Instant Pot Duo Honest Review: The Quirks Nobody Mentions

Last October I carried a box into my kitchen, cut the tape, and lifted out a six quart Instant Pot. I had twenty years of habit sitting in an old slow cooker that was about to go home with my daughter Karen, and I assumed the swap would come out roughly even. It has not been even. Some of it is better than I expected, and a few things are worse in ways no listing photo shows you.

I am sixty four. I spent twenty six years running the kitchen at a school cafeteria, and now I cook dinner most nights for two. My husband Gary does the dishes. Our house is a 1970s split level with about eight feet of usable counter, one sink, and an electric range. That is the whole runway. The pantry is a closet by the cellar door with four shelves, and it holds whatever is not used daily. So when I say whether an appliance is worth owning, I mean whether it earns a spot in this particular kitchen. The Instant Pot lives in that pantry, and that is not the insult it sounds like.

I am writing this because the reviews I read before I bought were heavy on the first week and light on the eleventh month. A first week review tells you the box arrived and the thing works. It does not tell you what will still be irritating next October, or which parts of your routine actually changed. That is the part I wanted, so that is the part I am writing.

What Nobody Tells You Before the First Cook

The box arrives and you think you will press a button and eat. What actually happens is that you stand at the counter with the manual open for a while, because thirteen programs on a touch panel is a different animal from a knob with two settings. The front panel runs on push buttons under a touch surface, and every one of them wants a decision from you. I would call the first three cooks a class, not a dinner. After that it turns ordinary.

The lid is the second thing. It locks, and it will not release until the pressure has come all the way down, which is exactly what it should do and also a small daily argument for the first couple of weeks. I stood over a pot of black beans more than once, giving the lid a look. The safe locking lid was doing its job. I was the one who had to adjust.

The third thing is size. The body measures 12.2 inches deep, 13.38 inches wide and 12.48 inches high, and it weighs 14.6 pounds. That is heavier than it looks in photos, and it takes two hands to lift off a pantry shelf. In a kitchen with eight feet of counter it is a real commitment, roughly a sheet pan and a little more. I measured before I ordered. I am glad I did.

How I've Actually Used It for a Year

Two or three times a week, most weeks. Dried beans are the reason it keeps its shelf. A pound of black beans goes in without an overnight soak and comes out soft in time for dinner, which is a thing my old slow cooker could not do without me planning the day before. Sunday chili for the family is one batch in the six quart, and there are two containers for the freezer afterward. There is usually a container of cooked beans in the refrigerator too, and the grandchildren eat them cold out of the bowl, which tells you they come out soft rather than chalky.

Pot roast is the other one. A three pound chuck roast, onions, carrots, a little liquid, and I am not watching it. Stock gets made from whatever chicken bones are in the freezer, and what comes out has more body than the cartons. Rice took me a month to trust. The first batches had a bite in the middle, and then I stopped fiddling with the amounts and it settled down.

Hard boiled eggs were the surprise. I did a dozen on a Saturday morning in January for the grandchildren, and every one peeled clean instead of tearing half the white off with the shell. I have done them four times since, always the same way, always the same result. My first attempt at rice, back in November, came out with a hard center because I had cut back on the water to be careful. I stopped being careful and it worked. That is the pattern with this machine: it punishes guessing and rewards following the amounts.

The slow cook setting works. I have used it for a soup on a day when I wanted to start something at noon and eat at six. It is not the old slow cooker, and I would not tell anyone to buy a six quart pressure cooker for the slow cooking alone. But it is there, and on the days I want it, I am glad.

The Quirks I've Learned to Live With

The lid comes apart in two pieces, an inner lid and an outer lid, and both need washing. That is fine except that the inner one has a shape that holds water, so it sits on the rack drying longer than you would expect. On a night when Gary is at the sink and I am putting food away, it is one more thing on the counter. Small. Still real, and nobody mentions it.

The drying is worse in winter, when the kitchen is cold and nothing air dries quickly. In January I started setting the inner lid flat on a folded dish towel instead of leaving it in the rack, and that solved it. It also means a dish towel lives on my counter now, permanently, which I resent a little. These are the adjustments nobody puts in a review, because none of them is dramatic. They are just the difference between a machine you keep using and a machine you quietly stop reaching for.

Timing is the other quirk. The up to 70 percent faster figure is true, and it is also true that the pot has to come up to pressure before any of that cooking starts. A twenty five minute cook is twenty five minutes plus the ramp. On a weeknight I plan for it. On a night when everyone is hungry and standing around, that ramp feels longer than it is.

And if you skimp on liquid, you will get a scorched bottom that needs soaking. That is not a defect. It is how pressure cooking works. But the listing does not say so, and the first time it happens you will think the machine is broken. The second time you will know better, and by the third you will have stopped skimping.

One chicken carcass, six quarts of water, and I have not bought a carton of broth since last winter.

What the Listing Photos Leave Out

The photos show a clean counter and no cord. Real kitchens run on cords, and where the cord can reach decides where the machine can sit. In my kitchen that is the strip of counter between the sink and the range, or nothing. It also decides whether you can leave the thing plugged in. I do not, because the pantry is on the other wall, and I have thought about adding an outlet there and decided against it.

The other thing the photos leave out is that this is a tool, not a decoration. It is stainless steel and it looks like equipment. Nothing about it is styled for a shelf. That is fine by me. I spent twenty six years around counters full of equipment, and I would rather have a pot that works than a pot that photographs well.

Where It Honestly Beats My Old Slow Cooker

The old slow cooker and I were together about twenty years. It made good chili and decent pot roast and it never once surprised me. What it could not do was cook dried beans in an afternoon or turn bones into stock in a couple of hours. That is the whole case. The Instant Pot does in an afternoon what used to take me a day of forethought, and I cook from dry beans far more often than I did. The sound is different too. The old one hummed. This one hisses and rattles as it works, loud for the first ten minutes and then a low rhythm after that, which took some getting used to.

Sunday chili is where the gap shows clearest. With the old slow cooker I had the onions and the meat going by nine in the morning to eat at five, and I checked on it four or five times whether it needed it or not. Now I brown the meat in a skillet on the range, everything goes into the stainless pot, and it is finished in the early afternoon. I get about three hours back on a Sunday. I use them to sit down, which at sixty four is not a small thing.

It also does better on the second day. Pot roast reheated from the freezer tastes like pot roast, and that was not always true before. The old slow cooker could dry a piece of meat out on the reheat. This one has not done that to me yet.

Where it does not beat the slow cooker is simplicity. The slow cooker was one knob and no decisions. I could hand Gary a recipe and he could run it. He will not run the Instant Pot, and I do not blame him. It is a machine with a panel, not a pot with a switch. He will stir a pot. He will not program one.

Two Things I Would Change

If I could change one thing it would be the weight. 14.6 pounds is not a lot in the abstract and it is a fair amount when you are lifting it off a shelf with one hand while holding the lid in the other. The second thing would be the lid itself. I understand why it locks and will not open early. I would still like it to be less of a conversation.

I would also change how the first month feels. Thirteen programs is a menu, and a menu is a decision every night until you learn your four or five. Now I press what I press and walk away. Getting there took a season.

The Time Math

This is the part I would want if I were reading a review. The cooking time a program gives you is not the time it takes. Add the ramp up, add the natural release if the recipe calls for one, add the minutes before the lid will open. A pot of beans that reads thirty five minutes is closer to an hour from the moment you press the button.

That said, almost none of it is time you spend standing there. My old slow cooker wanted the same forethought and gave me less back. With this one I put beans on at two in the afternoon and go do something else, and the machine handles the middle. Cooking time went up on paper. Hands on time went down a lot.

The Counter Space and Cleanup Math

Eight feet of counter, one sink, and a coffee maker already beside the sink. I did the arithmetic before the box arrived and the answer was the pantry closet, on a shelf at hip height. I am not lifting 14.6 pounds over my head at sixty four. Every Sunday it comes out. Every Sunday night it goes back. That is a small tax, and I would rather pay it than lose the counter where I chop.

I measured the shelf with a tape before I ordered, and the numbers on the listing matched the box that arrived: 12.2 inches deep, 13.38 wide, 12.48 high. My shelf has enough clearance to lift the pot out and not enough to slide it, so it comes straight up and straight back down, both hands, every time. The lid gets its own space beside it, because the lid and the pot do not stack on one shelf the way you picture them doing. Nobody tells you that either.

Cleanup is easier than the old slow cooker insert, honestly. The stainless steel inner pot lifts out, goes in the sink, and a short soak handles most of it. The lid is the fussy part. Because the closure is an inner lid and an outer lid, there are two surfaces and a rim, and the rim is where food hides. Gary checks the rim now. It took him a couple of months to start.

Who This Is For

This is for someone who cooks from dry beans, makes stock, and wants pot roast without standing over it. It suits a household of two to six, which is what the listing claims and what I found. Six quarts of chili fills the pot and leaves two containers for the freezer. It is for a cook who does not mind spending three evenings learning a panel and then never thinking about it again. If that is you, this pot earns its shelf. It is also for somebody who has been putting off dried beans because of the soak. That one change is worth more than the rest of the programs combined.

Who Should Skip It

Skip it if you want one knob and no menu. Skip it if you have no pantry and no spare counter, because 12.2 by 13.38 inches will not tuck into a drawer. Skip it if what you actually want is a slow cooker, since the slow cook setting is a bonus and not a reason to buy. And skip it if you are not going to read the manual once. The people who hate this machine are almost always the people who did not. If your idea of dinner is a sheet pan and a timer, you already have your answer.