-Or are these an old, industrial revolution-era answer to an unreasoning obsession with “sealing in the flavor?”
And if I find one in working order, will I in fact “seal in the flavor,” or simply “blow a hole through the back wall of my kitchen?”
My mother and brother both use one. Cooks up really cheap cuts of meat like they are prime. I’m haunting op-shops looking for a cheap one.
Canning your own food still requires the food to go thru a lot of heat processing, which destroys some flavor and nutrients. Same as commercial canning. Freezing is usually (but not always) better in this regard.
The advantages of home canning include selecting your own varieties/combinations, less exposure to metals like with cans, better prepared for the apocalypse, etc.
I like my homegrown Blue Lake green beans canned, not frozen.
If you buy a 2nd hand pressure cooker, there are several things to be careful about. Make sure it is complete (with weights/pressure relief valves, etc.). No cracks anywhere. And replace all the rubber parts. You can usually get the latter from the manufacturer and those few remaining really cool hardware stores.
We use ours when we make Seville orange marmalade . It speeds up the initial cooking of the oranges. Also we use it when making lentil or split-pea soups . Again this shortens the cooking time by a large factor.
I’m afraid you’ve lost me. Canning? Weights?
Both pressure cookers my family use are just pots with a sealable lid and a pressure valve. All they do is cook stuff very quickly so that after 30 minutes you get meat that tastes like it’s been slow cooked for hours.
I love my pressure cooker. We’ve pressure cooked for years, making wonderful stews, chowders, and sauces. It makes them FAST! I can come home from work, throw everything together, and have a nice beef stew with onions, potatos, carrots etc. in about an hour. Ready to eat!
I just got a Russell Hobbs brand cooker a few months back, which is wonderful. No more messing with the weight, and fiddling with the temperature of the burner. Just program it for the desired time and pressure, and the unit takes care of it all! No more food on the ceiling when I miscalculate (Gods, that was a pain!)
And it makes a pot roast to die for in a relatively short time too. In under two hours I can have a 5 pount roast just falling apart, with the veggies infused with its flavor, and vice-versa.
Count me in as a pressure cooker fan!
We still use our pressure cooker about 1 - 2 times per month, mainly for roasts. A slow cooker is my preferred way of doing a pot roast, but if we don’t have 8 hours to prepare, then the pressure cooker is a close second. Same as Qadgop, we throw in taters, carrots, celery and in less than an hour we are eating.
Ours is a relatively old model - stovetop with the weight on top to regulate the pressure. However, after googling Russell Hobbs cookers I may have to look into getting one of these new fangled models.
I am terrified while using mine, but it is great time wise. I use mine mainly to cook chicken for chicken pies. In all the years of use, I’ve only had one to blow!
I love mine. Dried beans to chili in less than an hour instead of half the afternoon. Raw whole chicken to chicken enchilada material in 30 minutes. Turnip greens with fresh pork in 15-20.
My father in law is a veteran pressure-cooker, uh, cooker. As I under stand it, KFC cooks all its chickens that way too. Anyway, back to my father in law. About a year ago my one year old daughter and I were sitting in his kitchen while he was cooking some cut of meat in the ol’ pressure cooker, and he was reagling me with the story of how the old one blew one day and scared my sister in law, who was just 8 or something, half to death. As we were laughing about it he goes over to the cooker which had stopped its rattling and spitting from the pressure valve. He moved it off the heat and stepped back, I grabbed my daughter and the thing blew its top! Apparently the meat had shifted a little and blocked off the valve, which is rather bad, obviously. So, he’s been cooking with a pressure cooker for 30 plus years and only had two blow up (the first one was a worn out seal).
You can’t beat pot roast from the pressure cooker!
I use mine about 3 times a month, unless it’s home canning time, wherein I use it almost continously.
I will say, however, that a few years back I did manage to decorate the ceiling with pinto beans, and was a little bit afraid to use a pressure cooker after that. It was the old kind with the jiggly weight and such. After buying a new cooker that is pre-weighted (not nearly as nice as a Russell Hobbs) , I no longer have these fears.
Nordicware makes a microwave pressure cooker which is similar to one I used years ago and really liked.
I sometimes use my pressure cooker as a still. (Not a recommended use.)
Otherwise, I just use it for canning and cooking beans.
Only Original Recipe.
We have a new(ish) stainless steel pressure cooker and from what I read before we bought it, the new ones have safety valves that prevent them from blowing.
As far as how it cooks, I must agree with those who have mentioned how great the food is that comes out of it, with very little time.
I was surprised at how few cook books I could find with pressure cooking recipes though.
I’ve been thinking about getting one, as I love pot roasts but don’t always have the time or the inclination to let them cook in a slow cooker. I also love beans of all sorts. So I might need to look around and find one.
No one’s mentioned it so far, so I will: risotto. Sure, a real cook will pour and stir, pour and stir. But what if you have a dinner party and not much time? You can make an awesome risotto in seven minutes of cooking flat with a pressure cooker. And you can make tons (since risotto is great as leftovers, fried into little patties for breakfast). The only special ingredient is some butter flavored cooking spray to do the bottom and sides of the cooker so that the rice wont stick (some inveitably burns to the sides, but very little and it rubs right off). After spraying, you do up your base (the butter, onions, flavored oils) right in the cooker, drop in your rice, stir till you get that glossy sheen, deglaze with your wine, drop in all but a bit of the broth, set up the cooker, bam it for five minutes at full pressure, pop the lid, maybe cook a bit more if needed with the extra broth, mix in any other goodies (wild mushrooms of course! and cheese if you’re capable of digesting it) and you’re done. No twenty minutes of careful stirring and pouring. A real winner. I use the recipe out of some book by a veggie lady named Crescent Dragonwagon (sic), and I’ve gotten rave reviews (I also garnish with fried carrot strips, shredded thyme, and carved button mushrooms with a touch of truffle oil). Four star resturant food done easy, it is.