Foodi Slow Cooked Stew

I’ve been having great fun with the Foodi as an air fryer and pressure cooker, but this is my first experiment with the Foodi as a slow cooker. Beef and mixed veg in a beef and red wine stock.

There has been some debate over how the Foodi and Instant Pot compares to a single-purpose slow cooker. I actually struggled with my old Instant Pot as a slow cooker, but I didn’t really experiment enough with it to come to a conclusion.

As this stew is feeding just me (and the freezer!), I don’t have any anxiety about it being ready on time. As a result, I am going to start off using the Foodi’s default settings – using “Lo” for 8 hours.

Reading negative reviews and YouTube content, I feel that part of the problem is people just dumping cold ingredients out of the fridge into the pot, and expecting it to perform miracles. I’ve always preferred to brown my meat and onions first, and the stock hit the pot boiling hot. So the stew is starting off hot (apart from the veggies) and the cooker just needs to maintain that.

Being able to use the saute setting to brown the meat is very convenient. With my old Sear and Stew cooker, I had to place the slow cooker pot on the gas to do this.

The lid is not a Foodi lid, it is one I already had in my cupboard. It is not an exact fit to the pot, there is a little movement there, but it is good. I could use the pressure cooker lid with the vent open, but it is nice to be able to see the stew cooking.

Later I will see how thick the stew is, and may do my usual thing of dropping some pearl barley in for the final hour, to thicken it up and add further flavour.

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