressure-cooking and that should be their primary use.

What does a pressure cooker do?

Pressure cookers create a sealed environment that traps steam and drives up the boiling point of water past 212ºF, which speeds up cook times dramatically. We have an entire article about how they work here.

Is a slow cooker the same as a pressure cooker?

Slow cookers rely on heating a ceramic pot with electricity, while a pressure cooker uses a sealed lid to create a pressurized cooking environment. Slow cookers use indirect heat to slowly heat food over long periods of time, while pressure cookers speed up the cooking process.

Is pressure cooking better than boiling?

Because pressure cookers create a pressurized environment that can exceed a boiling point of 212ºF, they can tackle tasks that take longer in regular boiling water. Pressure cookers excel at tenderizing meat and making stock much faster than regular cooking methods are able to.

Can you cook raw meat in a pressure cooker?

Relatively easy to cook cuts of meat, like chicken breast, aren’t likely to benefit from being cooked in a pressure cooker. Pressure cookers are better at breaking down tendons and muscle fibers in tougher cuts of meat that usually require long braises.