Multicooker Perfection: Cook It Fast or Cook It Slow—You Decide

by America's Test Kitchen (Editor)

Praised by Wired.com and featured by Chicago Tribune, Booklist, Epicurious, Booklist, and Eat This, Not That!

Multicookers such as the GoWISE USA and Instant Pot Duo are hugely popular; however, most recipes are unreliable or are designed to work in only one model of multicooker--and most often, they use only the pressure-cook setting. Enter Multicooker Perfection , a collection of foolproof recipes tested and developed to work in any multicooker and conform to your schedule. Make each recipe "fast" using the pressure-cook setting or let dinner cook while you're out by preparing it "slow" on the slow-cook setting.

These crowd-pleasing recipes are perfectly suited for cooking at the touch of a button, from soups and stews like Easy Beef and Barley Soup and Chipotle Pork and Hominy Stew; to weeknight-friendly meals like Braised Chicken Breasts with Tomatoes and Capers, Ziti with Sausage Ragu, and Thai Braised Eggplant; to company-worthy dishes like Tamarind Braised Beef Short Ribs and Osso Buco with Sweet and Spicy Peperonata. Plus, you'll find a chapter of unexpected recipes like Boston Brown Bread, Buffalo Chicken Wings, and even a perfectly creamy Cheesecake. Make cooking easier and better with this must-have cookbook for any multicooker owner.

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking, Food, Nonfiction, Reference, Foodie, Adult

192 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2018

About the author

America's Test Kitchen, based in a brand new state-of-the-art 60,000 sq. ft. facility with over 15,000 sq. ft. of test kitchens and studio space, in Boston's Seaport District, is dedicated to finding the very best recipes for home cooks. Over 50 full-time (admittedly obsessive) test cooks spend their days testing recipes 30, 40, up to 100 times, tweaking every variable until they understand how and why recipes work. They also test cookware and supermarket ingredients so viewers can bypass marketing hype and buy the best quality products. As the home of Cook's Illustrated and Cook's Country magazines, and publisher of more than one dozen cookbooks each year, America's Test Kitchen has earned the respect of the publishing industry, the culinary world, and millions of home cooks. America's Test Kitchen the television show launched in 2001, and the company added a second television program, Cook's Country, in 2008.

Discover, learn, and expand your cooking repertoire with Julia Collin Davison, Bridget Lancaster, Jack Bishop, Dan Souza, Lisa McManus, Tucker Shaw, Bryan Roof, and our fabulous team of test cooks!

Learn more at https://www.americastestkitchen.com/.

Reviews

[Punk · Rating 5 out of 5]

A family member flipped out and came home with an Instant Pot last week—look, the pandemic affects everyone differently—and after a moment of dismay (What? A new thing?? In the house??? Again, pandemic, etc.)—I rushed to the library website to find a book to figure out how to use the thing. The library reported "126 Results Found," and I just sat there for a moment, frozen and blinking. Then I remembered that America's Test Kitchen, while fussy, is a trusted friend and I found this and it's great.

This book is for multicookers—not the Instant Pot in particular—and because they're ATK they tested a bunch of cookers extensively and give recommendations up front. Of course they like the one with the LCD screen that costs $200 USD, but who can blame them, I find the Instant Pot's notification system thoroughly uninformative. If you walked into the room and looked at it while it was working, chances are you wouldn't know WHAT it was up to. But back to the book: All recipes include time at pressure and approximate total time until you're eating, and each recipe can be made with the pressure cook or the slow cook function, unless you do have an Instant Pot in which case some of the slow cook recipes are off limits for you because they just never finish cooking. Each recipe gives customized cook times—if necessary—mostly for the Instant Pot, goblin multicooker stepchild that it is. Apparently its saute function is wobbly and the slow cook isn't hot enough to cook certain things in a reasonable amount of time. That's fine, I'm mostly here to pressure cook the shit out of some beans without soaking them first. But of course not only does ATK wants you to soak your beans first, they want you to brine them and won't hear otherwise. They're such a drag.

The recipes are basic favorites like broths, soups, stews, beans, and meats, from a variety of cultures. Most recipes do involve meat, but there are a few that are intentionally vegetarian and developed to maximize flavor, not just "you can leave out the meat." I'm particularly interested in the chicken soup, the pulled porks, the chilies, the (drunken) pinto beans, and the baked beans. To save time, several of the recipes that call for meat and beans use canned beans, which is fine, but I wish they'd give an option for using dried beans in those cases, or, alternately, said it just can't be done. I can take it. It also has some outliers at the end like applesauce, cheesecake, Boston brown bread (cooked in a can!), strawberry jam, and flan flan flan.

The index is detailed—you can find recipes with barley under "barley" or "grains," and you will find barley in here as well as farro. Both grains contain gluten, but I'm fairly certain you can replace the barley with whole grain sorghum as it has a similar cooking time (and texture), and you could probably use brown rice in place of the farro. The drunken beans call for a can of beer, but you could use a GF beer or swap it out for another liquid. A few of the stews call for AP flour to thicken sauces; I'll replace it with the same amount of sweet rice flour and that should be more or less fine, but the brown bread recipe is out of our gluten-free reach as it contains wheat and rye flours. I didn't come here for brown bread, but now I'm thinking about a GF version. As for other common allergens: Soy sauce is used in a bunch of the soups and stews, but if you have to avoid soy you know how to handle that. A few of the recipes call for dairy, and eggs only show up in the meatloaf/meatballs and the desserts.

A good cookbook with recipes that can be used as is or as foundations for further experimentation. I'm excited to try out the dozen recipes I flagged.

[Angie · Rating 2 out of 5]

When people ask for cookbook recommendations, one of my first suggestions is anything from ATK. This one, however, isn’t going to find a permanent home on my shelf. I found the snobbish attitude toward Instant Pot users off-putting. Only one recipe got bookmarked to make for sure, with only a handful more being possibilities.

[Donna · Rating 2 out of 5]

I only tried a few recipes but didn't like either one; the second one I tried was really problematic as I had to finish it in the oven after getting the Burn message (due to adding flour before pressure cooking). It's apparently widely known that the Instant Pot will fail with the Burn message when you add thickeners before starting to pressure cook so it seems like the authors didn't really test these recipes - maybe they just assumed that their tried and true slow cooker recipes would work on the IP pressure cook setting.

I've learned so much from Cook's Illustrated magazine that I expected a similar level of quality instruction on the Instant Pot since this is from America's Test Kitchen; really disappointing.

Some of the other recipes sound good, especially those calling for French lentils but I've lost confidence in the book; returning it to the library without purchasing.

[Susan Bewley · Rating 3 out of 5]

As much as I hate to say it, this isn't a groundbreaking cookbook. IF you are new to using a pressure cooker, it is a great wait to get your feet wet. Most of the recipes aren't too difficult and including many recipes that are similar to other recipes from American Test Kitchen. As a cookbook that came with my Zavor cooker, I don't think it was bad for free but it isn't something I would purchase on my own. I will maybe use 20 recipes, tops out of the entire cookbook.

Why the three stars? Well, it isn't a bad cookbook, it just isn't the quality I would expect from American Test Kitchen. The pictures even a bit rushed but gives you an idea of the recipes. Just don't expect to find much you wouldn't find online for free or on Pinterest.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good book if you’re new to slow cooking or just purchased an instant pot. There are a lot of soups and stews, and there are a few chapters in the beginning that focus on method and technique.

The recipes aren’t that exciting - the meat chapter was the highlight for me. And if you’ve been using one of these cooking methods for a while, you’ve probably already got half these recipes.

This would be a great add-on gift with an instant.pot or slow cooker. The recipes and techniques are sound, just not that different from what you’d find elsewhere.

[Joanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm looking for good reference books for the instant pot I obtained this fall. It's hard to beat a cookbook from America's Test Kitchen. Their instructions are always super and you learn a lot about how and why things work or don't work from their books. The actual recipes in this one are too "international" for my household and there are only about a dozen recipes that interest me but I learned a lot about how to use the appliance (and adjust recipes for the particular brand I have) and benefitted from spending some time with this cookbook.

[Robin Arnold · Rating 4 out of 5]

With a Christmas present Instant Pot and this book I thought I'd jump right in but these recipes are fancy, more fancy than I normally cook, more time in the prep. I might try a couple but I didn't really think it would be this complicated. As normal, America's Test Kitchen does a good job of explaining why you do things and how they happen. I'm sure this will be a good resource but I'll be trying more "dump" style recipes.

[Gloria · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can never praise America's Test Kitchen enough. Truly their only 'fault' is explaining too much. Having acquired a multicooker for the holidays, this has proved to a great resource. Am now a fan of the multicooker (makes no noise whatsoever!) which is easy to clean and really brings out textures and flavors. The book instructions are simple and the recipes are mainstream, i.e., chili, chicken soup, mac and cheese, etc. Very practical.

[KC · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome recipes within instructions for cooking in a slow cooker or an instant pot pressure cooker. It's great to have the option of preparing either way... sometimes you're in a hurry and sometimes not. I'll be anxious to compare the outcome when I the two versions of a recipe.

[Amber · Rating 3 out of 5]

Amazing looking recipes and like how the book is organized. The only thing I didn't like is the editors did not include nutritional information. I can find similar recipes with nutritional stats online.

[Karen L. Hilliard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Way too many missing pages!

I doubt that the test kitchen would be very happy with this Kindle presentation of their book. Please correct! There's too many pages missing for me to even write them down.

[Kaitee Purdon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm a HUGE fan of ATK/Cook's Country, and I have several of their cookbooks. This is probably my least favorite because of the grain-heaviness and the sometimes unusual ingredients in this book. However, there are a couple of recipes we've tried that are fanTAStic. I do recommend the book.

[Sarah Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting book which offers two cooking methods for nearly every recipe (the slow cooker function and the pressure cooker function on a multi pot). There are plenty of recipes here I want to try.

[Maureen Sawyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great cookbook with precise directions. My favorite is the Risotto. I've made it several times using both red and white wines, added mushrooms, etc.

(I also think it was the best Pot Roast recipe that I've ever made before I gave up meat!)

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

Not bad certainly some good ideas but i am not a fan of "warm spices" and a significant portion of the recipes contain cinnamon or cumin or both

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ordered my Instant Pot today!! Well done, ATK!

[Deon · Rating 3 out of 5]

the reference sections were really helpful, found less than 20 recipes I would use

[Michael G · Rating 3 out of 5]

Love my Fagor Lux Multicooker. Use it all the time. The best part is that I've made some killer desserts in it for my wife and she loves them. Good book. Interesting, easy recipes.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some pretty solid recipes

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not tons of recipes...but I liked that you can use an instant pot or slow cooker for each recipe. Lots of good looking soup recipes. Each recipe has a photo and easy instructions.

[Linda Hartlaub · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good basic cookbook for the multicooker. Respectable photos of each recipe. Clear and concise directions. Nothing fancy but definitely useful.

[Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked the flexibility this cookbook gave for two divergent cooking methods that prevent similar outcomes. The recipes themselves are t earth-shattering.

[Bookerkc · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some good information and tips and there is a picture for every recipe but most of them just don’t look appetizing to me. Two I might try are the risotto and homemade almond milk.

[A. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great cookbook, with pretty good formatting, appealing recipes, and clear directions.

[Stacey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Had about 6-8 recipes I might try.

[Jeffrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Glad to see the experts addressing multicookers

This book contains a good selection of recipes that include both easy comfort foods and even a few exotic recipes. They do a good job of giving you options for slow and fast cooking (low and high pressure) for every recipe. The estimated cooking times are spot-on and even include prep times. At the end are 10 surprising things you can make in an Instant Pot-type cooker. At least half of those are truly surprising... and delicious! I don’t think I’ve seen any of these recipes on their websites, not even in the members-only section.

[Kat Nakaji · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good for getting to know your multicooker if you are new to it. A lot of common recipes and nothing truly exciting or wild. Would recommend to the new Multicooker owner, but if you are an old pro you can probably skip reading this book.

Also, many recipes are meat-based so not a great cookbook if you are looking for vegetarian or vegan options.

[Allison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Always trust the test kitchen recipes to be favourable and easy. The use of my insta pot has become less daunting.

[Kimi]

Lots of info on use and different brands and models. Recipes were underwhelming and the same old thing.