21 Duo Nova Instant Pot Recipes The Duo Nova does everything that the Duo can but adds some nice quality of life improvements. In addition, the Duo Nova comes with two sealing rings, rather than the usual one. Sealing rings are one of the most important parts of an Instant Pot, and the company recommends that you change your ring every months. It’s nice to know that you won’t have to worry about buying a new sealing ring in the future. When you’re shopping for a new Instant Pot you need to decide which features and size make the most sense for your needs. In 2019 the company added several new models including the Duo Nova. This model replaces seven appliances, including a pressure cooker, slow cooker and rice cooker. With different sizes available, this is a useful multi-cooker no matter what size your family or household. The pressure release button is our absolute favorite thing about the DUO Nova's user experience. It got hot enough to easily brown eve hearty veggies like carrots and made quick work of diced onions. We believe this ability is crucial; to effectively saute right in the pot vastly increases the number of meals you can make with only one dish to clean at the end. For the most part, we found the differences in cooking abilities to be minor between the models in our fleet. That being said, we thoroughly enjoyed the food made by the DUO Nova, with it earning superlatives in most of our cooking tests. The stainless-steel cooking pot doesn’t have handles for easy lifting, if you’d prefer handles consider another model such as the Instant Pot Pro or the Instant Pot Evo Plus. Fast, versatile, and convenient, with its bright, upgraded display and lid, the Instant Pot® Duo™ Nova is a rising star in the bestselling Duo™ family. The chili wasn’t thickened to our liking but by switching back to saute it was easy to reduce it to the perfect consistency. During slow cooking the handles and sides all stayed cool, the lid reached 113 F/ 45 C which isn’t too warm to touch. The Instant Pot Duo Nova has 15 one touch preset programs covering off the main foods you’re likely to cook in the multi-cooker, as well as various manual settings for the different functions. But it has far fewer preset programs than you’ll see on some other Instant Pots such as the more expensive Instant Pot Duo Evo Plus, which has 48 customizable presets. One cool thing that the Instant Pot Duo Nova has is an auto-sealing lid. If you’re struggling to choose between the two, then be sure to have a read through our Instant Pot Duo vs Duo Nova breakdown above. So, after all that, which Instant Pot model would we actually recommend? In truth, the Duo and the Duo Nova are very similar products and in a lot of situations, they will offer exactly the same functionality and ease of use. Once you know what you’re doing, Instant Pots are an absolute dream, but understanding the different modes and experimenting with recipes can take some time. To make your life easier, we’d recommend starting out by using recipes shared online by other Instant Pot users. Before we get into our comparison, it’s probably best to take a look at what Instant Pot actually is. Although the term “instant pot” is often used in place of products such as “slow cooker” or “pressure cooker”, Instant Pot is also the name of one of the most popular worktop cooker brands. The Instant Pot Duo is one of the electric pressure cooker models made by Instant Brands. Additionally, we found many meat-based pressure cooker recipes suggest significantly longer cooking times than Instant Pot suggests for the same cut of meat. In those situations, we generally found Instant Pot's recommendations to be more on point, with the longer cook times bringing about slightly drier and tougher results. The pressure release button makes depressurizing the cooking chamber feel much easier and less stressful. Helen is a freelance writer who specializes in kitchen appliances and has written for some of the biggest home-related titles around. Instant Pot is the most recognizable brand name in the pressure cooker space for a reason, and the DUO Nova delivers on that pedigree by offering exceptional performance at a reasonable price. There are very few situations where the DUO Nova wouldn't be our top pressure cooker recommendation. The first is for those that mainly want to cook meat, as we've found some other cookers that can retain just a bit more tenderness in specific cuts than this machine. It sets the standard for pressure cookers, offering a versatile list of cooking functions, well-designed controls, and convenient touches like a pressure release button. In the world of pressure cookers, the DUO Nova sells for a relatively reasonable price but leads the pack in terms of performance.