Instant Pot Duo Crisp Air Fryer - Reviews for Beginners

I love sitting down for a family meal to talk about my day with my kids over some seriously delicious food. But I've always side-eyed the ridiculous amount of time it takes to whip up a tasty dish compared to how long it takes to demolish it.

The ratio is on its head.

So, I'm continuously looking for gadgets and gizmos to turn the tide in my favor and reduce the cook-to-eat-time ratio.

Enter Instant Pot Duo Crisp Air Fryer Reviews.

After checking and testing, and testing and checking this behemoth of an air fryer, I put the Duo Crisp Air Fryer on trial to help you decide whether it's right for you and yours.

Can one appliance do it all? Is this Instant Pot worth its mid-range price point? Can this multicooker outperform other air fryers?

Let's find out!

Jump to:

• What Is the Instant Pot Duo Crisp Air Fryer?
• What’s in the Box?
• How’s the Build Quality?
• Instant Pot Duo Crisp’s Features & Functions
• What Made Me Smile About the Duo Crisp
• What Made Me Frown About the Duo Crisp
• How Easy Is The Instant Pot Duo Crisp To Use?
• Cooking With The Instant Pot Duo Crisp
• How Easy Is The Instant Pot Duo Crisp To Clean?
• Key Takeaways

What Is the Instant Pot Duo Crisp Air Fryer?

The Instant Pot Duo Crisp Air Fryer is a multi-functional kitchen appliance that combines the features of a pressure cooker, slow cooker, sous vide, steamer, sauté pan, and air fryer.

What makes the Instant Pot Duo Crisp unique is its dual-lid setup. You'll need to select the pressure cooker lid or super powerful air fryer lid (or no lid at all!) depending on which function you're using.

The Duo Crisp gained remarkable popularity thanks to its ability to cut cooking energy bills by 50% compared to full-size cookers. This Instant Pot appliance's popularity is also increased by how easy it is to use and the lightning pace at which it will provide you with perfectly cooked meals.

While it depends on your mealtime requirements as to whether this snazzy air fryer can fulfill your food volume needs, it can do almost anything your culinary heart desires.

If that isn't enough to tempt you to give Instant Pot's latest offering a try, I don't know what is!

What’s in the Box?

• Stainless Steel Inner Pot 
• Pressure Cook Lid
• Air Fryer Lid
• Stainless Steel Multi-Level Air Fryer Basket
• Stainless Steel Broil/Dehydrating Tray
• Stainless Steel Adjustable Rack
• Protective Pad & Storage Cover
• User Manual

How’s the Build Quality?

Build quality is very important to me. It's all well and good having an economical air fryer that cooks mouthwatering food, but if it breaks down after a couple of months, it's no use to human or beast.

Fortunately, the Duo Crisp has a real quality feel to it right out of the box. It's a hefty unit, but not so heavy that it's impossible to move around freely. All of the components feel like they've been built and tested by a bespectacled clipboard-wielding engineer in a German automobile plant.

Both the pressure cooker and air fryer lids give satisfying clunks and clicks when you lock them into place, reassuring you that they're not going anywhere until your food is cooked to perfection.

My only complaint is the control panel, which has a push-button setup with a film over the top that makes it feel a bit out of date compared with the slick touchscreen interfaces found on comparable Ninja and Cosori air fryers.

Instant Pot Duo Crisp’s Features & Functions

There's so much going on in this cooker that it'd be difficult to cover everything in one sitting, so I'm mainly going to cover the air fryer capabilities of the Duo Crisp. As its name suggests, it's the primary function. However, here's a quick look at everything it can do.

Air Fryer Lid Mode

The air fry comes complete with five functions that you can only use with the air fryer lid in place.

• Air Fry
• Roast
• Bake
• Grill
• Dehydrate

As with most air fryers and multicookers, there's little difference between the way air fry, roast, and bake actually works. In fact, I'd go as far as to say there is no difference other than the default time and temperature settings that automatically appear when you select each function.

Grill uses only the heat from the element inside the air fryer lid without the need for a super-powered air fryer fan. And nobody knows how the dehydrate function works because, in the history of air fryers and multi-cookers, it has never been used.

Pressure Cooker Lid Mode

While you only need the full functionality of the pressure cooker lid to pressure cook, you can use this lid (or not) for five other functions.

• Pressure Cook
• Saute
• Slow Cook
• Steam
• Sous Vide

Pressure cooking in the dup crisp is an absolute delight. It makes light work of sweet potatoes, risotto, and chunky cuts of meat. While you don't essentially need the pressure cooking lid to use the other functions, it helps retain the heat and moisture in your food. I find the saute function particularly useful for cooking one-pot dishes or to whip up a quick bacon sandwich.

Finally, the slow cooker and steam functions lend a hand when cooking juicy pulled pork, tender stews, and healthy vegetables.

Other Modes

There are a couple of other functions that proved themselves to be valuable allies on my cooking missions. The time and temperature adjusters let you fine-tune your recipes, and "Keep Warm" lets you, well, keep your food warm until you're all ready to eat.

The delayed start feature is one of my favorites thanks to its fire-and-forget abilities, so your meals are ready precisely when you want them to be.

What Made Me Smile About the Duo Crisp

• Excellent Value for Money - It's not cheap but way more affordable than a regular cooker.
• Incredible Build Quality - This Instant Pot Air Fryer feels solid and beautifully made, and the components fit together like a glove.
• Fast, Efficient, and Healthy Cooking - Instant Pot achieves the ultimate trifecta.
• Unrivaled Versatility - Few small kitchen appliances have as many genuinely useful functions as this Instant Pot model.
• Quieter than Mouse in Slippers - Considerably quieter than my Ninja 11-in-1 multicooker and Dual Zone air fryer.
• Straightforward to Use - Simplicity is the key to creating fun-to-use kitchen gear. There's no confusion when using this multi-cooker.
• Decent Length Power Cable - Other air fryers I've used had annoyingly short power cords, but this model has a good-length cable—not massive, but not frustrating.
• Solid Stainless Steel Cooking Pot - The steel cooking pot feels robust, well-made, and not covered in a potentially toxic non-stick coating.
• Easy to Clean - Whether using a dishwasher or cleaning by hand, you won't have any problem cleaning your air fryer.
• Satisfying Notification Beeps - The beep sounds don't offer any functional value, but they're easy on the ears.

What Made Me Frown About the Duo Crisp

• Two Separate Lids Need Extra Storage - This Instant Pot multi-cooker lids are pretty big, so you'll need a permanent home for one or the other when you're not using them.
• Completely Removing the Lid to Check My Food - It's a little bit annoying taking the lid off and holding it or placing it on the heat pad to stir or shake your food.
• The Outdated Feel of the User Interface - I'm not a huge fan of how the buttons feel when I'm pressing them.
• Small-ish Air Fry Basket - For me, the basket is a bit on the snug side for the amount of food I usually cook.

How Easy Is The Instant Pot Duo Crisp To Use?

Despite my love for time-saving gadgets, I'm a bit of a technophobe.

I constantly call on my eldest son to help me figure out how to change the clock in my car, solve the problem of why the washer won't start, and how to connect my Xbox to the WiFi.

With this in mind, I found the Instant Pot Duo Crisp user interface incredibly intuitive and didn't struggle to set the air fryer function; there were no tantrums when setting the unit for pressure cooking, and I shed no tears adjusting times and temperatures.

As long as you know what cooking style you want to use, how long your food needs to be cooked for, and the required temperature, this thing is a breeze. There's no confusion when matching the cooking functions with the separate lids either, as the control panel neatly packages them together with air fryer functionality represented with a black outline and little fan icon.

You can easily add extra minutes or turn up with heat (or turn it down) with the plus and minus signs and start and stop the thing with the obvious buttons. When you take the lids off to check on your food, you get an audible notification, which is pretty cute, and the same goes when you put it back to reassure you it's in the right place.

It couldn't be easier.

Cooking With The Instant Pot Duo Crisp

You can cook so many meals with the Instant Pot Duo Crisp that you are only limited by your imagination. Anything from fast and convenient snacks to intricate one-pot meals that you slow cook for hours.

Air Fry

Fries and wedges are a family favorite in my house, so being able to create quick snacks when the kids are hungry (and getting on my nerves) stops me from pulling out what's left of my hair. The nonstick coating on the air fryer basket makes tossing the food halfway through a breeze. Air frying is quick and easy and perfect for food like bacon, sausages, frozen french fries, and chicken nuggets.

Roast

I used the roast function to cook some Hunter's chicken with streaky bacon and cheese. I could probably have used the air frying feature to equal effect, but I wanted to test out the air fryer function on more complex meals. The chicken was succulent, and the bacon crispy. Use this setting for chicken, ham, and vegetables.

Grill

Burgers are one of my desert island foods, so whipping up some of my homemade cheese-stuffed Aberdeen Angus burgers was a no-brainer. While the Instant Pot Duo Crisp made light work of making these juicy patties, the air fryer rack is pretty small, so you won't be able to make huge batches of them for a big family meal or Super Bowl party.

Slow Cook

Slow cooking is so underrated. People hear the word "slow" and are automatically turned off because everyone wants everything, and they want it now. But the slow-cooking stews, pulled pork, and casseroles are the only way I cook these types of food now. I took three hours to make my burrito mix which was exquisite. While the air fryer basket may be a little small to cook massive meals, the cooking capacity of the inner pot is more than capable of holding large quantities of slow-cooked, pressure-cooked, or steamed food.

How Easy Is The Instant Pot Duo Crisp To Clean?

Hands up, who hates cleaning?

Because that's not something you'll need to worry about with this Instant Pot appliance. If you have a dishwasher, all the removable parts are dishwasher-safe, so you can fire and forget this bad boy and put your feet up while your personal kitchenware cleaner does its thing.

But, if, like me, you don't have the space for a dishwasher, you'll need to initiate the clean-up process by hand. While it's not as much fun as watching TV while your washing-up robot takes care of business, hand-cleaning the components is a piece of cake ... even if you've burnt your cake onto the stainless steel pan.

I can see the pot becoming more challenging to clean a couple of years down the line, but right now, clean-up is a cinch.

Key Takeaways

I am in love with the Instant Pot Duo Crisp.

The Instant Pot Duo Crisp is like the Swiss Army Knife of multicookers, offering air-frying and pressure-cooking capabilities all in one. While it might require a bit more storage space in your kitchen due to its dual-lid setup, it's a small trade-off for its versatility.

Sure, the air fryer basket may seem a bit narrow, given the unit's size, but if that’s not a dealbreaker for you, then this appliance is absolutely worth considering. It brings unmatched convenience and efficiency to your cooking adventures.

Many products out there are made with cheap parts that feel weak and don’t work well. But with the Instant Pot Duo Crisp, the engineers didn’t cut corners. They created a fast, energy-efficient kitchen buddy that can handle just about anything you throw at it.

If healthy cooking, saving energy, and versatile home appliances are your thing, then the Instant Pot Duo Crisp is well worth its mid-range price point.

Whether this Instant Pot air frying, pressure cooking, steaming behemoth is right for you really depends on your family's needs.

Do you have the additional storage space? How many people will you be feeding? Do you want the Instant Pot Duo Crisp to be your primary cooking appliance or an air fryer multi cooker to supplement your traditional range?

For me, the Duo Crisp's air frying cooking capacity is a little small to feed my tribe (which, to be fair, is way bigger than your average family), but it works exceedingly well as a supplementary appliance.

The cooking chamber for the slow cooker and pressure cooker are more than adequate, and even having to find storage space in my already jam-packed kitchen cupboards for the separate lids is counteracted by the extraordinary versatility of my new kitchen best friend.

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