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I love making soups, stews, sauces -- almost anything I need to prepare and then watch over for a good part of my day. It can be comforting and calming. ("Long before there were antidepressants, there was stew," Regina Schrambling wrote in The New York Times.) If I have all day, I pull out my Dutch oven, throw in some protein, vegetables, spices and whatever else I use to make chili or carnitas or beef stew or Bolognese, and then keep an eye on it while it simmers.
But especially on a weekday, I have minutes -- not hours or days -- to make dinner for my family. Sure, I could quickly put together a meal of tacos or burritos or pasta with sauce out of a jar, but that's not a lot of variety.
The 6-quart Instant Pot Duo 7-in-1 pressure cooker lets me cook a good meal and not spend a good amount of time doing it. I gather my ingredients, slice up anything that needs slicing, toss everything in the Instant Pot and tap a few buttons. Everything cooks quickly, under pressure, and I spend my day doing something else. Even better, it's part of Amazon's Prime Day sale, and you can now get it for 17% off, or $84.
I've recently started using my pressure cooker to make the main dish for dinner parties too, which feels a little bit like cheating because it's so easy to make a tasty stew or tagine with a pressure cooker. The 6-quart Instant Pot does everything I want.
You can plunk down more cash to get extra settings or even an air fryer and pressure cooker combo product, but I've never wished mine had more options. I'm not surprised that the Instant Pot Duo 7-in-1 tops CNET's picks for the best Instant Pots of 2024. It's also the No. 1 bestseller for electric pressure cookers on Amazon. For more, here are other essential cooking utensils to make your kitchen life better and our favorite meal-delivery services for those nights you don't feel like cooking.
Watch this: How to Hack Amazon Prime Day: Shopping and Deals Advice
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An Instant Pot is a great gift for beginner cooks too
And it's not just for making meals quickly. It's perfect for someone learning how to cook, because it takes a lot of the fuss out of cooking. I gave one to my kid -- who could cook exactly one dish -- when he moved into his first apartment in college, walking him through a few recipes he could make. He not only mastered carnitas, chili, rice and other dishes, but he evangelized the pressure cooker to his roommates so much they were all making meals in it by the end of the year.
For more about deals, here are some of the best TV deals, and here are the best deals under $25 to grab during the October Prime Day sale.