The Fagor Electric Pressure Cooker Plus Is a Quiet Cooking Ninja

Item: Fagor Electric Pressure Cooker +
Price: $89.99
Overall impression: This cooker makes flavorful food fast, and is super quiet while in use. The instruction manual is a little hard to understand, but if you’re familiar with pressure cookers, this shouldn’t be a problem.

This handsome pressure cooker from Fagor has a sleek look with a few more options than just low and high pressure (rice, vegetable, and meat). Are they necessary? I took it through three tests — dried beans, eggs, and chicken — to see how well it performed.

• Height: 14″ x 14″ x 13″
• Weight: 11 pounds
• PSI: Low pressure 5PSI, high pressure 9PSI
• Quart capacity: 6-quart capacity
• Construction: Stainless steel exterior with nonstick pot
• Settings: Low pressure, high pressure, brown program, rice program, meat program, keep warm program
• Accessories: Pressure regulating knob, silicone gasket, condensation reservoir, cooking pot, lid (Note: Does not include trivet)
• Warranty: One-year warranty

Favorite details: This pressure cooker was very quiet when in action – I didn’t notice any sound on low or high pressure. I was very impressed by how flavorful the chickpeas were in this cooker, and how easy it was to peel eggs and brown chicken.

Potential problems: The manual for this pressure cooker isn’t great for a first-time user. The features and functions section has rudimentary sketches of what each part is and what it’s for. The control panel has a “meat” and “vegetable” mode, which I found confusing and maybe unnecessary. When I used it for the chicken, it didn’t make a big difference.

Who would love this? If you’re a little more comfortable with using an electric pressure cooker and want to create super-flavorful food and don’t want a lot of noise, this is the one for you. It’s also on the cheaper end of things.

I put the Fagor through three different tests, and here’s how it did:

• The test: 1 pound of dried, un-soaked chickpeas, minimum amount of liquid required (1 cup), 1 tablespoon oil, 1 teaspoon salt, 1/4 yellow onion, 1 clove garlic. Cooked on high pressure for 40 minutes with a natural release.
• Result: The cooker came to pressure in a little over 5 minutes. It was completely silent when it was on high pressure. The beans had a great texture after 40 minutes and were super flavorful.

• The test: 4 eggs with minimum amount of water required (1 cup). Cooked on low pressure for six minutes with a quick release.
• Result: This cooker does not include a trivet, so I had to use another one I had on hand to perform this experiment. The eggs were ready in six minutes, and were on the softer side of hard-boiled. The eggs were easy to peel and tasted great.

• The test: Sautéed onions and garlic, browned 2 chicken thighs, covered in 2 cups of chicken stock, and cooked for 10 minutes on high pressure with a quick release.
• Result The browning program on this cooker was good, but it took a little more time than the other cookers to brown the chicken. It took 5 minutes for the cooker to come to high pressure, and it was completely silent the entire time. After 10 minutes the chicken was super moist.

To operate the cooker, you choose the desired pressure (low or high) or you can choose a different set of modes: rice, vegetable, or meat. After that, you punch in the desired time by continuously pressing down on the mode and then the start button. I personally found this a little confusing compared to other pressure cookers where they have just pressure and time to deal with.

The cooker came to pressure very quickly, and didn’t take long to drop naturally. You can tell the pressure has dropped by a small pressure indicator located on the lid. At first, this was hard for me to read.

The cooker was extremely quiet when it was in action.

The pressure regular knob was easy to understand; there are three functions: pressure, steam, and clean. It was easy to rotate the knob to switch from pressure to steam with the help of a long wooden spoon.

The chickpeas that this pressure cooker made were on the softer side of things, and were very flavorful. The beans did not split when cooking.

The eggs and the chicken were delicious, although the eggs were a little softer than hard-boiled and the chicken took a little longer to brown compared to other cookers.

The manual indicates that you can clean the removable pot in the dishwasher, but I didn’t have any problem washing it by hand. The rest of the cooker can be wiped down by hand. I didn’t have any problems with this aspect of the cooker.

In order to clean the pressure regular knob, you move the knob to the “clean” function and lift the lid to remove and clean as instructed in the manual.

• $89.99

Apartment Therapy Media makes every effort to test and review products fairly and transparently. The views expressed in this review are the personal views of the reviewer and this particular product review was not sponsored or paid for in any way by the manufacturer or an agent working on their behalf. However, the manufacturer did give us the product for testing and review purposes.