Instant Pot Duo Crisp Ultimate Lid Review 2023

Dec 21, 2023

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Our experts air fried, pressure cooked, baked and more to find out whether this appliance deserves a spot in your kitchen.

The Instant Pot is one of the best-known electric pressure cookers. Each of the brand's 15+ models offers several functions — that's why the appliance is also known as a multicooker. Instant Brand's newest model, the Instant Pot Duo Crisp with Ultimate Lid, boasts an impressive 13 functions: air fry, pressure cook, sauté, slow cook, steam, warm, roast, bake, broil, dehydrate, yogurt, sous vide and bread proof.

It has a large footprint and is the most expensive Instant Pot on the market, but if it can stand in for your air fryer, pressure cooker, slow cooker, dehydrator, sous vide circulator and rice cooker, it could be quite a steal. The experts in the Good Housekeeping Institute Kitchen Appliances and Innovation Lab put it to the test to find out if the Duo Crisp is worth the hype.

The Instant Pot Duo Crisp with Ultimate Lid features a unique lid construction that doubles as both an air fry and a pressure cooker lid. Other Instant Pot models require you to switch out the lid for a special air fry lid or offer no air fry capability at all. In fact, even with its multiple functions, the Duo Crisp has minimal accessories: just an air fry basket that stores inside the appliance. The basket and the other removable pieces — the stainless steel inner pot and pressure cooker lid — are dishwasher safe.

Because pressure cookers can be intimidating (some people may even say scary) at first, there are also many safety features for peace of mind: a locking lid and Instant Pot's Overheat Protection, which is designed to reduce the pot's output automatically when the appliance detects a high temp.

In the Good Housekeeping Institute Kitchen Appliances and Innovation Lab, we've tested nearly 50 different pressure cookers, slow cookers and multicookers (including many Instant Pots) in the last decade. We assess Instant Pots by testing them both for performance and ease of use.

When it came to evaluating the Instant Pot Duo Crisp with Ultimate Lid, we knew that we needed to put it through numerous tests to evaluate its vast functionality. In the Lab, we brought the cooker to pressure with water and used the quick-release function to determine the timing of each phase. We pressure-cooked rice and beef stew to evaluate the foods' textures. We slow-cooked chicken soup while tracking the temperature of both the bird and the broth to assess consistency. And we air fried chicken wings and frozen french fries to see how crispy they turned out. At home, we pressure-cooked beans, baked yellow cake and even dehydrated strawberry slices. After each test, we cleaned the multicooker by hand or in the dishwasher to assess its cleanability. We also scored whether it was easy to navigate this model's controls and to use the owner's manual. Here are the results from our recent Instant Pot Duo Crisp with Ultimate Lid testing:

✔️ White rice: While this multicooker does not have a specific rice function like some models, we still wanted to test its ability to cook grains. We used a cooking timetable from Instant Brand's website and pressure-cooked 2 cups of white rice for four minutes with a natural release (which took 12 minutes). The rice that was yielded was nice and fluffy but very slightly mushy. But for a quick batch of white rice, it was pretty impressive.

✔️ Beef stew: We pressure-cooked beef stew for 20 minutes with a natural release, following our Lab procedure. The beef was fairly moist and extremely tender, while the carrots and celery held their shape but were very mushy. The broth was pretty thin — not a rich stew-like consistency — compared to other pressure cookers that we have tested.

✔️ Chicken soup: Using the slow cook setting, we prepared a chicken soup utilizing a whole chicken and chopped vegetables. The soup was cooked for six hours and kept warm for two hours. We used thermocouples to track the temperature of six different zones (four in the chicken and two in the cooking liquid) every 15 minutes over the total eight-hour period. While the chicken was fall-off-the-bone tender, the meat was on the drier side. The vegetables still had a nice bite to them, but the broth was a bit watery.

✔️ French fries: Utilizing the air fry setting, we cooked crinkle-cut frozen french fries according to the packaging instructions. The color of the french fries was uneven: Some were light, some were dark and some were perfectly golden. The color of the fries didn't exactly match with our expectations of their crispness: Some of the very light-colored fries were crispy while some dark ones were a little soggy.

✔️ Chicken wings: To air fry the chicken wings, we again used the cooking timetable, cooking 1 lb of chicken wings for 19 minutes at 400˚F. The chicken wing flats were more moist and tender than the chicken wing drums, but neither were very crispy compared with those from other air fryers we have tested. While they were golden and evenly browned all over, they looked more crispy than they actually were.

✔️ Beans: During our home-use tests, we pressure-cooked a pound of un-soaked cannellini beans for 25 minutes with a natural release. Some beans were more tender than others, but overall they were cooked rather well.

✔️ Yellow cake: Using a boxed yellow cake mix, we baked two small loaves for 30 minutes at 350˚F. Unfortunately, we found the cakes to be very dark in color on the exterior and a little dry on the inside.

✔️ Dehydrated fruit: To test the dehydrate function, we dehydrated strawberry slices from three strawberries for five hours. The resulting strawberries were perfectly dehydrated — great for topping cocktails, baked goods or cereal.

If you're in the market for an appliance with many functions, the Instant Pot Duo Crisp with Ultimate Lid could be a good choice. We found the control panel incredibly easy to navigate, especially for someone new to pressure cookers, and the material is durable and easy to clean. This model is heavy and has a large footprint, but if you're using it to replace several appliances, you might be leaving it out on your kitchen countertop (rather than pulling it out as needed, as some do with their pressure cookers).

If you're primarily interested in the air fryer setting, we would recommend checking out our best air fryer guide to ensure you get an appliance that can give you crispy, golden and juicy foods every time. And if you want a smaller and lower-cost Instant Pot with fewer functions, our best Instant Pot guide is great resource as well. However, we do think the Instant Pot Duo Crisp with Ultimate Lid performs well with all of the functions and features that it offers.

Eva Bleyer is the reviews analyst in the Good Housekeeping Institute Kitchen Appliances and Innovation Lab. She has tested many kitchen appliance categories, including induction ranges and gas ranges, microwaves and blenders. She performed both the Lab and home testing of the Instant Pot Duo Crisp with Ultimate Lid. She graduated from NYU with a bachelor of science in Food Studies, Nutrition and Public Health and is a trained chef through the Natural Gourmet Institute. She loves the functionality that a multicooker offers; she likes to pressure cook beans, air fry buffalo cauliflower and dehydrate orange wheels for a cocktail garnish.

Eva (she/her) is a reviews analyst in the Kitchen Appliances and Innovation Lab, where she tests kitchen gear, home appliances and culinary innovations. She graduated from NYU with a bachelor of science in food studies, nutrition and public health and is a trained chef through the Natural Gourmet Institute. Eva has more than 10 years of experience in the food industry, working as a food stylist, personal chef and marketing manager.

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