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I Love the addition of the pressurising (pre-heating) - Cooking status bar.
The new anti-rotation inner pot is also good.
The new vent realise valve is I guess easier to use.
This is my fourth instant pot, my third 8L instant pot (I cook A LOT of food all at once and use them all lined up in my bench at the same time). You really can't go wrong with the large size, if you only want to cook a few hard boiled eggs it's really the same time no matter if it's a large pot or small. If you have large amounts of food to cook it's best to get the big one.
However if you never cook that much then it would be a waste of electricity and money as it will take more energy, so stick to the medium sized one I think. It's not to small and not too big. I have a 5.7litre which I use to do the hard boiled eggs, fish, chicken liver pate or when I used to make almond milk yoghurt.
They are quite easy to wash. Scrub with a metal scourer first, then a yellow/green scourer.
I do highly recommend you think about getting the basket in my last picture. It does NOT come with the instant pot and they are a little expensive but worth every cent. You cook whatever your cooking and lift it straight up and out all of the juices it's fantastic. I buy them all off of Amazon and have one for each of my four instant pots. Make sure you find the right size for yours.
The pressure cooker is a little scary to use at first until you get used to it just be very careful and never try to move it when it's cooking.
Do not put your face or hands anywhere near the steam event when it's depressurizing or when you want to manually release the pressure.
When the small metal/silver pop on the lid (between the steam vent and manual release slider) is level with the lid (and you do not have pressure cooking selected) you can safely open the lid, the pressure has not built up yet. If that metal/silver popup is rising or all the way up it is not safe, do not open the lid. The pressure is increasing and or full. You must manually vent and see this dropped all the way back down first.
When they talk about manually releasing the pressure they mean pushing the slider on top of the lid which is next to the seal and vent words, when it's in seal obviously the pressure is contained but when you slide it back to vent the steam will start pouring out of the big black nodule on top. Stand as far back as you can before you slide the vent and make sure you have a wide open space above it.
It helps if you let it naturally release for a while because then when you manually slide to vent there's not as much pressure coming out and not as much fast steam. But some foods you have to manually release immediately so they do not overcook.
Natural release is when the pressure cooker does this itself over time and you will see the small metal/silver pop up drop back down to be level with the plastic lid. It is safe to open the lid once that metal silver pop up has dropped down.
Always make sure you put enough water (1cold cup of water. Not hot or boiling) when you are pressure cooking or it will burn, and tell you it's burning too. Lol.
The Only exception I have found to this is if you are cooking chicken liver pate and then you only need one tablespoon of oil, no water, because they are so full of water it ends up very soupy anyway.
My dog has a lot of allergies and I spend a lot of time cooking all his meals in these, I cook a lot of pork and lamb in large amounts, I find it helps to chop it up and circle around the outer edge of the steam basket (that I have mentioned in the photographs attached) but leaving the inside hollow (like looking down onto a doughnut), this allows it to cook more evenly and you can actually cook more because you can go all about to the top.
