This last winter there was a sale on the Instant Pot 7-in-1 electric pressure cooker. I picked one up and I regret not buying one of these sooner. It is so amazing. I put chicken in there and eight minutes of cooking later it’s completely done. I’ve even put frozen in there and that only took twenty minutes. Now, it does take some time to get up to pressure, but it is still insanely fast.
Plus, I can make rice in it, yogurt, sear my food, etc.
Last week I made chicken noodle soup for my daughter. I seared the chicken in the pressure cooker, poured everything else in, tightened the lid, and twenty minutes later my soup was done.
My wife got one for Christmas. We’ve been experimenting with it. It does do rice very quickly and as well as a rice cooker. It also cooks chicken dishes very quickly and the chicken is tender and fully cooked when it comes out.
However, how do you sear meat in it? We have seen this direction in a few recipes, but have no idea how to do it.
Also, please share your chicken noodle soup recipe and any yogurt ones you have. We’re curious.
I think the closest I ever came to being an army casualty was when a guy opened a pressure cooker in the same tent without venting it first. He went to the hospital, I just got splashed with boiling water, but there you go.
It was the one time in my career I yelled “MEDIC!” like I was in some damn movie, but it was a pretty messed-up situation.
The newer pressure cookers are safer- I just got an Instant Pot 7-in-1 cooker too, and it can’t be opened if it’s still under pressure.
The first thing I tried was making chicken stock- I make stock pretty often, and I would simmer it for 4-5 hours, so it would be an all-day thing. The pressure cooker makes stock in an hour, and I think it tastes better than the 5-hour simmered stock! Only drawback is the 6 Quart Pressure cooker doesn’t make as much stock as my stock pot. But at 1/5 the time I can make 2 batches and it still takes half the time.
Some of them have a “brown” or “sautee” setting, in which case you just turn it on and go for it. That’s also nice if you want to cook down onions or something before putting the other ingredients in.
The way I make soup: salt and pepper boneless skinless chicken and brown it in some veg oil, then add chopped onion, carrot, celery, minced garlic, some herbs, and a quart of unsalted chicken stock. After it cooks, pull out the chicken and shred it, then dump it back in and season to taste with more salt and pepper. I cook noodles or rice separately on the stove.
If you use skin and bones chicken, or even a small whole chicken, it comes out even more flavorful but it delays gratification because you have to pick the meat off the bones and skim the grease off the soup.
I can never understand why anyone would need a yogurt “maker”. All you have to do is warm the milk to about 110 (a very high fever is how it has been aptly described), add a few spoons of starter and leave it on the counter (Or stick it into the oven with light on is the house is cold).
I can’t quite fathom how a pressure cooker has any role to play. On the other hand, it’s a godsend for making quick work of dried beans, lentils, potatoes, rice.
It just acts as a heating element in that case. Nothing to do with pressure. There pressure cooker also has a sautee setting and a slow cooker setting. (As well as a rice setting, which is under pressure. I haven’t tried the slow cooker setting, but I assume that’s not under pressure.)
I don’t really make yogurt, but my house is chilly and I don’t really have any place to keep something warm. (Well, the oven, but my oven light is broke.) Plus, as I understand, you want to keep it 110-120 the whole time if you want it nice and coagulated. At least that’s how my father does it (I think he uses a modded slow cooker or something.) But I do understand there are also “countertop cultures” for yogurt that perform in the 70-80F range (made from mesophilic bacteria instead of thermophilic bateria).
I just bought one too. I also bought a book of recipes, but I think I’d rather try some actual recipes from fellow dopers than the gourmet offerings they put in the cookbook I bought.
I love my pressure cooker. We use it at least once a week for pot roasts, soups, stews, chowders, sauces. It’s the modern programmable variety that won’t blow up or put food on the ceiling like our old models did.
I have two pressure cookers, an electric one (not an Instant Pot, I can’t remember the brand) and a 22 quart cooker/canner. I made a turkey in the big one once. I cooked it fine but, obviously, you don’t get crisp skin. The small one also has rice and slow settings.
I don’t like to make rice the standard way in the pressure cooker since it comes out too mushy for my taste. I played around and found a different way to make rice in the PC so the rice comes out similar to on the stovetop.
Put the rack and a couple of cups of water in the PC. Put equal parts rice and water in a bowl and put the bowl on the rack. Typically the water-rice ratio is 2-1, but that’s to account for the water that boils off. When doing it in the PC like this in a seprate bowl, a 1-1 ratio is fine. Set the timer for about 5 minutes. When the pressure valve releases, open it up and the rice is done. You may have to tweak the time a little depending on your PC.
It’s also great for hard-boiled eggs. Put some water in the bottom and put the eggs on the rack. Set the timer for 0 minutes. When the pressure is released, the eggs are cooked perfectly. Plus, they peel super easily. For a different taste, cook them for 45 minutes and the proteins in the whites will “brown” similar to how meats brown when cooking. It makes for a more savory taste.
Interestingly, for me, the rice in the pressure cooker ends up firmer (but cooked) than my stovetop rice. It’s definitely a different texture, but not mushy. Do you reduce the amount of water for the pressure cooker? It’s closer to 1:1 rather than 2:1. Sometimes I like it in the pressure cooker, but when I want it a bit wetter, I do it on the stovetop.
All the recipes that came with my PC had more water than 1:1. I never tried just that. I guess I was assuming that the extra water was to prevent the rice from burning.
I can’t remember what mine was, but it’s something like 1:1 or 1.25:1. It says 1:1 of wet rice on their website, but I never tried it quite that wet, but closer to 1.25 or 1 1/3:1.
As an aside: different varieties of rice, and different harvests of each variety, will cook differently. If you get rice that’s too wet or dry, tweak the water/rice ratio accordingly next time. (I get my rice from my Thai in-laws; mom-in-law is very assiduous in providing details on adjusting the ratio based on her experience with each batch.)
This is true, but it seems pressure cookers take a lot less water than stovetop methods. For my typical medium- or long-grained white rice, I do a scant 2:1 (probably 1.8:1 or something there abouts, it’s not that exact) for my stovetop method, but for the pressure cooker, I have to take it down significantly, to about 1.25:1 to achieve similar, but not exactly the same, results.