Pressure Cookers to Avoid, An Occasional Series

Hopefully a very occasional series - I don't do this lightly

When I first started writing about pressure cookers, some 15 years ago now, I set out to test as many brands as I could and 3 quickly showed themselves to be particularly good. These were Fissler, Kuhn Rikon and WMF. I still rate Fissler and Kuhn Rikon very highly. WMF - and in particular their Perfect Plus Pressure cookers - not so much.

For years, I used this particular model from WMF on a daily basis - it was even the one I would take on holiday. I loved its efficiency, its high PSI, I loved the slide mechanism on the handle which meant you could natural release in a really controlled way, compared to the short bursts needed by other pressure cookers. I recommended this pressure cooker to everyone and I know quite a few of you bought them.

I had 2 niggles, 1 minor, 1 turned out to be quite major. The first was the dimensions - the diameter (22cm) tends to be a bit narrower than a lot of larger volume pressure cookers - and instead of increasing the diameter along with an increase in volume, the cookers just get taller. This is fine if you are making big batches of stock, but if you want a larger surface area, it’s not so great. The second niggle was that the top part of the handle - the bit that attaches to the lid of the cooker, and contains the weights, the pressure gauge and the release mechanism - could be a bit fragile. I broke a couple and had a bit of a shock when I realised that the replacement price could be anything from £50-£85 - a lot more expensive than many pressure cookers.

It was feedback from several of you - and experience of my own most recent replacement - which made me realise that I could no longer recommend this particular WMF model (I haven’t tried the others in their range). For a while, people had been getting in touch to say that they were having problems with their new WMFs or replacement handles. The issue was that the slide mechanism was sticking tight and nothing was getting it open. To start with I assumed the occasional faulty model. But the same issue cropped up again and again. Then I got my replacement handle and I understood why. The spec had changed. The pressure gauge was different - cheaper and plasticky - mine kept falling off. Importantly, when I cooked with it, not only did it seal less efficiently, with steam escaping when I would not expect it to, I immediately started having issues with the slide mechanism too.

To start with this was just a slight resistance and with some jiggling it would work loose. But then it started jamming shut and would not open. A friend of mine wrote to WMF about it and received this response:

"In the event that the pressure cooker can no longer be opened, we always recommend turning the pressure cooker upside down and shaking it. The pressure cooker should then open again.

Another option would be to place the pressure cooker under cold water for at least 10 minutes so that the pressure cooker cools down completely. It can happen that the pressure indicator is already completely down but the pressure cooker cannot be opened. This is usually because there is still some residual pressure in the pressure cooker."

This is TERRIBLE advice! And actually, some of it is dangerous too. Putting aside the merits of shaking the contents of your pressure cooker (imagine you were making something Pot in Pot!), or the amount of water wasted by running it under cold water for TEN MINUTES, I tried running a jammed cooker under cold water and it is not safe. Do not do it!

What happened was that the residual pressure immediately dropped - but the slide mechanism didn’t disengage. The result of this was that the lid ended up pushed off at an angle, and the gasket fell into the cooker and the slide mechanism remained closed and was even harder to open. I couldn’t leave it to run under cold water because the cold water would run into the cooker and flood the food within.

To be fair to WMF, I have always managed to get mine open, but it is erratic, and therefore unreliable, and whilst it is no big deal waiting for a cooker to cool down if you are cooking something that won’t suffer from the extra time, there are a lot of foods that become woefully overcooked if you can’t fast release.

I am now at the point that I can no longer rely on this particular WMF model for demos or for anything that needs a fast release. I noticed that they have changed the handle again, more recently, but I am still hearing reports of the same issue. I have just bought a new handle which I am going to test rigorously, so will update. But until I am confident they have addressed what I consider to be a pretty serious issue, I would advise you to avoid it. I have written to them a couple of times with no response, which is disappointing - again, I will update if I ever do hear back!

If you have the old style handle (it will say “Made in Germany” on it, and the pressure gauge will have bands of red/orange/yellow instead of red lines), I am very envious! Treasure it!

Apologies for writing such a negative post. I prefer writing positive reviews and simply ignoring the bad. But I am asked very regularly about which pressure cookers to buy and not to buy and I want to avoid any of you making a very expensive mistake.

I shall be back very soon with hopefully a more positive post! This is a free one, so please share with anyone you think may find it useful - and of course, as usual, if you can spare a moment, please click through on the heart! Thank you all!