Blusmart CR-26A Electric Pressure Cooker Review


Blusmart CR-26A Electric Pressure Cooker Review

Buy it at Amazon: Blusmart CR-26A Electric Pressure Cooker [Affiliate Link]

Takeaway: Fast and convenient; makes delicious food but no included recipes, could use better instructions.

After owning a stovetop pressure cooker for many years, I have to say there are few occasions now where I would use that over an electric one. The electric ones are more convenient, heat up faster, and don't need constant monitoring. This Blusmart electric pressure cooker has a capacity of 6 qts and measures 15" tall with a 11" diameter. All the accessories are inside when you receive the unit: 4 ft power cord, rice scooper, measuring cup, condensation cup, and instruction manual. The inner bowl and bowl chamber both have non-stick coatings on them for ease of cleaning. On the bottom of the lid is a removable gasket and debris filter, though you have to pull pretty hard on the silicone handle to extract it. The bowl also has measurement lines for the capacity of the unit and water measurement lines for cooking rice.

The manual is readable, but isn't a great English translation. It doesn't explain well what the differences between the modes are or how to use them as there are no recipes included with the unit. You've got presets like rice, cake, chicken, fried foods, and soup. Then the 'manual cook' button allows you to set a delayed start time from 30 mins to 24 hours in 30 min increments. The red key is the power/cancel and keep warm key, and there are up and down keys for time adjustments in 1 minute increments. When you press any of the presets, it'll just input set values for the cooking time under pressure. With any preset, you can increase or decrease the time under pressure and the unit automatically switches to keep warm when the timer runs out.

So far in the pressure cooker I've made rice, chicken stew, beans, steamed veggies, hard boiled eggs, zucchini bread, quick preserves/jam, corn on the cob, and boiled pot stickers (which I later air fried). The unit takes about 5-10 minutes to pre-heat and pressurize, depending on the amount of food you put in, before the timer counts down, so expect a 5 minute setting for 1 cup of rice to actually take about 15 minutes. The one thing that kept throwing me off at first is that the pressure valve isn't marked as to which direction is seal and which direction is release (counter-clockwise is seal). I also recently found out the square tab that sticks out of the stick of the lid is so you can store/stand it upright in the handle on the side of the pit. That's clever, but again, not explained in the manual. There's no recipe book included so I'm kind making up recipes as I go.

The things that really impressed me was the cake function. I didn't actually think it would bake a decent cake, but my zucchini bread came out wonderfully moist, evenly cooked, and fluffy. It also released cleanly from the bowl and wasn't burned at all on the bottom. I liked that I didn't have to fire up the big oven and that it took half the time to finish cooking than in the oven. I was also able to make quick fruit preserves/jam by adding chopped fruit, lemon juice, and sugar with a splash of water and putting it under pressure with the release valve open for 20 minutes. This eliminated the hours of standing in front of the stove stirring and reducing jam and it came out wonderful and slightly caramelized.

Overall, the functionality of the pressure cooker is very well done. The construction is solid and durable. It's easy to use and saves me time versus traditional cooking and baking. It's also cleans up easily. My main complaint is that there weren't any recipes included and the different settings aren't explained well. Like for 'fried' am I supposed to use oil and deep fry under pressure? Should I use the gasket or not and should the valve be open or closed in this setting? It's unclear and the instructions weren't too helpful in that respect. A bit of clarification would help me fully utilize the device's potential, which currently I don't feel like I have enough information to do. Otherwise, I'm quite pleased with it and plan to use it a lot more and experiment with different recipes.

Buy it at Amazon: Blusmart CR-26A Electric Pressure Cooker [Affiliate Link]

Comments

  1. I recently purchased this cooker at a reduced price thinking that i could probably find help on the internet. Thank you for your input. I am having to make it up as I go as well. I found a Mac and cheese recipe for the instapot that worked well and am trying a roast right now. I, too wish there had been more help with the functions. Knowing them would go a long way in determining what recipes to use from other pots similar to this one. I specifically liked this one because of the fry setting, however. There are no instructions to understand how to use it. Now I wish I had gotten one with a yogurt function instead. If you have been able to figure out the functions, please update... Thank you

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Karen, after using this machine for many months I've come to the conclusion that all the functions basically operate the same way. There doesn't seem to be anything special about any particular settings in terms of temperature and pressure, and it simply chooses a different amount of preset time in each. According to most of the comments and feedback I've read online these electric pressure cookers aren't designed for deep frying or pressure frying so it's a mystery to me what the "fried" setting is supposed to do. Perhaps something was lost in translation and it simply means stir-fry or sautee. But again, I seem to be able to do that in any mode regardless, so perhaps "7-in-1" is simply a gimmick of marketing as it really does the same thing 7 times with different timers. Performance-wise it's great but backend support is pretty lacking.

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  2. Hi, I recently purchased BlueSmart pressure cooker. I am trying to make soup/stew that requires 3 hours of cooking time, and when i pressed the soup button, the preset value is 30, and when i press the +, it only allow me to add time to 40, and i couldnt add to 3 hours. any suggestions?

    Best,
    Sue

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Sue. Since the pressure cooker cooks food at high pressure, this should reduce the amount of time needed to cook the food by at least half or more on a traditional recipe. In almost all cases, you'll never have to cooking anything under pressure for 3 hrs as everything in the pot will turn to mush. The longest I've seen is maybe 90 minutes and usually in two sessions, with a cool down period to add more ingredients at the halfway mark. My suggestion is to try your recipe using the max time allowable of 40 minutes and check the stew by releasing the pressure when the time is up to verify that it needs more time. If it does, you may need to also top up the liquids at this point as some may have escaped as steam during pressure cooking.

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  3. Hi Sue, i agree with Phil. I think you will be pleasantly surprised at how quickly you can cook with this. Soup cooks beautifully in a very short period of time and tastes just as good, if not better than cooking it on the stove for 3 hours.

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