The Kambrook Pressure Express KPR800 Digital Pressure Cooker isn’t exactly a sexy looking bit of kitchen gear. It’s nicely functional, however, and that’s enough for my purposes.
Kambrook Pressure Express KPR800 Digital Pressure Cooker: On the plus side
I’ve long been a fan of slow cookers, largely because I’m a very busy man, and a parent to boot. There’s definite utility in putting a bunch of ingredients into what is essentially a big bowl in the morning, flicking a switch and returning to it eight hours later to a nicely cooked meal.
Recently, however, my slow cooker died. This made me sad, and also determined to replace it. You can still buy slow cookers, along with every other type of kitchen gadget designed to cook, but what I found was that (at least in the stores I perused) they’ve largely been combined with pressure cookers. I didn’t plan to buy a pressure cooker per se, but when the pricing is similar, there’s really no reason not to do so. That’s how I’ve ended up with the Kambrook Pressure Express KPR800 Digital Pressure Cooker I’m testing today.
While it sells itself as “digital”, this isn’t exactly an app-controlled super-pressure cooker of the future. By “digital”, what Kambrook means is that there’s a small digital counter on the front that shows the current cooking time and status. It’s not exactly high technology, but it’s essentially sufficient.
As noted, I was after a slow cooker, and the Kambrook Pressure Express KPR800 Digital Pressure Cooker can manage that, along with sautéing and pressure cooking soups, rice (white or brown) and pot roasts. You can also set custom timings for your pressure cooking if desired.
The internal bowl has a capacity of six litres, which means it’s quite large enough to prepare meals for a family of five. It’s got a non-stick coating, which I rather solidly appreciate after many years of scraping clean the slow cooker’s internal pot.
In order to get a comparative feel for its pressure cooking prowess, I deliberately prepared the same meal with the same ingredients twice, slow cooking the first and then pressure cooking the second. Specifically a very simple Chili dish, which required no additional work for slow cooking, but used the sauté setting to brown the meat and cook the onions beforehand. In terms of time difference, the slow cooker took eight hours, whereas from go to stop, the pressure variant took around 45 minutes, including 28 minutes of pressure cooking time.
The results were a lot closer than I’d expected. Giving the meat eight hours to seep in the spices did give it a slightly richer flavour, but not by all that much compared to the pressure cooked variant. There were certainly no complaints from the younglings in terms of eating the results of said experiments.
Kambrook Pressure Express KPR800 Digital Pressure Cooker: On the minus side
There are a few niggles that could be better addressed. When you are slow cooking it’s perfectly feasible to lift the lid to stir the contents, but because this is a pressure cooker, the lid has to be opened carefully, even when there’s no pressure. This has a bit of a learning curve to work properly, which is annoying.
Equally irksome are the audio tones that give indication of started and completed cooking cycles. They’re shrill and harsh, and while pressure cooking does feel very 1970s to me, there’s not much reason why the sound chips still have to be that way.
The learning curve around pressure cooking, and especially the right amount of liquid to use still eludes me for some dishes. That’s not unique to the Kambrook Pressure Express KPR800 Digital Pressure Cooker, but it’s worth bearing in mind if, like me, you’re coming to it from a slow cooker usage background.
Kambrook Pressure Express KPR800 Digital Pressure Cooker: Pricing
Kambrook lists the Kambrook Pressure Express KPR800 Digital Pressure Cooker as having an RRP of $119. I bought mine for a little under $100.
Kambrook Pressure Express KPR800 Digital Pressure Cooker: Fat Duck verdict
I can’t say that I was drawn specifically to the Kambrook Pressure Express KPR800 Digital Pressure Cooker because of a particular fancy feature set. The observable reality right now is that there appears to be a whole crew of similar devices from other brands. I bought mine because I needed a replacement slow cooker, and it was both in stock and at an attractive price point.
That out of the way, the Kambrook Pressure Express KPR800 Digital Pressure Cooker isn’t the sexiest bit of kitchen gear I’ve ever owned. It’s solid, it’s functional, it’s nicely easy to clean, and that’s all I really want out of it.
I’ve also just realised that the other bit of kitchenalia reviewed thus far on Fat Duck Tech was a Kambrook product. That’s not specifically deliberate; if any other manufacturers want products reviewed, feel free to drop me a line. I can always eat.