Power Pressure Cooker XL Review
I love the look of amazement when I teach someone how to use an electric pressure cooker. A friend of mine had never owned one, but wanted to learn how to make dinners, faster. She’s not a great cook (her words, not mine) and doesn’t really enjoy her time in the kitchen as much as I do.
I spent an afternoon with her, and gave her this Power Pressure Cooker XL 6 quart. We started off with an easy recipe, chicken soup, and threw in chicken bones, carrots, celery, 2 bay leaves, a tablespoon of black peppercorns and a rind of parmesan. The Power Pressure Cooker XL has a “soup/stock” button, so it really was just one button push.
After 20 minutes of cooking, we manually released the pressure, used a strainer to strain out the ingredients, and then added a fresh batch of diced carrots and celery, diced chicken breast meat. I set it back on pressure, this time using the manual time setting for 3 minutes. This extra step ensures that the vegetables and meat in the soup is perfectly cooked, flavorful and tender.
The Power Pressure Cooker XL is great for those cooks who like the 1-button settings. There are plenty of options – from soup, canning, slow cooker, rice, fish/vegetables/steak, chicken/meat and beans.
Things that I loved about the Power Pressure Cooker XL:
- While we got the 6quart pot – there’s a even bigger ones! If you’re looking for BIG – take a look at their 8 quart and 10 quart pressure cooker. I’d love to have a 10-quart pressure cooker for the holidays – big enough for a giant ham, or pot roast for a crowd.
- The first step of the Power Pressure Cooker is actually to “season” the unit. I’ve never heard of needing to season a pressure cooker, especially with just water. Honestly, I think this is more of a safety step to fit the rubber gasket direct from manufacturing with the unit to ensure a snug, tight fit. It should be required with every pressure cooker!
- The unit has been tested for canning – the larger 8 and 10 quart units come with accessories for canning.
- Price. Less than $100 – a great deal for an electric pressure cooker.
Things I didn’t like:
- Adjusting time and pressure manually is a pain (versus the Instant Pot with the up/down arrows), and the “searing” function isn’t intuitive. For example, we wanted to brown the shallots and onions prior to adding rice for more flavor, but didn’t really know how to do that.
- The temperature really didn’t get as hot as I would like for searing or browning. But, to be fair, after testing 6 different electric pressure cookers, none of the units tested well for high heat searing of meats.
- I wish pressure cooker companies would give more accurate cooking times – setting the appliance to cook for 10 minutes doesn’t mean that dinner is ready in 10 minutes. It means it will cook under pressure for 10 minutes. It will take 10 minutes to get UP to pressure, and an additional few minutes to release the pressure as well. I would love a countdown timer that gives approximately how long to build up pressure and also to release.
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Power Pressure Cooker XL Giveaway
