The Best Pressure Cookers To Buy Online In Australia
A top notch pressure cooker will have enough settings and features to allow you to make everything from a simple stew to a full roast chicken. We've listed several of our the best pressure cookers we've found, to help you find the right one for your kitchen.
Best Overall Pressure Cooker
Tefal CY8515 Cook4Me+ Multi Cooker
- Can be used for pressure cooking, classic cooking, as well as reheating and keeping your meals warm
- Can memorise your most frequently cooked dishes in the favourites menu
- Comes programmed with over a hundred recipes
- The warranty only lasts for a single year
- A few people have complained that the dial can be unresponsive at times
One of the best attributes of the Tefal Cook4Me+ is how beginner-friendly it is. It doesn’t matter if you’ve never used a pressure cooker before, or if you don’t even know what sort of dishes you can make with it, the interactive menus have got you covered.
The dial can be used to select between the four cooking options that the cooker comes with. These include the favourites option that allows you to memorise certain dishes, the manual option that allows you to set the time and temp yourself, the ingredients option that allows you to manually select a specific food that you want to cook, and the recipes option.
The recipes option is the most noteworthy one thanks to the fact that it provides you with around 150 useful recipes, sets the temperature and time for you, and gives you step-by-step instructions. You can also select the number of people that you’re cooking for, which automatically adjusts the ingredients in the recipe.
Best Budget Pressure Cooker
Crock-Pot Express Crock Multi-Cooker
- It has a non-stick removable bowl and an airtight locking lid
- Comes with a steaming rack, a stirring spoon, and a recipe book
- Easy to use and clean
- The buttons need to be pressed down hard in order for it to work
- Limited set of features
This handy appliance has nine different preset options that you can choose from as well as buttons that easily allow you to set manual temperatures, cooking times, and pressure settings. Even though each preset comes with its own time, temperature, and pressure setting, these can be adjusted if you’d like your soup prepared at a lower temperature for a bit longer, for instance, or if you want to make sure that your rice is done quicker but still cooked right.
It comes with a removable non-stick bowl, but it can only be washed manually. The lid has a simple safety lock that disables the cooker if it’s not shut properly.
While this device might not have quite as many options as some other models, it’s still one of the best pressure cookers that you can pick up if you’re looking for something that can get the job done without breaking the bank.
Best Smart Pressure Cooker
Breville The Fast Slow Pro Multi Cooker
- 11 pressure cooking settings
- Triple safe lid construction
- Comes with a steamer basket, a stainless rack, and a recipe book with 41 recipes
- The bowl isn’t non-stick, which some customers have found makes washing it a bit more difficult
The Fast Slow Pro by Breville lets you choose between pressure cook, slow cook, steam, sear, saute, or “reduce cooking” options, which means that you can make pretty much anything you want without any difficulty. You also get four different steam release options, all of which make a significant difference when it comes to the texture and the taste of the food.
You can select all of these different options through the menu on the screen and set custom cooking time and temperature settings by simply using the dials. All of the features that this pressure cooker comes with are designed to give you as much control over the final result as possible. This way, you’ll be able to make your food just the way you like it and save the settings so that you can repeat the process with remarkable consistency.
If you want an appliance that can give you full control over all of your recipes, then this might be one of the best pressure cookers for you.
Best Large Pressure Cooker
Instant Pot Duo Nova Electric Multi-Use Pressure Cooker 8L
- Combines seven appliances in one
- Simple to use digital display
- Overheat protection and safety lock
- Advanced steam release controls
- Some customers found it hard to clean or that food sticks to the bottom
- The inside of the bowl is easy to scratch if you use metal utensils
The Duo Nova works as a rice cooker, pressure cooker, slow cooker, sauté pan, steamer, food warmer, and yogurt maker that has 14 one-touch, smart auto-cook programs. You also get an easy-seal lid that makes sure that no heat or flavour escapes the inside of the pan, a large LCD and keyboard, and advanced steam release controls that are still easy to use.
The eight-litre capacity of the Duo Nova makes it one of the best pressure cookers that you can get if you have a big family since you’ll be able to prepare a full course meal for them all at once. This does mean that you’ll have to set aside a bit of space on your kitchen counter to be able to actually fit the cooker, but that’s hardly a big problem and certainly isn’t a good enough reason to ignore such a handy product. Well, if you need the capacity, that is.
Best Versatile Pressure Cooker
Ninja OP300 Foodi Multi Cooker
- Comes with a multi-functional basket and a reversible rack
- Can be used for pressure cooking, slow cooking, sauteing, steaming, air crisping, baking, roasting and grilling
- Has a pressure and a crisping lid
- The cooker is quite wide, which takes up a lot of space
- High price tag
The Ninja actually comes with two lids, each of which is used for certain types of cooking. The inner lid isn’t on a hinge and has a silicone lining on top that ensures no heat will escape when cooking. The top lid has a more standard lock, and it’s put in place when you want to crisp, roast, grill, or bake your food, and it has a wide range of motion on the hinge, which means that it doesn’t get in your way when you’re cooking or trying to take out the food.
This pressure cooker also comes with a multi-function basket that can easily be fitted into the bowl in order to more accurately direct airflow so that you can cook the inside of your food while making the outside nice and crisp. You also get a reversible rack that can be used to cook meat, or you can steam veggies on it while you’re cooking something else in the bowl.
Best Stovetop Pressure Cooker
Tefal P4624931 9L ClipsoMinut Perfect Pressure Cooker
- Nine-litre capacity
- Comes with a steam basket and recipe book
- Most of the components are dishwasher safe
- You’ll need quite a bit of space on the stove in order to fit this pressure cooker
This Tefal cooker comes with an onboard temperature setting gauge that allows you to set and monitor the ideal temperature for the dishes you’re preparing. Since this is a stovetop pressure cooker, it doesn’t actually heat itself and relies on a stove to do that instead. The temperature gauge sends out an audio notification on when the ideal cooking temperature is reached so that you can adjust the stove dials accordingly.
You get a massive 9L capacity, which is more than enough for large families, and the cooker itself is made out of durable, stainless steel, which essentially means that if you drop it on a concrete floor, the floor will lose. Unfortunately, due to the size and the materials, the appliance is very heavy and can be a bit cumbersome to move, especially when full.
We’d also be remiss if we didn’t mention the staggering 10-year warranty that this pressure cooker comes with, which is in stark contrast to the standard one-year agreements that most other cookers get.
Best Pressure Cooker Brands
Tefal is a company that produces everything from bread makers to deep fryers, so they provide products for a large range of different customers. Their products have reputation for being intuitive to use and come with some very useful cooking settings and helpful features.
As you might have guessed by the name, Instant Pot is a lot more specialised when it comes to cooking appliances. However, while they may not have as large of a general selection as some of their competition, they do have a great range great rice, slow, and pressure cookers. Their products are simple to use, easy to clean, and fairly inexpensive compared to a lot of other options.
How To Choose The Right Pressure Cooker
How Do Pressure Cookers Work?
In the most basic terms, a pressure cooker is really nothing more than a lid, a bowl, and a heating element underneath the bowl. As the heating element reaches higher temperatures, it evaporates the water inside of the bowl or from the food itself and creates steam. The steam is trapped inside the cooker thanks to the air-tight lid that usually has a silicone seal or a safety lock on the side to ensure that no heat escapes.
The steam that evaporates contains many nutrients and flavours. Since this steam is kept inside thanks to the lid, most of those same nutrients don’t escape, and more importantly, the flavour is significantly better in comparison to more standard cooking methods.
Pressure cooking is significantly faster than other cooking methods which can be highly convenient for busy families, working professionals, or anyone who wants a home cooked meal without spending excessive time in the kitchen. It's also handy that you can use a pressure cooker without needing a stove is pretty and they can help you make recipes that would be difficult and messy to prepare in a standard oven.
Should I Get a Pressure Cooker, a Slow Cooker, or a Rice Cooker?
The distinction is blurred by the fact that many pressure cooker models also come with slow cook and rice cook options, and a lot of rice cookers also have a pressure cooking option. That's good news, because it means that in many cases you don't have to choose between them and can buy a multi-cooker with all three functions.
Rice cookers are much better optimised for water evaporation, and slow cookers are designed to keep a steady temperature on the inside for longer periods than the other two, but in many cases all three could be used to prepare the same dishes, even though the flavour or quality might differ slightly.
Rice cookers are usually the smallest appliance out of the bunch, slow cookers are the largest models and pressure cookers are somewhere in the middle, being something of a jack-of-all-trades, capable of covering a wide variety of different dishes and recipes.
How to Compare Pressure Cookers
The main two factors, aside from price, that need to be considered when buying pressure cookers are the capacity and the functionality.
Most standard pressure cookers have a capacity of around six litres, which can usually feed three adults. The number of servings that you get at this capacity is enough for couples or even small families, but if you’re trying to feed many people, then you might need something a little bit bigger.
The features that pressure cookers come with are two-fold: cooking settings and additional equipment. The cooking settings can help you prepare a large assortment of dishes at different temperatures and pressure settings, while additional equipment like a cooking rack can help you prepare specific meals with greater ease. The importance on these features may depend on what other cooking appliances you already own, or whether you are looking for a multi-cooker device that can be a 'one-stop shop' for your cooking.