Written by: Jill Nussinow, MS, RD

Wednesday, 5 March 2008

Topic: Cooking Organic | Article Comments (7)

Second generation, pressure cooker

If you’ve never seen a pressure cooker, they are a curiosity. If you have, you might conjure up frightening images of hissing pots and food on the ceiling, or worse. I saw the aftermath of my mother’s pressure cooker and vowed never to use one of those. And I don’t.

My new, second generation, pressure cooker is safe, quiet and produces healthy food in a fraction of the time of conventional cooking methods, keeping me cool while cooking in the summer and making hot food really hot in the winter.

Introduced from Europe to the U. S. in the 1980s, the new pressure cookers are an improved version of mother’s. They have at least three safety release valves. Instead of a jiggler on top, they use a spring valve that rises with pressure. They cannot be opened until the pressure subsides. You have more chance of blowing the engine on your car than blowing the lid off one of these cookers.

Cooking under pressure relieves the pressure in your life. Come dinnertime, you can have a meal on the table in less than 30 minutes. How does 17-minute chili, 15-minute lentil soup, 5-minute black beans or quinoa sound? Once you lock on the lid and bring your cooker to high pressure, almost all you need to do is set a timer.

Pressure cooking is simple. At least one half cup of liquid (or the amount required by your brand of pressure cooker) is added to the pot along with other ingredients. With the locked lid and high heat, the liquid inside boils. When the resulting steam raises the spring valve, you know the pot is under enough pressure to start the timer. Then reduce the heat, to the lowest setting required to maintain high pressure.

When your timer beeps, release the pressure. This occurs naturally by letting the pot sit for about 10 minutes, or less depending upon how full you have the pot. You can either do a quick release on newer pots by using the release mechanism only (the preferred method) or by carrying the pot to the sink and running cool water over it. Both quick release methods drop the pressure in a minute or two which is great for quick-cooking vegetables or when you are sure you want to stop cooking.

If you discover that your dish is not done, you may lock the lid back on and raise the pressure again or simmer on the stovetop without the lid. These stainless steel pots with triple-ply bottoms cook evenly.
The high heat of pressure cooking results in quick cooked food that tastes like you spent a long time cooking. For best results with your cooker, read the booklet that comes with it. You may also want to invest in a good book like Lorna Sass’s Great Vegetarian Cooking Under Pressure. Or buy my DVD Pressure Cooking: A Fresh Look, Delicious Dishes in Minutes which will guide you through 14 recipes from breakfast through dessert. But the best teacher is experimentation.

No matter what time of year, when you want the “new fast food” such as soup, stew or chili, and quicker than usual vegetable dishes, think about using your pressure cooker. It cuts cooking time by about half, requires little, if any fat, boosts flavor, retains more nutrients and relives the daily pressure of cooking dinner, giving you more time to enjoy the other parts of your life.

Note to readers: while this article is about vegetarian cooking with the pressure cooker, I want you to know that you can successfully cook meat dishes in a pressure cooker. You can expect a whole chicken to cook in about 25 minutes at high pressure, and let the pressure come down naturally. Beef stew takes about 20 minutes but you have to do either a quick-release and add the vegetables for just a few minutes or a natural pressure release and again quick-cook the vegetables for a few minutes.

The cooker is extremely versatile and you likely save as much energy cooking meat as you do when you cook dried beans. I can’t give you many great meat recipes because it’s not what I usually cook but give it a whirl.