Presto 01241 4-Quart Aluminum Pressure Cooker

10 reviews for Presto 01241 4-Quart Aluminum Pressure Cooker

1. 

   Rated 5 out of 5

   Delia Castillo Morales – August 19, 2024

   Excelente calidad, coce muy bien los alimentos.

2. 

   Rated 5 out of 5

   Gundisalvo – September 2, 2024

   Muy útil para una pareja o para tres personas.

3. 

   Rated 4 out of 5

   Amazon Customer – September 13, 2024

   Works good. There is no second holding handle. Hard to lift with one hand for older one.

4. 

   Rated 5 out of 5

   Crochethooker – September 16, 2024

   I purchased this 6-quart pressure cooker, and it has quickly become a staple in my kitchen. The size is perfect for cooking meals for my family of four, and it’s versatile enough to handle everything from soups and stews to rice and even tougher cuts of meat.
   What I love most is how fast it cooks. It does the job well. The build quality is solid and durable. The locking mechanism is secure , so I feel confident using it.

   Overall, I highly recommend this pressure cooker to anyone looking to make home-cooked meals quickly and easily. It’s a fantastic value for the price.

5. 

   Rated 5 out of 5

   Amazon Customer – September 26, 2024

   Best cooker ever!

6. 

   Rated 5 out of 5

   Laurie – October 10, 2024

   Was looking in average stores for this product and was hard to find. It is exactly like the one I had for many years. Works well. Best to be familiar with pressure cookers if purchasing. But I love mine.

7. 

   Rated 5 out of 5

   Farthion – October 15, 2024

   I bought this about a year ago, and for the vast majority of that time, it sat in my cupboard waiting to be used. I really wish I had used it sooner.

   I’m the family cook and time in the kitchen is always a hot, steamy affair. Considering I hate to sweat, the less time I spend sweating in there, the better.

   We’ve started going to stews and lower quality cuts of meat (gotta love food-for-fuel-caused increases in prices!) for our dishes and that involves way too much time sweating. So I finally decided to check out the pressure cooker laying fallow in the cupboard in the hopes of making my time in the kitchen both shorter and more productive.

   And boy did it deliver!

   If you look at my other reviews, I almost never gush. I’m a hyper-critical son of a female dog (sorry, Mom!) and can find fault in just about anything. But this thing is amazing. The 6qt bucket cooks 3-5 pounds of meat in under an hour. With the right spices, the meat is extremely flavorful, and it’s always falling apart tender. The spice combinations can be complicated, or as simple as salt and pepper – it’s up to the cook.

   Use is simple, with the only real consideration being the amount of water in it and the cooking time (in general, if you want it to cook longer, use more water, less if cooking for less time), the charts for which are freely available on the Internet. It makes cooking rice, barley and meats – usually things that can take a lot of time – insanely fast. That the results are generally more flavorful and aromatic only adds icing to the pressure-cooker cake.

   Instructions included are kind of rudimentary, but the idea is to heat it up on high until the top knob starts to dance, then turn the heat WAY DOWN, to a point just enough to keep the dance going. If you’ve ever simmered anything in a covered pot, you have an idea of how low that heat may be. It depends on your stove, of course, and some fiddling to find the “sweet dance spot” may be required. Once you know the SDS, you can walk away for the requisite amount of cooking time until it’s time to take it off the burner.

   Once you get the hang of it, you will wonder why you ever lived your life without one.

   We’re converting toward pressure cooking (it uses a lot less electricity cooking due to the faster cooking times on lower heat) because you can take inferior products and make gourmet-tasting meals.

   Now, least you think I’m shilling here, some down-sides to the 6qt model I got.

   -Learning curve. If you cook a lot, you’ll learn how to use this quickly. If you don’t, chances are you’re going to have a lot of overcooked food. Note cooking times and water to avoid that.
   -The screw holding the handle to the pot comes loose occasionally. A screwdriver fixes that.
   -It’s enormous, so if you have an older dishwasher, likely you’ll be washing it by hand. Finding storage space in small apartments for that size may be an issue as well. You might want to consider your actual use needs before getting one this large (I needed large).
   -It can be a bit “loud”. My wife hates the sound of it, even if she loves the results of what it cooks. I don’t find it that annoying, so your mileage may vary there.

   And that’s pretty much it as far as negatives go. I can easily deal with all of them, and even with my hypercritical, ready-to-objectively-bash-everything attitude, I can’t find any credible reason not to give this thing less than the five stars it deserves.

   An absolutely stellar product.

8. 

   Rated 5 out of 5

   Nom De Plume – October 21, 2024

   Didn’t know what size to get but careful reading of instructions and what I make I determined this was the best size for me. Couldn’t decide between a 4qt and a 6 qt. I wanted a 6 qt but Amazon forced you to buy Amazon Prime if you wanted the 6 qt and I didn’t want that FORCED on me as I don’t want Prime Membership right now and didn’t want the hassle to quit later.

   But as it turned out the 4 qt is more than enough for one or two people or even if you have a small child. It’s well and simply made and very cheap compared to others out there. Was not sure about the crude rocking cap but it works, is reliable and simple to see if the pressure is correct by it’s gentle rocking.

   One decision to buy this was the gasket and other rubber seals are cheap to replace. The other one I looked at and really liked, the gasket and rubber replacements would cost me nearly $18 dollars a year to upkeep paying for another of their Pressure Cookers in only 3 YEARS!!

   The aluminum used is soft and scratches and stains easily and is not hardened i.e anodized. I wish it was but the cost would go higher too. But the manual gives a way to remove stains. Have not tried it as the light stains don’t bother me. I also did NOT detect any aluminum taste with dishes that contain acidic ingredients. A well-known site tested for aluminum and said it leeches .0025 of aluminum, but said when you take an antacid, one tablet contains 250 mg of aluminum! Drinking from soda cans can give you 1 or 2 mg of it.

   If that still bothers you go get a stainless-steel one. But the shape changes compared to the aluminum one even though they have the same capacity. I think the SS model is flatter and not as tall.

   I bought it mostly to cook beans in it and it excels at that. I tried their bean recipe and it’s good as any. Completely satisfied. I also use it to cook soups, stews and am still experimenting. I don’t know which is better at the moment for doing the latter as I only had this for a few months. Whether traditional cooking, i.e. Crockpot (failed at beans unless you buy it canned) or traditional stove, coil or gas.

   I can’t seem to get the full flavor nuances on the latter when using the Pressure Cooker, however, strangely, we did gobble up everything made by it. Cabbage in soup gets overcooked, though, as this is powerful and and has only one setting at 15 lbs. Perhaps delicate herbs and flavoring get smothered by the extreme pressure? Maybe not either, as I’m still experimenting in amounts and may take me a year or more to determine the truth, as I don’t use fresh herbs and tend to customize my recipes on the fly.

   I might add, also, it has a strangely very comfortable handle.

   See you in one year. 😉

9. 

   Rated 5 out of 5

   Bill Murphy – November 10, 2024

   It works OK.

10. 

    Rated 5 out of 5

    Very comfortable and nice material – November 11, 2024

    This is the best pressure cooker I have bought it save time cooking easy to use and I love the style