Crock pot vs. Instant Pot

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asicer

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asicer
My slow cooker (aka crock pot) is having issues. Its electronic brain wants to power off by itself every couple hours or so.

I noticed that Costco is having a sale on the Instant Pot Duo for roughly the same price as a replacement slow cooker. I also noticed that this unit has a slow cooker mode.

How well does an Instant Pot function as a slow cooker? Is it a viable replacement?
 
I'm sure it works just fine as a slow cooker. We also have the Duo, but we've never used it (got it as a gift). I believe it does quite a few functions (steamer/saute/etc). We just usually resort to the old fashioned slow cookers because they're simple. We have one with the electronic buttons/timer and one with the regular high/medium/low/off switch. Both get used more than the InstaPot, but that's just largely because we haven't needed to make something quickly where a pressure cooker would excel.
 
They’re much smaller than many slow cookers depending on what you need to slow cook. Our slow cookers get more use because we make larger things and batches in them and freeze leftovers.

Other than that the only other difference is some don’t have differ temp settings for slow cooking. Another feature to watch for if needed.

I’m sticking a couple of pork tenderloins and some apples in the pressure cooker version tonight — see how that goes. The tenderloins are thawing and brining now with various spices.
 
I have a huge instant pot and we love it! I cook all sorts of stuff in it. Last week I threw about 8lbs of brisket in it with bbq sauce. In 2 hours we had meat so tender you couldn't pick it up. I chopped it up. We had chopped beef potatoes, sandwiches and Nacho's for days!
We do Chinese veggies, Italian, Potroast etc. Most stuff takes like 12 minutes!
 
pigpenracing said:
Most stuff takes like 12 minutes!
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We have an electric pressure cooker too and we like it, but be honest. It’s 12 minutes of cook time. Add in the time for the pot to come to pressure and then pressure release (if you don’t do a quick release) and you’re more like 40-60 minutes of total cook time.
 
Once we got our instant pot the slow cooker has not seen much use. Our issue was that the things that went into the slow cooker were done before anyone was ready to eat them. The Instant Pot works better for us, because we can assemble the dish and have it ready in less than an hour, which works better on our schedules.
 
asicer said:
How well does an Instant Pot function as a slow cooker?
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Think of it like the high-wing / low-wing debate.... You can almost replace the nouns.

How well does a (low-wing aircraft) function as slow (aircraft)? Not well.... for that you need a high-wing.

Slow cookers - good for waiting around all day to get what you want to eat. High wings - waiting around all day to get to your destination.

instant Pot - whooooooeeeee. Like gettin’ there in a Bo. or Mooney I guess. Good food cooked fast.
 
The tenderloin came out great. Apples too. Used Stevia to keep the sugar away.

Modified a recipe that called for honey and cinnamon and instead went with cinnamon, allspice, cloves, and nutmeg.

Original recipe called for a cup of vegetable stock, used a cup and a half of no sugar apple juice I had leftover from another recipe. The strained the juice and reduced in a saucepan.

Also the tenderloin wasn’t completely unfrozen so two rounds at 7 min of pressure cooking. Would have been a tad less done and just right fully thawed to start and about 10-12 min.

Two apples. Two 1 lb-ish tenderloins.

Next time it needs some black pepper. Some might not like that with apples but I would. Or a sneaky pinch or two of cayenne.

Delicious. Also snuck a tablespoon of bacon fat into the sauce to make it look shiny, restaurant trick. They use butter. Either works. Sneaky way to add a little more pork fat. :)

Meat was super juicy and tender.

1ecdb6b9ab16bc35c9a59d4228022c87.jpg



What it looked like after the first 7 minutes in the pot. Can see the little raw stuff in between the loins. Rotated that part down and went again. Five minutes would have been plenty but 7 turned out fine.

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And yeah using whole cloves I created a bit of work for myself picking those out — but I knew I did. No big deal while straining. If I was lazier I had some ground clove here but that can get out of hand real quick in a sauce. LOL. Doesn’t take much.

A lovely fall meal. Leftovers are in the fridge marinating in the apple sauce. Probably even better after a day or two of that.
 
I've looked into instant pots, but can't bring myself to get one.

I have an old crock pot (circa 1980s) that functions perfectly for slow cooking. I also have a high-quality stove-top pressure cooker that's served me well for many years. With these two gadgets in my kitchen arsenal, I can't find a good reason to buy an instant pot.
 
Sluggo63 said:
We have an electric pressure cooker too and we like it, but be honest. It’s 12 minutes of cook time. Add in the time for the pot to come to pressure and then pressure release (if you don’t do a quick release) and you’re more like 40-60 minutes of total cook time.
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It will come up to pressure faster if, as soon as steam starts escaping from the pressure indicator, you lift up on the lid and push it back down quickly. You can shave several minutes off the "waiting for pressure" time.
 
ETres said:
I've looked into instant pots, but can't bring myself to get one.

I have an old crock pot (circa 1980s) that functions perfectly for slow cooking. I also have a high-quality stove-top pressure cooker that's served me well for many years. With these two gadgets in my kitchen arsenal, I can't find a good reason to buy an instant pot.
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You don’t need it if you already have a pressure cooker.
 
kitchen gadgets... I have a lot of them!
I like the Instant Pot, but ours is a small roughly 3qt one we bought at Costco a couple years ago. Great for pressure cooking, have done all sorts of recipes in there, e.g. red beans and rice, or just rice, or chili...
I have multiple slow cookers, in fact I have two 8 qt slow cookers that are dead simple. A simple power switch for warm, low and high, no timer... We use these for large cooks, like Turkeys, Navy bean soup (make 2 gallons at a time). My oldest slow cooker is over twenty years old. My mom still has one which she uses and she got before I was born.

For most meat, I have switched to Sous Vide, I can buy a cheap roast and use the sous vide and end up with great flavor that I cut with the side of the fork.

I have way too many gadgets....

Tim
 
pigpenracing said:
I have a huge instant pot and we love it! I cook all sorts of stuff in it. Last week I threw about 8lbs of brisket in it with bbq sauce. In 2 hours we had meat so tender you couldn't pick it up. I chopped it up. We had chopped beef potatoes, sandwiches and Nacho's for days!
We do Chinese veggies, Italian, Potroast etc. Most stuff takes like 12 minutes!
Click to expand...

Interesting on the brisket. I might just try that. I've never been able to pull it off in either the oven or the crock pot, unless it happens to be in the form of corned beef.
 
Sac Arrow said:
Interesting on the brisket. I might just try that. I've never been able to pull it off in either the oven or the crock pot, unless it happens to be in the form of corned beef.
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I have gone sous vide for briskets, roasts.... comes out "perfect" each time. Requires much less timing precision on my part.

Tim
 
We were gifted an instant pot. Laurie hates it. We're giving it to a friend who wants to see if she, too, will hate it.

Standard Crock Pot is the way to go.
 
Ted DuPuis said:
We were gifted an instant pot. Laurie hates it. We're giving it to a friend who wants to see if she, too, will hate it.

Standard Crock Pot is the way to go.
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Didn't realize the Instant Pot was a pressure cooker. My pressure cooker (my mother's, possibly even her mother's!) died few years ago - the rubber gasket in the lid disintegrated and there's no way to repair/replace. Incredibly heavy, so I use it without the lid for boiling pasta and potatoes. Been looking for another pressure cooker, haven't liked any around that are cost-effective. I like the Fissler (6 qt $230 made in Germany) compared to the Instant Pot (6 qt, $100 made in China). The Fissler is only a pressure cooker, and as Alton Brown points out, he hates anything that has only 1 use (other than the fire extinguisher). When it wasn't broken I've done soup and brisket in the pressure cooker, no need for the 7 options, 14 programs instant pot. But for a Franklin, I might try it. Instant Pot = 2 hours of flying but I haven't been in the air in over 2 months (weather, work) so look at all the $$ I've saved up.
 
New crockpots (tm) apparently have been lawerized and now all cook too hot, in my opinion. A quick google search agrees.
 
gkainz said:
New crockpots (tm) apparently have been lawerized and now all cook too hot, in my opinion. A quick google search agrees.
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Hadn’t heard this new fresh hell, but one way around that would be to get one with a “warm” setting below “Low”. Then just adjust switch usage down a notch. LOL.

Only the companies with smart lawyers will figure that one out. LOL
 
denverpilot said:
Hadn’t heard this new fresh hell, but one way around that would be to get one with a “warm” setting below “Low”. Then just adjust switch usage down a notch. LOL.

Only the companies with smart lawyers will figure that one out. LOL
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Advantage of the stove-top models - you're responsible for setting the temps.
 
gkainz said:
New crockpots (tm) apparently have been lawerized and now all cook too hot, in my opinion. A quick google search agrees.
Click to expand...

We use our crockpot quite a bit. After moving into our new (and very old) house, we noticed the formica countertop was starting to crack right where we set up the crockpot. We attributed it to house settling. Over the next few years, the crack elongated and widened somewhat. We kept using the crockpot, and blaming the house. Finally, when the countertop cracked full-width, I realized that the crockpot was throwing insane amounts of heat beneath it...the countertop was hotter than the interior of the crockpot, and that's what trashed it. Next cook, we put a plastic cutting board under the crockpot for insulation, and it developed a full 3" of warp, so yeah, I think they do get too hot.

We're using it on ceramic tiles on top of trivets now, until I build a more elegant heat shield.
 
We have a slow cooker, but don't use it very often. I should use it more, but I don't.

We bought the large size (8qt?) InstantPot for each of our kids over the last couple of years since they didn't already have slow cookers.

I've used them when we've visited. What I do like about them is that you can sear inside the InstantPot, which you can't do in a slow cooker. So you can brown meat in it, then either set it to slow cook or pressure cook. It makes for a simpler "one pot" solution for a lot of recipes. Clean up is pretty easy.

As someone else noted above: Be wary about the cooking time advertisements. That's only the time spent at pressure, and not the time spent getting to pressure and releasing the pressure.

If our slow cooker ever dies, I will probably replace it with an InstantPot.
 
Matthew said:
We have a slow cooker, but don't use it very often. I should use it more, but I don't.
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Primary usage for our slow cookers seems to be leavings from roasts. Prior to roasting, collect all the trimmed gristle and silver skin. After carving, collect the carcass/bones. Toss them all in the slow cooker along with a splash of vinegar and a dash of salt to make broth. So before becoming unreliable, it got used a couple times a month.
 
tspear said:
For most meat, I have switched to Sous Vide, I can buy a cheap roast and use the sous vide and end up with great flavor that I cut with the side of the fork.
Click to expand...
The $60 Instant Pot on sale at Costco has a sous vide mode. I wonder how well that works...
 
denverpilot said:
Hadn’t heard this new fresh hell, but one way around that would be to get one with a “warm” setting below “Low”. Then just adjust switch usage down a notch. LOL.

Only the companies with smart lawyers will figure that one out. LOL
Click to expand...

Got one that has High, Low, Warm. Warm is still too hot. Going shopping at Good Will for an old pre-litigation model.
 
asicer said:
The $60 Instant Pot on sale at Costco has a sous vide mode. I wonder how well that works...
Click to expand...

I have two containers I use for my sous vide. A 12qt one that I use for most stuff. A larger 48qt one which is more of a rectangle instead of a square. Great for cooking four full racks of ribs, or a few weeks ago when I cooked six corned beef briskets at roughly 7lbs each Not sure how much space is in that Costco Sous Vide. But I know the problem I would have with ours is size.

Tim
 
gkainz said:
Got one that has High, Low, Warm. Warm is still too hot. Going shopping at Good Will for an old pre-litigation model.
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I missed that, what litigation?

Tim
 
tspear said:
I missed that, what litigation?

Tim
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Yeah, I was just heading back here to correct my poor choice of wording from “litigation” to “liability avoidance”.
I’ve seen no evidence of litigation online, just speculation of possible liability in having food in the “unsafe range” for too long.
 
Ours works fine as a slow cooker. My wife tossed the slow cooker. Plus our old slow cooker was a "dumb" model, just low/high setting, no timer. The Instant Pot has a timer which makes it nicer. Of course during the COVID mess that's not a big deal as we're both working from home.
 
Sac Arrow said:
Interesting on the brisket. I might just try that. I've never been able to pull it off in either the oven or the crock pot, unless it happens to be in the form of corned beef.
Click to expand...

After it cooks take the meat out and chop it up and add new fresh BBQ sauce. DO NOT use the sauce and juice it cooks in because it will be greasy. Ask me how I know :D
 
pigpenracing said:
After it cooks take the meat out and chop it up and add new fresh BBQ sauce. DO NOT use the sauce and juice it cooks in because it will be greasy. Ask me how I know :D
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Have you tried to de-fat that sauce? Just wondering how that worked out.
 
Matthew said:
Have you tried to de-fat that sauce? Just wondering how that worked out.
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I have tried that previously. It did not work very well. But then I may not have used the best technique...

Tim
 
Matthew said:
Have you tried to de-fat that sauce? Just wondering how that worked out.
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Throw away all that greasy stuff it cooked in and put new sauce. That is how I de-fat it. LOL
It works great doing the same with boneless chicken breast also. Just cook less time.
 
tspear said:
I have tried that previously. It did not work very well. But then I may not have used the best technique...

Tim
Click to expand...
Put the greasy sauce in a bowl, put bowl in freezer for a few minutes. Then take a knife, run around the edge of the bowl and lift out the grease. May end up with a few pieces of grease, but you still have the good part of the sauce so you can add it to the new sauce.
 
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