Do you need one? Maybe. Should you get one? Probably.
When Instant Brands discontinued its Aura slow cooker, it replaced it with this six-quart electric Dutch oven. The Instant Precision Dutch Oven has an electric heating element that can be dialed into any temperature between 77ºF and 400ºF, which means it can be used for almost anything you’d do on the stove, including frying an egg, caramelizing onions, and searing meat. If I were going to be without a cooktop, even for an extended period of time, I’d be happy to use this in its place.
My biggest issue with the Instant Precision Dutch Oven is the slow-cooking settings, or lack thereof. For a machine with variable temperature control—especially one meant to replace a slow cooker—it’s odd that the slow-cook function only has one slow-cook setting . There are, however,, and Manual Mode #2 can be used as a workaround for a traditional “high” slow cooker setting by setting the temperature to 300ºF but only for three hours at at a time, which is kind of weird.
Even with its quirks and limitations, I really like this multi-cooker, but wanted to get a second opinion, so I sent it home with my mother-in-law—who is equally enamored with her