I use mine all the time. Today I saw an electric programable pressure cooker. It was even on sale, but I resisted.
Yup! That was my reaction, too. I cooked a small batch of pintos in 20 minutes.
I never used one because they scared me. My friend was throwing hers out because she never used it. Instead, she gave it to me. I’ve been using one for a few months now and I couldn’t live without it.
None of the new ones are difficult to complicate. I was using mine within 15 minutes of opening the box.
My mom uses the pressure cooker all the time… like Endemic says, in India, they’re used more or less daily.
I have my grandmother’s pressure cooker and use it every so often.
It’s at least 50 years old, and just fine, even the rubber gasket.
I do roasts in it, and they come out nice and tender.
Google by brand name . I used “presto pressure cooker” +parts +replace
and got this:
http://www.everythinghome.com/prprcoseriai.html
Using “presto pressure cooker” I got this:
which has this link:
which walks you through finding the right gasket for your model.
Thanks!
Dang it, I already bought a state of the art Zojirushi fuzzy logic microcompouter rice cooker due to the rice cooker thread (it makes amazing rice BTW) and now I’m jonesing for a pressure cooker. Will my kitchen gadget lust ever end? No more talking about cool cooking devices… 
here’s my pressure cooker. I love it, we use it all the time.
We used to use the old style, and occasionally had food on the ceiling. This one is so nice. Set the time for cooking, it brings it up to the proper pressure, keeps it there, then shuts itself off.
Great for soups, especially bean soup. Also I can make QtM’s traditional spaghetti sauce in about 40 minutes instead of 4 hours with no decline in quality. Roasts are wonderful, and can be served about an hour and 45 minutes after you start cooking.
Growing up in Mossland (Seattle area) Mom & Grammaw used them all the time for canning. I want to get into canning now, but I live in Denver & if you read the heat process manuals, that means stuf that can boil for 10 minutes at sea level has to boil for like, 3 days at mile high. Given the rate at which my kids go through strawberry jam, that’s just not practical. So for now we are poster children for botulism…been lucky so far without heat processing but it’s only a matter of time.
QtM’s cooker, looks real nice and the green beans (those that survived the hail 
)are about ready! And then there will be the pumpkins in a couple months! Someone just gave me $250 for changing her clutch, I think I’ll just nip off to the internet & get one…well whaddaya know, I’m already there! 
The picture of QtM’s pressure cooker gave me the weird sense of having travelled in time. The last pressure cooker I saw was the dingy battered weight-on-a-spike thing from my mom. Next, my life is devoid of the things, or even the thought of the things, for twenty years. The next thing I see is Quadgops cooker, boldly going where no cooker has gone before. Kinda like going from Thunderbirds to Voyager in one single step.
It would make sense for pressure cookers to be electric. Then they can shut themselves off when they get hot, instead of having to let off steam, like a cooker has to do that remains on the stove.
Well, so far mostly enthusiastic stories. I went to look for a pressure cooker today, and found a Tefal. The users manual demanded I should still soak beans a full night before cooking :dubious: Wuss.
I’m wondering though, there must be a lot of people whose pressure cooker is just gathering dust on a neglected shelf. Most kitchen appliances do, after all, and a I suppose a pressure cooker is very likely to end up that way.
So come on, fess up: who has a pressure cooker and never uses it, and why?
I’ve been shopping around for one and the aluminum ones are much cheaper than the stainless steele. But do they work as good? I’ve never cared much for aluminum cookware.
Well, it’s pot roast that we make in pressure cookers. I’m not sure why we call it a roast as that, by definition, requires dry heat.
Pot roast is always cooked in liquid. Pot roast is a tougher (and relatively cheap) cut of beef which require long, slow, wet cooking. Cuts from the shoulder and neck are usually used for this.
A friend gave me her T-Fal and I whipped up a pot of black beans from dry in about half an hour. Maybe there’s some culinary benefit to a proper presoak and less time cooking, but the joy of the PC is it’s speed.