I Didn’t Expect to Love It This Much

Pressure cookers come in handy for whipping up one-pot weeknight meals, but lackluster sautéing performance and the somewhat terrifying, stinky pressure release process have been reasons for me to shy away from regular use. And then I received a Chef iQ Smart Cooker to test.

This smart pressure cooker is feature-packed, with a built-in scale, guided recipes, an intuitive app, and gentle pressure release. The whole package was enough to change this skeptic’s mind about multi-cooking machines.

Key Features and Findings

In our home, deciding what to make for dinner can be kind of exhausting. Relying on the standbys is the easiest thing to do, but we also want variety—without a lot of effort or time required.

This multicooker can’t decide what to cook and do it for you, but it offers the next best thing: a library of recipes to choose from and guided cooking assistance and progress tracking in one vessel.

If you want to ease a little bit of decision fatigue and save on cleaning time too, this smart pressure cooker offers a win-win.

Design: The Smart Cooker is a hefty device, but it’s still relatively easy to move around or put away when not in use, as long as you have the space for it.

It comes with a few helpful accessories, including a separate gasket for sweet foods, a silicone lid, a steaming basket, and a steaming rack.

The all-black matte finish doesn’t show smudging or collect as much gunk as stainless steel appliances, which is a welcome trait. The non-stick cooking pot really does ease cleaning, and the accessories are all top-rack dishwasher safe.

One feature that elevates this appliance is the LED touchscreen. It’s bright, easy to read, and responsive. Using the touch inputs with the single dial is intuitive, too.

Setup: This smart pressure cooker is extremely simple to set up.

It requires a two-step pairing process with Bluetooth and then Wi-Fi, and a firmware upgrade, but all of that took a matter of minutes for me. And once connected, the machine continues to receive software upgrades.

Guided Recipes and Ease of Use: The Chef iQ library of guided recipes, of which there are over 500 across categories like Weeknight Dinners, Good for You, and Plant-Based, is a major Smart Cooker selling point.

You can search by category, ingredient, and view your favorite and recently cooked recipes.

Once I chose a recipe to cook, I really enjoyed having my own front-row seat to a cooking demonstration.

The recipes list the ingredients to gather first, a built-in scale setting if you’d rather not reach for measuring devices, and step-by-step videos illustrating each cooking step.

My favorite aspect of these guided steps is the built-in timer in the app and a looping video if you miss the directions the first time around.

If you happen to be outside the app after, say, 10 minutes of sautéing is up, the app sends you a handy push notification to let you know it’s time to advance to the next step.

All of the recipes I chose, meatballs, stews, soups, pastas, and even cooking a whole chicken, required some amount of pressure cooking.

The app does a sort of hand over to the touchscreen at that point, reminding you what to do (place and lock the lid, adjust the pressure knob) before starting this process.

I appreciated the progress status on the display and the time remaining indicator via the mobile app. Both allowed me to leave the room and do other stuff around the house.

The one feature I’d love to have with the app is picture-in-picture functionality. When using guided cooking, I wasn’t able to continue viewing the directions if I opened another app briefly or if using my phone to listen to music or podcasts.

Though Chef iQ probably wants to encourage users to stay in the app and focused on meal preparation, and I get that.

Cooking Presets: I’ve been using the sautee, manual, and pressure cooking presets the most, but this cooker offers other applications, including ferment, steam, and most recently sous vide.

If you choose an ingredient from the list, the Smart Cooker offers a recommended cooking time and application.

For example, eggs from the Pressure Cooking menu includes settings for hard- , soft-, or medium-boiling. And for chicken and other proteins, you have options for various cuts.

All told, the Smart Cooker offers over 300 presets for home cooks, eliminating the need to hop online and search for the right settings or guess at them.

Steam Release: Manual steam release has been my least favorite part of pressure cooker use. The Smart Cooker offers a really gentle alternative: automatic, gradual release depending on what you’re cooking.

The Smart Cooker’s quick release is fast and recommended for most foods, but it’s not nearly as alarmingly loud (or smelly) as I’ve witnessed. The pulse setting offers gentle bursts of pressure release and is best for starchy foods.

But the natural option, my favorite, is silent and emits nothing. Chef iQ recommends this method for foods without a risk of overcooking, like soups.

The only caveat is that the natural option is a pretty slow process: from 15 minutes to an hour. I saw closer to the 15-minute mark, which was just fine by me!

Important Specs to Know