Euro Cuisine Yogurt Maker vs Instant Pot Yogurt

My husband bought me an Instant Pot three Christmases ago, and it has earned its keep on soups, beans, and more pot roasts than I can count. What it never quite won me over on was yogurt. The yogurt setting technically works, but I found myself frustrated more mornings than not, forgetting which button sequence I needed or coming back to find the pot still holding a full day's worth of yogurt with nowhere else useful to go. So this past spring I set a Euro Cuisine YM80 electric yogurt maker on the counter next to it and ran the two side by side for about six weeks before deciding which one deserved a permanent spot. If you only want the short version, here it is: the Euro Cuisine is the one still sitting out on my counter. It comes with seven small glass jars I can pull straight from the refrigerator, and it doesn't tie up the Instant Pot for the better part of a day. But the Instant Pot has real strengths too, and I'm not going to pretend them away just to sell you on buying a second appliance.

I should tell you where I'm coming from first. My husband and I have about three feet of usable counter between the stove and the window, and the Instant Pot already lives on that counter for weeknight cooking. Adding a second appliance meant the Euro Cuisine had to actually earn its spot, not just look promising in a box on a store shelf. Over six weeks I made yogurt in both machines using the same milk, the same starter, and roughly the same schedule, keeping notes on a card taped inside a cabinet door so I wasn't relying on memory alone, so what follows is a real side by side, not a guess based on reading two spec sheets.

How I Ended Up Testing Both

I'd been making yogurt in the Instant Pot on and off for about a year before I ever considered a dedicated machine. It worked well enough most of the time, but I never loved having to remember which button sequence started the yogurt cycle versus the pressure cook cycle, and more than once I caught myself starting the wrong one and having to begin all over again, which meant an extra hour or two lost before I even noticed the mistake. The bigger problem was scheduling. A yogurt batch in the Instant Pot ties the whole pot up for six to eight hours, and on more than one evening I wanted that same pot free for soup or a pot roast and had to plan my whole day around a batch of yogurt instead, sometimes pushing dinner back or reaching for the stovetop when I hadn't planned to. That's really what sent me looking at a dedicated yogurt maker in the first place, not any complaint about how the yogurt itself turned out.

The Euro Cuisine YM80 is about as simple as a kitchen appliance gets. It's a small white base with seven glass jars, each with its own lid, that sit in a ring around a heating element. You warm your milk, stir in your starter, fill the jars, set the dial for how many hours you want it to run, close the lid, and walk away. There's no display to read and no settings menu, nothing that could go wrong except forgetting to plug it in. For six weeks I made a batch in each machine roughly every four or five days, so I had plenty of side-by-side batches to judge from before I made up my mind, and by the third or fourth round I could already tell which routine I looked forward to and which one felt like a chore.

	Euro Cuisine YM80	Instant Pot Yogurt Setting
Portioning Into Single Servings	Seven small glass jars with lids, each one a ready-to-grab single serving	One large pot of yogurt you have to spoon out and portion yourself afterward
Total Batch Size	About one quart total, split across seven small jars	Up to about two quarts in a single batch, depending on your model
Ties Up Another Appliance	Its own small dedicated machine, doesn't touch anything else in the kitchen	Occupies the Instant Pot for six to eight hours, unavailable for other cooking that day
If You Already Own an Instant Pot	A separate appliance you have to find room for on the counter	No new purchase needed, you already own the tool that does the job
Cost If You Don't Already Own One	Under thirty dollars for a dedicated yogurt maker	A full multicooker runs well past a hundred dollars if you're buying one just for this
Pieces to Wash After Each Batch	Seven small jars and seven small lids	One inner pot and one lid
Ease of Getting Started	Plug it in, set the dial, walk away, no menu or button sequence to learn	Requires knowing your model's yogurt button sequence and boil setting

Where the Euro Cuisine Yogurt Maker Wins

The jars are the whole reason I kept reaching for this machine after that first batch. The YM80 comes with seven small glass jars, each one a single serving with its own lid, and once a batch finishes I move all seven straight into the refrigerator. My husband takes one to work in his lunch bag, I keep one out for breakfast, and the rest sit there ready to grab whenever either of us wants one, no big crock of yogurt that somebody has to remember to portion out before it starts going soft on the counter. With the Instant Pot, I ended up with one large pot of yogurt that I had to spoon into whatever clean containers I had on hand, which usually meant washing extra jars anyway just to have somewhere to store it, and more than once I lost track of how long a portion had been sitting out while I looked for a lid that fit.

The other thing that won me over is how little this machine asks of me. I set the timer dial, plug it in, and walk away for close to eight hours without thinking about it again. There's no menu to click through and no worrying whether I hit the wrong button, the way I did more than once on the Instant Pot in that first year. And because the Euro Cuisine is its own small dedicated appliance, it doesn't take the multicooker out of service for most of a day. More than once during that six week test I started a batch of yogurt in the Euro Cuisine in the morning and still cooked dinner in the Instant Pot that same evening, something I simply couldn't do when the Instant Pot itself was busy holding a batch of yogurt warm. That alone changed how often I actually made yogurt, since I wasn't weighing it against whatever else I had planned to cook that day.

Where the Instant Pot Wins

I'd be lying if I said the Euro Cuisine wins on everything, because it doesn't. If you already own an Instant Pot, you don't have to buy anything new at all, you just use the yogurt setting on a machine that's already sitting on your counter. That's a real advantage, especially if you're careful with money the way I am. A dedicated yogurt maker isn't expensive, the YM80 runs under thirty dollars, but under thirty dollars is still money you don't have to spend if the appliance you already own can do the same job well enough for your household, and I understand why plenty of people would rather not add a seventh gadget to an already crowded kitchen.

Batch size is the other place the Instant Pot pulls ahead, plainly. My seven Euro Cuisine jars hold about a quart total, which is plenty for the two of us through most of a week, but if you're making yogurt for a larger household, or you like keeping enough on hand to cook and bake with as well as eat plain, the Instant Pot's inner pot holds closer to two quarts in a single batch. Cleanup afterward is genuinely simpler in one specific way too, you're washing one inner pot and one lid instead of seven small jars and seven small lids. Mine happen to be dishwasher safe, so I'm not standing at the sink scrubbing them by hand, but loading seven little jars into a dishwasher rack without them tipping over still takes more fussing than setting one pot in the sink and closing the door.

A Batch That Made Up My Mind

There was one particular Sunday that settled this comparison for me more than any spec sheet did. My son and his family were coming for dinner, and I'd planned a pot roast in the Instant Pot along with a batch of yogurt I wanted ready by the time they arrived. I'd forgotten, or rather I hadn't fully thought through, that both jobs wanted the same pot at the same time. I ended up starting the yogurt at five in the morning so it would finish with enough hours to spare before I needed the pot free for the roast, which meant setting an alarm earlier than I would have liked on a Sunday. The Euro Cuisine, sitting quietly beside it, never once entered into that calculation. It ran its full cycle on its own schedule without asking anything else of my day.

That's when it stopped being a close call for me. A machine that does one job well and stays out of the way of everything else I'm cooking is worth more on my counter than one that does two jobs but makes me plan around it. My husband still uses the Instant Pot's yogurt setting on the rare Sunday when I've already got a batch going in the Euro Cuisine and we want extra, and it works fine for that. But it's no longer my first choice, not after that early alarm clock taught me the real cost of sharing one pot between two jobs.

One Thing Neither One Gets Right

Neither machine solves the actual waiting. Whichever one you use, you're still looking at six to eight hours before a batch is ready, and neither one speeds that part up no matter what the box promises. I've learned to start a batch before bed and let it run overnight in the Euro Cuisine, or start it first thing in the morning if I'm using the Instant Pot and know I won't need the pot until evening. That planning ahead is the real skill either machine asks of you, not which button you press or which jar you pour into. If you're hoping for yogurt in under an hour with either one, you'll be disappointed no matter which machine ends up on your counter.

Who Should Buy Which

If you're already using your Instant Pot's yogurt setting and it's working fine for you, I wouldn't tell you to run out and replace it. It genuinely handles a large batch well, and if your household goes through more yogurt than just the two of us do, that larger capacity matters more than the convenience of small jars. Just know you're giving up that pot for the better part of a day every time you make a batch, and you'll want extra containers on hand afterward for portioning it out and storing it, plus a plan for what else you were hoping to cook that same day.

For my kitchen, this comparison honestly wasn't close. I don't want to plan my Instant Pot's schedule around an eight hour yogurt batch, and grabbing a single jar straight from the refrigerator instead of spooning yogurt out of a big pot every morning is exactly the kind of small convenience that matters more to me the older I get. If you want the fuller picture after several months of using the Euro Cuisine on its own, I wrote up an honest review of how it's held up, and I walked through exactly how I make a batch from start to finish if you want the step by step.