I can recommend the Sage/breville “fast and slow go 6L” cooker if you cannot or don’t want to get the instant pot. I have had mine for 2 years now and its solid build and i have used it a lot. Makes excellent youghurt and risotto among others.
So are water heaters and we use those pretty confidently.
Pressure cookers get a bad reputation for safety from the times when they were basically a metal box with a tiny hole in it, but modern cookers have a lot of additional redundancies. Particularly modern ones with timers. It’d take a lot of work to get one of those to go catastrophically. It’s more likely to get killed by lighting than by pressure cooker, at least in the US, and as far as I can tell from available stats, and most of the pressure cooker injuries the stats list are from people who got a contact or steam burn, not by explosions.
It’s also interesting that people are often afraid of exploding pressure cookers when they think of them as pressure cookers, but you don’t get as much anxiety from rice cookers (AKA pressure cooker - but small).
“Dedicated” is doing a lot of work there. Regardless, they are both a vessel with a small hole where you’re heating up a gas. The difference is the pressure cooker has a valve that lets the pressure climb higher before it vents while the rice cooker is only up to whatever pressure builds up due to the vent cap foam filter being narrower than the lid. The old “exploding pressure cooker” thing is about that valve getting blocked, broken or clogged and pressure building indefinitely.
Only that shouldn’t happen on modern versions of either because the electric versions of both are using timers and sensors to control the cook. My old-school stovetop cooker still relies on pressure building until the valve hits the pressure I’ve set and vents the steam, but the electric one I was using before didn’t have to vent (at least when used manually, some programs had venting built in), it just went to temp and pressure and stayed there for some time, then released the steam at the end.
But even if my stovetop’s valve failed, there is still a safety valve. And even if that failed again, there is a scored area on the lid that is designed to fail first and vent the pressure (although you wouldn’t want to be in front of it if that happens).
I’d still default to an instant cooker if I was worried about safety. Not only does it not build up pressure indefinitely in the first place, but it also won’t let you open it until it’s vented, so you won’t open it and get a faceful of pressurized steam. Which, honestly, is the real danger with old manual pressure cookers. Everybody freaks out at anecdotal reports of explosions, but from what I can tell “opened too soon or vented incorrectly, got a burn” seems to be the real scenario you should be concerned about.
Ironically, that can still happen with rice cookers. I’ve (lightly) burnt myself by popping the lid open while my rice cooker was still hot before.
I have a modern stovetop stainless steel pressure cooker, very common type in Europe. It has three redundant pressure / over pressure relief safety sytems plus a very hard to circumvent locking mechanism that only unlocks at ambient pressure. Instant pot types look interesting, because they expand on the concept, but a major drawback I see is that they are often small (my pressure cooker is 6L) and, basically a dealbreaker for me, the vessel is usually plastic coated, I.e. non/stick. I think I will stick with mine, which coupled with a programmable stovetop induction single heater I own, fulfills part of the features.
I’m curious about how expensive. My last electric pressure cooker was a more expensive model (and I sold it after years in working order), but the stovetop pressure cooker I have at home now was more expensive than the entry-level Instant Pot branded electric cookers.
Is the new one stainless steel? If so there are very few parts that may fail, valve parts and gasket essentially. Instant pots have a ton of failure points. The modern stovetops are almost buy it for life.
I can recommend the Sage/breville “fast and slow go 6L” cooker if you cannot or don’t want to get the instant pot. I have had mine for 2 years now and its solid build and i have used it a lot. Makes excellent youghurt and risotto among others.
The thing is, these are just a pressure vessel with a timer and a heating element. They are all good unless they are very poorly made.
Theyre all good until they are bombs, then they’re pretty good bombs
So are water heaters and we use those pretty confidently.
Pressure cookers get a bad reputation for safety from the times when they were basically a metal box with a tiny hole in it, but modern cookers have a lot of additional redundancies. Particularly modern ones with timers. It’d take a lot of work to get one of those to go catastrophically. It’s more likely to get killed by lighting than by pressure cooker, at least in the US, and as far as I can tell from available stats, and most of the pressure cooker injuries the stats list are from people who got a contact or steam burn, not by explosions.
It’s also interesting that people are often afraid of exploding pressure cookers when they think of them as pressure cookers, but you don’t get as much anxiety from rice cookers (AKA pressure cooker - but small).
Every dedicated rice cooker I’ve seen has a permanently open vent. They aren’t pressurized.
“Dedicated” is doing a lot of work there. Regardless, they are both a vessel with a small hole where you’re heating up a gas. The difference is the pressure cooker has a valve that lets the pressure climb higher before it vents while the rice cooker is only up to whatever pressure builds up due to the vent cap foam filter being narrower than the lid. The old “exploding pressure cooker” thing is about that valve getting blocked, broken or clogged and pressure building indefinitely.
Only that shouldn’t happen on modern versions of either because the electric versions of both are using timers and sensors to control the cook. My old-school stovetop cooker still relies on pressure building until the valve hits the pressure I’ve set and vents the steam, but the electric one I was using before didn’t have to vent (at least when used manually, some programs had venting built in), it just went to temp and pressure and stayed there for some time, then released the steam at the end.
But even if my stovetop’s valve failed, there is still a safety valve. And even if that failed again, there is a scored area on the lid that is designed to fail first and vent the pressure (although you wouldn’t want to be in front of it if that happens).
I’d still default to an instant cooker if I was worried about safety. Not only does it not build up pressure indefinitely in the first place, but it also won’t let you open it until it’s vented, so you won’t open it and get a faceful of pressurized steam. Which, honestly, is the real danger with old manual pressure cookers. Everybody freaks out at anecdotal reports of explosions, but from what I can tell “opened too soon or vented incorrectly, got a burn” seems to be the real scenario you should be concerned about.
Ironically, that can still happen with rice cookers. I’ve (lightly) burnt myself by popping the lid open while my rice cooker was still hot before.
I have a modern stovetop stainless steel pressure cooker, very common type in Europe. It has three redundant pressure / over pressure relief safety sytems plus a very hard to circumvent locking mechanism that only unlocks at ambient pressure. Instant pot types look interesting, because they expand on the concept, but a major drawback I see is that they are often small (my pressure cooker is 6L) and, basically a dealbreaker for me, the vessel is usually plastic coated, I.e. non/stick. I think I will stick with mine, which coupled with a programmable stovetop induction single heater I own, fulfills part of the features.
My Instapot died after a year and was expensive to fix. I didn’t bother replacing it, just use the slow cooker if I need to now.
I’m curious about how expensive. My last electric pressure cooker was a more expensive model (and I sold it after years in working order), but the stovetop pressure cooker I have at home now was more expensive than the entry-level Instant Pot branded electric cookers.
Is the new one stainless steel? If so there are very few parts that may fail, valve parts and gasket essentially. Instant pots have a ton of failure points. The modern stovetops are almost buy it for life.
How many spellings of yogurt do people need to make before we have enough?
yohghurht is clearly the correct spelling
I don’t know, you could maybe fit a few more silent H’s in if you stretch it a little bit.
Go full Lovecraft and spell it “yog-huurt”.