Our Favorite Counter Appliances

Dinner for eight is a logistics problem before it’s a meal. By 5 p.m. the little ones are melting down, our 8-year-old is asking what’s for supper, and the baby wants to be held while something actually gets cooked. For a long stretch we leaned on the stove and a slow cooker that took all afternoon, which meant deciding at breakfast what we’d eat twelve hours later — and we are not that organized.

What finally fixed the witching hour was the Instant Pot Duo. Dried beans, a whole chicken, oatmeal for a crowd, rice that doesn’t need babysitting — it all goes in, the lid clicks, and we walk away to referee homework. It earned its spot on the counter simply by being the appliance we reach for most nights, the everyday-family-use workhorse the guide is built around.

We looked at bigger multi-cookers and a couple of air-fryer combos, but the Duo won on the boring things that matter in a full house. One pot to wash instead of three. A footprint that doesn’t hog the whole counter. Controls even a tired parent can run at the end of a long day. At around $89.99 it has paid for itself in rescued weeknights, and after years of near-daily use the seal and pot are still going strong. When you’re feeding this many people, reliable and forgiving beats fancy every single time.