The Breville Fast Slow Pro is by far the priciest model in our comparison – it’s more than twice as much as most of the other brands we tested. However, this unit created the tastiest foods of any pressure cooker we tested. Perfect for the foodie or serious chef, this device gives you more control over your cooking and truly brings out the flavors of your food while providing fast cooking times and easy clean-up afterwards. This sleek 6-quart device works best to prepare meals for roughly four to six people.
We wanted to see if a more expensive model would give better cooking results than an average-priced pressure cooker. It did. The Breville produced some of the best rice, and it also had the second fastest overall rice cooking time at only 20 minutes and 8 seconds. To add some perspective, some of the cookers we tested took 10 to 16 minutes longer. Our taste testers agreed that this device prepared the most flavorful, tender and best textured pot roast, giving it a 100 percent pot roast score. Hardly anything stuck to the bottom of the pot when cooking, which also made cleaning easier.
The pot’s minimum fill amount for both foods and liquids is 1 quart, which makes it difficult if not impossible to use for cooking smaller portions. This device has 11 food presets, but instead of having an individual button for each option, you choose the preset you want by turning dials and selecting settings on the screen. There is also a Custom setting which allows you to choose the cooking time and pressure levels for any other foods you might cook. As with most other pressure cookers, the keep warm function automatically turns on when your food has finished cooking.
This pressure cooker gives you more control over the texture and flavor of your foods by giving you more steam release options. You can set the steam release to natural, auto quick or pulse, which affects how moisture interacts with your food and determines how fast the meals will take to complete. If you’re in a hurry, the auto quick setting depressurizes automatically so you don’t have to babysit the unit.
Unlike most devices that keep you in the dark during sections of the cooking process, this one always tells you what is going on. For example, in addition to telling you if the pressure is in the high, medium or low range, this device shows you the current psi levels – a feature that isn’t on most other devices.
With its brushed stainless steel exterior and professional-looking design, this pressure cooker keeps in fashion with other Breville devices. It is by far the most attractive appliance we tested, so you won’t be embarrassed to have this pressure cooker on your kitchen counter if you leave it out. The accompanying steamer basket and rack are both made of stainless steel and are machine washable. The inner pot is dishwasher safe, though the manufacturer warns that you should hand wash it to protect the ceramic non-stick coating. In our testing, this pot had the second-best stick-resistance and was super easy to clean.
Breville covers this pressure cooker with a one-year warranty. Considering that it’s more than double the price of some appliances in our comparison, we would have expected it have better coverage. If you’d like a less expensive pressure cooker that still gives good cooking results, you should check out the Instant Pot range.
