Duo Nova upgrades include the EasySeal Lid to automatically seal when pressure cooking and a cooking progress indicator, so you know when cooking begins. With 12 Smart Programs — ranging from meats, soup, stew, beans, chili, poultry, rice and yogurt, to multigrain, porridge and slow cook — it puts cooking on autopilot. The Poultry Smart Program cooks moist and tender chicken, turkey and other poultry, even from frozen. The Bean/Chili Program takes dried, unsoaked beans to flavorful cooked beans in no time. The Meat/Stew Smart Program cooks beef and pork anywhere from rare to fall-off-the-bone.
Portable, compact, and lightweight, this model is great for those with space constraints as well. Here is all the information you need to better understand these models’ functions and other details. Chowhound has been a home for food explorers since 1997, helping the food and drink-curious to become more knowledgeable instant pot duo nova enthusiasts, both at home and while traveling. Join our community of passionate experts, eaters, and home cooks and find all the resources, information, inspiration, and support you could want in the kitchen and abroad. Read our simplified explanation of the crisping craze and check out some of the best air fryers.
In designing the DUO Nova, Instant Pot took an already user-friendly machine and added a convenient pressure release button. Helen is a freelance writer who specializes in kitchen appliances and has written for some of the biggest home-related titles around. She has been reviewing small appliances, including blenders, juicers, and multi-cookers, for more than 8 years, and also upholsters furniture when she’s not testing the latest food tech gadgets. With a familiar design, the Duo Nova is instantly recognizable as an Instant Pot and as we’ve said in previous reviews, multi-cookers are not the most attractive of the kitchen counter appliances.
– If there is steam leakage from the lid (such as, sealing ring not installed, or steam release handle being in “Venting” and not “Sealing” position) the cooker will not pressurize. The cooker monitors the pre-heating time and lowers heat output if working pressure is not reached within 40 minutes. The DUO Nova provides most of the basic pressure cooking functions and some more advanced options. Essentially, unless you’re looking for some specific specialty functions like air fry or dehydrate, it will likely meet your needs. Some of the design requirements of pressure cookers almost inevitably lead to some cleaning challenges. However, the DUO Nova navigates these challenges better than most, making its cleaning process about as easy as one could hope.
The Duo Nova is upgraded with 10-plus safety features, so you won’t have to worry about a culinary malfunction. And, thanks to its microprocessor that adjusts time and temperature, this Instant Pot can reportedly cook food up to 70 percent faster than other methods . The Instant Pot Pro is a modest step up from the Duo Plus.
All Instant Pots can pressure cook, slow cook, sauté, cook rice, steam, and warm. As you climb the ladder of different models, buttons for things like cake making, roasting, and sous vide appear. When one appliance can do so many things, it also nixes the need to buy and find storage for separate kitchen devices, like an egg or rice cooker. Continues to offer all of the other usual functions you’d expect, like pressure cooking, slow cooking, rice cooking, yogurt, warming, sous vide, and sterilizing. The interface has quite a bit going on, giving lots of extra buttons for setting shortcuts, indicators for heating and cooking progress, and everything in between. Expect to enjoy a lot more granular control with the Instant Pot Pro versus other models.
And the simple, safe push of the quick release button, ensures minimal mess and easy clean up. The Duo Nova will do pretty much everything you would need it to do, and the LCD has a progress indicator to let you know how your food is coming along. If you’re a bit of a novice in the pressure cooking department, it’s worth noting that this model comes with 11 preset program buttons to take the guesswork away. This can make it harder to release the pressure once the cooking is done. However, it is easier to release the pressure in controlled bursts with this pressure cooker. The 8-quart Instant Pot Pro Crisp + Air Fryer is the Duo Crisp turned up to 11.
The Instant Pot DUO Plus is actually a refresh of their previous most popular best-selling model, the DUO. It includes everything the DUO hasplusa new “sterilize” function in addition to “egg” and “cake” programs (pre-set times and pressures). They call this a 9-in-1 multi cooker – we’ll let Instant Pot figure out the math. The display is completely modernized so the cook can easily tell if the cooker is heating, pressure cooking, keeping warm and if the beeping sounds are on or off. At this time I can’t advise on the utility of the “sterilize” setting as there are no official guidelines on how to sterilize or can using an electric pressure cooker . However, Instant Pot has made it clear that this setting is not to be used for pressure canning low-acid foods such as meat.