Cooking with a Pressure Cooker

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Cooking with a pressure cooker is one way to stretch your food budget, save your energy, and spend less time in the kitchen. The wonder of it is its ease and versatility, and you may find it becoming your favorite piece of kitchenware.

What Is a Pressure Cooker?

A lot of us remember our mothers and grandmothers using pressure cookers. They were large and noisy, and, when ignored, they could cause an explosion of food all over the kitchen. Worry no longer – this cooking process has caught up with the modern age.

A pressure cooker is just a pot with a rubber gasket for a tight-sealing lid and a regulated pressure-release valve. Instead of something coming to a boil and the steam being free to evaporate, the retained steam builds pressure. This pressure is maintained by the regulator on top of the lid. When cooking with a pressure cooker, you can expect reduced cooking time, saved energy, and the ability to tenderize tougher and cheaper cuts of meat, making them absolutely moist and delicious.

Today’s cookers are just as capable of handling a small job as a large one. Most can still cook over six quarts of soups or stews, handle a large roast or piece of meat, and yet, delicately steam your favorite vegetables. The difference is that today’s cookers are more easily regulated, a lot less noisy, and there is no chance for explosions due to an automatic shut-off valve.

Things to Remember while Cooking with a Pressure Cooker

There are a few basic useful points to remember when cooking with a pressure cooker.

You can braise a roast or sauté in a pressure cooker before you actually use it to cook. This will avoid the need for an additional pan.

Pay attention to the amount of cooking liquid your recipe calls for and do not add more.

Never fill your pressure cooker past the half-way point.

When the pressure cooker starts doing its job, you will hear a distinctive noise. It sounds like a hissing and then rhythmic thunk-thunk sound. Turn down the heat and let the pressure cooker cook. Time the cooking from this point.

When your timer sounds, remove it from the heat and either release the valve and let it cool naturally, or place it in the sink and run a stream of cold water over the top of the pan.

What You Can Cook

Pressure cooked Leg of Lamb

The list is long and you can cook anything from seafood to beef, soups to tough root vegetables, and stews to stewed apples. Many pressure cookers today come with a low and high set pressure regulator with the pressure going from 5 pounds psi (per square inch) to 15 pounds psi. You can go to Fast Cooking.ca, a site devoted to fast cooking, for a great list of pressure cooking times for just about any dish.

Additional Benefits of Using a Pressure Cooker

Not only are you going to make less expensive foods taste great, you also will be locking in nutrients and vitamins, along with flavor. Cooking with your pressure cooker is going to allow you to introduce new foods to your family, ones they will actually want to taste.

The addition of liquid in the form of broth, cooking wines, and basting juices all serve to help seal in food’s natural juices during this cooking process.

You are also going to taste many of your old favorites without the need for excessive seasoning, especially salt. This is an ideal way to prepare foods for someone on a special diet.

You may also find your cooker replacing the need for several kitchen items including stockpots, steamers, and Dutch ovens.

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