Breville’s Fast Slow Go Cooker Helped Me Make the Best Rice of My Life

We’ve written about the joys (and problems) of working with a slow cooker a few times before on this website. It’s a kitchen appliance that, when used correctly, can help simplify cooking projects that might otherwise seem kind of daunting.

My mum has long raved about the beauty of throwing some ingredients into a pot and then forgetting about them for hours on end. I, however, had never dabbled in this kind of cooking before, so when I got the opportunity to review Breville’s Fast Slow GO machine (which offers options for slow cooking, steaming, pressure cooking and more), I figured I had to give it a shot.

Here’s how my experience went.

Real Life Reviews: Breville’s Fast Slow GO cooker

First of all, let’s take a look at the features on offer with this slow cooker slash pressure cooker, slash steamer and beyond.

Specs you need to know about:

• Stainless Steel Cooking Bowl
• Stainless Steel Trivet
• Collector Condensation
• Dimensions (WxDxH): 31 x 35 x 33 cm
• Capacity: 6L
• Settings: 14 Shortcuts & Appliance Setting Including; Soup, Stock, Meat, Stew, Steam, Sauté, Legumes, Rice/Grains, Risotto, Yoghurt, Reduce, and Sous Vide
• Power: 1100 Watts
• Voltage: 220 – 240 Volts
• Warranty: 1 Year Replacement Warranty
• Automatic Steam Release Setting: Hands-free automatic steam release; Quick, Pulse, or Natural for extra safety
• Dual sensors at the top and bottom monitor ingredients for more accurate temperature and pressure control, while the hands-free steam release automatically varies across foods to maximize flavour and texture.
• Delay Start and Keep Warm Functions: Adjust your cooking times with delay start and keep warm functions
• 3-Way Safety System: Safety locking lid, safety valve and a safety locking pin
• Colours: Brushed Stainless Steel ($329) and Sea Salt ($359)
• Price: From $329

What’s good?

Okay, let’s start from the beginning, shall we? Set up was incredibly simple. It’s a fairly big boi, so that is something to consider, but there is no major prep involved other than washing the bowl, setting your altitude level (because that does things to boiling temperatures in slow cookers), and running some water through it for a thorough clean. Easy.

On to actual use. Now, I have been testing out the Breville Fast Slow GO for a few months because there are so many different features to try; I wanted to ensure I at least experimented with the majority of them before attempting to review the cooker. Some of those experiments went very well, others not so much – but more on that later.

If you had a read through the features above, you’ll recall that there are 14 shortcuts and appliance settings: Soup, Stock, Meat, Stew, Steam, Sauté, Legumes, Rice/Grains, Risotto, Yoghurt, Reduce, and Sous Vide. That is a lot of choice for your average home cook. It hugely opens up the kind of dishes you’re able to produce – and without much effort most of the time.

There is bound to be some benefit to be found in most of these cooking settings, but the ones I get the most use out of are Meat, Soup, Stew and Rice/Grains.

It’s no exaggeration to say that when you’re preparing meat in the slow cooker, your job is to get all the right ingredients together in the pot, and then it’s up to the appliance to make the magic happen. You simply close the lid, select the cooking setting and time (my roommate and I have tested up to about six hours) and return when that baby is ready.

Stews, soups and rice are much the same in the Fast Slow GO. Throw it in, select the correct cooking setting, and come back when it’s time to eat. Because the appliance is more than just a slow cooker, you’ll find that it can handle a broader variety of dishes which is useful if you don’t want 1,000 different machines on your benchtop at any one time.

For example, rice is usually not great in a slow cooker, but the Breville Fast Slow GO has a specific rice and grains cooking setting which genuinely gets me the best and most consistently-cooked rice I have ever made in my life.

If you want a stew or curry, the slow cooker settings will give you a flavour-filled sauce base, but if you want a meat base for tacos, you can reduce away any excess liquids you don’t need. It does take some getting used to, but there are almost an overwhelming number of options with this thing.

The safety setting where the cooker locks until all the steam has been let out is another nifty addition, though there are times when I have wished it would settle a little faster.

Oh, and the Breville website also gives you a downloadable e-book of recipes if you don’t know where to start. That’s a huge help.

What’s not so good?

I will admit here that I am someone who tends to skim the instruction manual and likes to figure out how to use an appliance intuitively. It’s not the smartest approach, but it is one I take quite often.

You cannot do this with a machine like the Fast Slow GO cooker. There are loads of different settings, and there are loads of specific ways to achieve certain cooking styles. If you’re not a pro with a slow cooker or similar, you may also find you need to follow recipes rather closely. Again, this is something I rarely do.

If you take the cowboy route like I have (a couple of times), you will probably end up with dishes that taste bland or don’t achieve the consistency you want.

I attempted to make yoghurt in this thing and only roughly read the recipe – I wound up with a pot of hot milk with a few lumps of Greek yoghurt in it.

The point I guess I’m trying to make here is that you should understand the kind of cook you are before you take on an appliance like this. If you can’t be bothered to follow directions, you’ll probably only ever use one setting, and the purchase won’t be worth it for you. And if you’re spending over $300 on something, you want it to be justified.

Adding to that, if you are only looking to cook the occasional chicken or one soup every winter, you don’t need an appliance as complex as this. You could do just as well with a cast iron pot (granted it doesn’t cost more than a slow cooker).

The last thing I’ll mention in the not-so-good area is more about placement than anything. If you have a small kitchen and you’re planning to store this in a little corner somewhere, be aware that the steam release function will let out a fair amount of steam. There is a chance it might create some mess on your splashback or let some moisture out on the base of your kitchen cupboards – just something to keep in mind.

Breville’s Fast Slow GO cooker: The verdict

As a whole, my roommate and I have found the Breville Fast Slow GO cooker to be a genuinely useful addition to our kitchen set-up. My roommate describes her experience using the appliance as nothing short of “amazing,”, especially as someone who has never used a slow cooker before. (Can confirm, her six-hour-cooked pulled pork was damn delicious).

While there is definitely a learning curve for anyone who is used to a slap-dash approach to cooking, the time you spend learning how to properly put this baby to work is more than worth the effort. Once you know your way around it, you can produce incredibly impressive meals without much work, and the clean-up after is as simple as washing one single bowl.

As long as you know you’re going to use the different settings with some regularity, I would say this purchase is a fairly easily justifiable one.

Just don’t ask me to make you yoghurt. I haven’t mastered that yet.

You can shop the Breville Fast Slow Go from Breville directly or from retailers like Bing Lee, The Good Guys or Harvey Norman.