I got a pressure cooker, a Kuhn-Rikon, for Christmas, and I’m loving it. Jacques Pepin, in his PBS series, Fast Food My Way, sold me on them. The idea of preparing an entire stew or pot roast in half an hour after work was extremely appealing.
But I’m curious about a couple of things:
I thought it was low, slow heat that tenderized tough cuts of meat. Yet 20 minutes in the pressure cooker rendered a chuck roast as tender as can be. what am I missing? Isn’t it hotter than hell inside a pressure cooker?
Can I stop and start the cooking? I don’t want vegies and potatoes to cook for the same amount of time as the meat, or they’d be rendered into mush. I’d like to stop the cooking with five or ten minutes to go, add the vegies, and start 'er up again. Can I do this without hurting anything?
Jacques Pepin once did a veal roast (not really a pot roast) without adding any liquid. He browned the outside of the roast, then browned a lot of onions, and covered it and “roasted” it. When he opened the cooker, the roast was done to medium pink and there was a lot of liquid generated from the onions and the meat itself. Yet the instructions with my cooker say never cook anything without adding at least half a cup of liquid. Do you think the onions created enough liquid in this recipe that I could try this at home?
I can’t help with #1. I’ve always assumed the extra pressure forced steam into the food but what do I know?
I have added vegetables after the meat was already done. The only thing is it’s a bit of a nuisance depressurizing and repressurizing. But it’s worth the effort otherwise your veggies will be way overcooked.
I think pressure cookers should be used as the manufacturer directs. I would be deathly afraid of liquid free cooking if the manufacturer said not to do it.
As long as we’re on the subject of pressure cookers…my husband’s mom used to make flan in hers, and it turned out really well. But we don’t have her recipe, and haven’t had as much success. Anyone have a foolproof recipe & method for this?
(Not entirely a hijack…if you do it right, the flan is REALLY GOOD, so you other pressure cooker folks might like to try it, too! )
Pressure cookers cook food at a higher temperature than normal which reduces the cooking time. You can to a limited degree stop and start cooking but it requires you to drop the pressure to atmospheric and then repressurise it again which takes a certain amount of time. In general, it’s not really done. What is far more practical is to use pressure for the first phase to cook meats, beans and other things requiring long cooking time and to then just use it like a normal pot for vegtables and other finishing touches.
And I’ve never had problems with the veggies getting too mushy, even when adding carrots, onions, and potatos to pot roasts and cooking on high pressure for 90 minutes. The vegetables are infused with many wondrous flavors as a result. And they’ve held their shape okay. They are not crisp, however.
I could live on nothing but onions and carrots, if they were cooked in a pressure cooker next to a chuck roast!
'Zat so? I’m still new at this. Next time I’ll recklessly add everything right at the beginning and see how it turns out. Mr. brown dearly loves long-cooked carrots and onions in a stew or a pot roast, too.
When I did my roast last week (it was veal chuck roast, by the way), the stock generated by the stewing was absolutely superb. Another cooking rule blown to bits! It only took 30 minutes! I thought it’d be impossible to get such rich stock without simmering it all day. Now I’ll have to chop up a chicken and stew it in there to see what kind of chicken stock results.
It’s usually connective tissue that makes meat tough and cooking long and slow dissolves it; so does cooking it really hot - it’s a bit like gettting a sticky label off a jar - you can soak it off in warm water for hours, or remove it in a minute or two with scalding hot water.
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