GadGets

I used to trust this company and buy their products. But during the past couple of years, they seem to be taken over by the “next quarter’s profits must be higher” boys. No real interest in customer service. Inferior (cost-cutting) products. Look elsewhere for kitchen appliances. Too bad. A once-great company.

Now useless.
Rating: 1 / 5

I used the cooker ONCE and the 2nd time, the cooker DID NOT get up steam, I entered MENU, TIME, then START, the cooker started, went to ’00′, YELLOW, finished, NO COOKING, I did that several times, called CUSTOMER SERVICE, we talked, nothing different worked, I was told to RETURN the item.

I have returned the item and want my REFUND.

Thank you,

Ronald A Stricker
Rating: 1 / 5

At first blush, this product seems like a significant improvement over its more traditional predecessors, as its digital display and sturdy, locking lid remove a lot of the confusion and fear that the general public often feels towards pressure cookers.

Unfortunately, this appliance is riddled with design flaws.

As others have noted on here, the wiring in these pressure cookers would have to be considered faulty at best. Rather randomly these things will just up and stop working entirely, seemingly with no provocation whatsoever (I’ve had this happen to me once). Also, and I haven’t read this on here before, but prior to its dying completely the unit I was using would occasionally shut itself off in the middle of cooking something and have to be restarted from the beginning. VERY annoying.

Another glaring design flaw that I ran into involves the actual structural composition of the appliance. This pressure cooker consists of 3 basic parts: The lid (self explanatory), the base (where all of the electronics are housed), and the pot (a removable bowl that fits inside of the base, it’s where you actually put your food when you’re cooking with this thing). Now, the decision to make the pot removable was probably a wise one by Cuisinart, as it certainly makes cleanup a lot easier, but unfortunately this feature also leaves the base of the cooker EXTREMELY vulnerable to damage whenever the pot isn’t sitting in it. Here’s why:

At the bottom of the base is a large heating plate which is raised about 1/2″ or so above the rest of the base, with nothing beneath it but a large gap that leads directly to all of this appliance’s (completely and utterly exposed) electronics. Now, imagine that one night you run the pot through the dishwasher… then imagine that the next morning you groggily forget to put the pot back inside the base before pouring some beans into your pressure cooker. You know what you’ve just created? That’s right, a $150+ baby rattle! Those beans will fly straight down through the crack between the heating plate and the rest of the base and directly into the area occupied by this thing’s wiring and circuitry. Worse yet, this machine is designed in such a way that there is absolutely no way to get them out of there other than turning the thing upside down and shaking it for an hour or four (admittedly, the lapse in awakeness that resulted in beans being poured down there was my fault, but there should have been something filling that gap to keep debris from getting on the electronics anyway). Oh, and just for the record, I poured beans into the components of my second one of these units… the first one died completely on its own.

Anyway, Cuisinart is well aware that their product breaks all the time, so they don’t put up much of a fight when you request that they send you a new machine (which is nice), but since you have to send your original machine back to them AND pay for the shipping ($[...]), it’s still a pretty sizable pain in the butt.

To be fair, when it’s working properly this is a great little device, but unfortunately its flaws and frailties far outweigh the convenience it provides on the whole. If you’re looking to get into pressure cooking, do yourself a favor and just get one of the traditional stovetop units… you’ll be getting 3 times the appliance for 1/3rd the price, and the learning curve is only slightly steeper.
Rating: 2 / 5

The valve design is such that one can get easily burned with scorching steam and water if not careful when removing the valve. Otherwise, I like the concept of an electric pressure cooker.
Rating: 1 / 5

My wife and I purchased this item a couple of months ago. It worked well the first two times we used it. The third time our luck ran out. It seems as though the digital circuitry simply quit working. Button press after button press was met with no response. Being a man, I couldn’t let this go unchallenged. The pressure cooker had thrown down the gauntlet and I was quick to grab my screw driver and digital multi-meter.

Ten minutes later the workbench was littered with parts. A new episode of “House” was starting – so work on the pressure cooker had to end. Four weeks later I came back and looked with distain at the bench and decided that the risk of going insane was too high – so I decided to scrap the whole thing and purchase another brand.

So here’s my final conclusion:

CONS:

- Quit working after second use

- Has no interpersonal skills what-so-ever

PROS:

- Lots of useful screws, bolts, nuts, and random pieces of metal that can be used for other home projects

- The 6qt pot can be reused for boiling things like lobster, oysters, or eggs.

- The absolute best part of the pressure cooker is the pot that is ‘hard’ connected to the chassis of the unit. Once this has been removed (5 min with wire cutters, phillips screw driver, and an 8mm nut driver) it makes for the PERFECT planting pot. It is about 10 inches tall, has a nice, black finish, and is riddled with 1/4 to 1/2 inch holes in the bottom. Put a plate under it and viola! – a perfect device for re-potting my newly purchased orchid.

It wouldn’t have cost me $90 at a hardware store to purchase these parts – and the relay switch, LED readouts, bipolar transistors, resistors, capacitors, and diodes were absolutely useless – but at least I got a 6qt stove-top pot and a WONDERFUL planter pot.

Now, in the future, whenever I look at my gorgeous orchid plant I will always be reminded not to ever purchase another Cusinart pressure cooker.
Rating: 1 / 5