Operation costs of Instant Pot vs Gas Stove

December 19, 2016
Recently, Mango used an Instant Pot for the first time and immediately became enamoured with it. Pressure cooking is pretty convenient for a few reasons. Sometimes it's faster than stovetop cooking, you never have to worry about your pot boiling over, and if you follow the directions, you don't have to worry about scorching. Having an analytical mind, Mango was curious what cost more to operate: the electric Instant Pot, or a natural gas stove. Mango measured the natural gas and electricity consumption used to cook equivalent amounts of rice and multiplied it by the cost of the utility. The results: $0.0042 for the Instant Pot and $0.0126 for the gas stove. So if gas is cheaper than electric, why is the electric Instant Pot cheaper? Our guess is because it's more efficient and does not allow heat to escape as a stovetop pot does. We had to boil our rice on the stove for four minutes to get the same result as an Instant Pot in manual mode for one minute (NPR for 20 minutes following). Remember this is based on one person's utility bill, and one recipe, but even still, it illustrates that the Instant Pot is a very cost-effective tool.