First, the scary blowing-up thing. It’s rare, and it happens when the cook ignores the instructions. In over a half-century of pressure cooking, I, and my mother before me, never had a blow-up. In fact, I had only one failed meal in a pressure cooker in all that time. I got distracted and forgot to add the water to a batch of green beans. They got burned.
There are two ways for the steam to escape, the regulator and the safety popper. If you overload the cooker and block those, you’re risking a blow-up.
I have a 4 qt. Presto and a 6 qt. Mirro, with two kinds of dancing weights. I use them for vegetables, not so much for the speed, but for the taste and texture. I don’t know a better way to cook cabbage wedges, broccoli, cauliflower, asparagus, and best of all, a big mess o’ green beans, onions and quartered potatoes. Once you cook them in a pressure cooker, you’ll never go back to boiling vegetables into submission.
Pressure cooking is one of the best things I ever learned about cooking.
Grandpa’s second wife blow up something that stains badly. It covered every surface in the kitchen. They had to throw out the curtains, paint the walls and the ceiling, after cleaning every inch maticulously. The lesson is to always make sure the relief valve is free moving befor you tyrn on the flame. Don’t over fill either, or the liquid can block up the valve. I considered buying one, but microwaves hitting the $150 mark, canceled the purchase for me.
You could run under cold water, as mentioned. Mine has a valve on top - using a kitchen towel and my silicon pot holder, I can release the pressure just by lifting the valve. Most newer models will have some way to vent the steam - I’ve seen some where one doesn’t have to take my precautions.
Concerning safety:
Pressure cookers are regulated by the dancing valve on top to not exceed (correct me if I’m wrong) about 15 psi. Much higher, and it’d have to be regulated as a pressure vessel, and everybody who owned one would have to register theirs and have it inspected. There must be a safety factor of at least 4, I’m sure, so there’s almost zero chance of the thing simply exploding for no reason. Sure, if you try and open it when it’s still under pressure, it’s not going to be plesant. Even if it’s only at 1 psi, there’s about a square foot of surface area, so there’s going to be 150 pounds of pressure trying to get the lid off. That said, as long as you follow the rules, and don’t try to open it early, everything will go as planned.
Concerning science:
In case you’re curious as to why it works, water cannot get above 100C (212F) at atmospheric pressure. When you raise this pressure, you can get the water hotter without it turning into steam. With the water-under-pressure hotter than 212F, the food will cook faster. Heat transfer is dependant on the temperature gradient (difference). You can see the same concept at the opposite end of the spectrum by putting a beer in the fridge, and one in the freezer. The one in the freezer will chill first.
A pressure cooker for frying chicken is a special animal. DO NOT FRY CHICKEN IN ANY PRESSURE COOKER THAT DOES NOT SAY IT IS SUITABLE FOR FRYING CHICKEN!!! and DO FOLLOW the recommended instructions. :o
A pressure cooker removes most of the pre-planning requirement for using dried beans. Soups and stews can be done very quickly as well.
One thing I don’t like about a slow cooker is if I am in the house while it is cooking. By dinner time I am ravenous from smelling the victuals all day…and my appetite really doesn’t need the boost.
I loves me my Russell Hobbs Electronic Pressure Cooker a lot. It gets used 2 or 3 times a week. No food on the ceiling with this modern device! (I always hated food on the ceiling with the old ones.)
I’ve got a Duromatic Swiss steamer that is something of a Ferrari of a pressure cooker.
You can produce Asian style dishes in minutes and you are supposed to put in very little liquid - typically 59ml for chicken pieces.
I was given it about ten years ago, and have not done anything adventurous with it for the last five, as I tend to have a few drinks before cooking - and am terrified of an explosion.
I used the pressure cooker twice over the last few days.
Once was to make chicken soup. I had the carcass of a roasted chicken left, and threw it into the pot with some carrots, celery, an onion, some parsley, some poultry seasoning from a grinder, salt and pepper, and some garlic.
I brought this to pressure for 20 minutes, let off the pressure quickly, separated the bones and inedible chicken parts, pureed the veggies with some broth and a hand blender and returned them to the pot. The soup was served with egg noodles cooked separately. I had the whole thing done in about 35 minutes, which is fast for chicken soup from scratch.
The other time was to make pinto beans, and they turned out great as well. They were cooked with Ro-Tel tomatoes, onions, chili powder, cumin, and beer.
I’ve gotten a good start with Pressure Cooking for Dummies. I’ll probably have to move on soon, but this is a good primer, and has good charts for meat and veggies, plus gome very good recipes.
I want a pressure cooker, we are moving to the country and I look forward to getting real veggies that I can learn to can.
I have tried many things with my slow cooker and I’ll be damned if anything comes out tasting decent. I’m about to give up on the darn thing, although I love the idea, the reality for me is, well, dismal. So the thought of venturing forth into canning/pressure cooking is rather disheartening.
You want this book, Slow Cooker Ready and Waiting. It’s a bit of a misnomer because it’s not ready and waiting - you do have to do some cooking, and the times are often less than 8 hours so you can’t always just slop it in and go to work. The results are absolutely amazing, though - I cook a lot, people say I’m a good cook, but everybody’s favorites are things from that book.
I just got an old pressure cooker from my guys mother. I had planned on using it to can some venison. However this cooker seems to small to be of much use in canning. It’s about the size of a small stock pot with lid. So I guess my question is, are there any differences between a regular pressure cooker and a canning cooker?
I am excited to try out some chops in the cooker I do have!
There is a difference. A canner will be much larger and will have a rack that can be used to lift the jars out.
Mine is a pressure canner, though I have not used it yet for such a purpose. A pressure canner can be used as a pressure cooker, and the recipes I have given should work fine in a regular pressure cooker.
If your pressure cooker looks to be on the old side, check the gaskets carefully and do a pressure test using plain water on the stove before cooking anything.
Thanks for the info! I have replaced the gasket already, so we’re good to go on that end. But it looks like i’ll have to find a pressure canner in the near future.
After this last weekend, I have to re-emphasize the potato steaming recommendation.
We were going to have a picnic, and I wanted to bring along pre-cooked potatoes to halve, oil, and grill. The only potatoes I had were honkingly huge baking russets, so I popped them in the pressure cooker for about 30 minutes, whole, while I packed all the rest of the picnic stuff. When I opened up the cooker, I thought surely they had to be still only half-cooked, because they looked firm and whole and utterly unchanged. Yet they were tender to the core when I thrust a bamboo skewer through them!
Potato salad season is going to be a breeze this year.
