So What is a Pressure Cooker?

What is a pressure cooker?
Well if you are from my generation you will remember those moments before dinner when tension was at it's highest in the kitchen with Mother staggering towards the sink holding a vast pot steaming from it's head like some great angry whale scattering au pair girls and other people's children (the more enlightened family siblings seeking sanctuary elsewhere..)

These were dangerous and alarming times in all manner of ways but none so terrifying as the great steam screamer moment in a kitchen near you

..

The insistence was that it was a quicker and more nutritious way to cook, which it is but I have to admit that I was put off for years by the memories of this spectacle and imagined that pressure cookers were dangerous and angry dinosaurs better left in the cellars they were banished to as their age, like the Jurassic seemed to come to an abrupt halt with the arrival of microwaves and, face it, ready meals.

The fact that it is also an energy saving device of course would not have occurred to the 1970's housewife, but as it happened my mum was spot on on all accounts. She was saving energy, cooking better quality food that would lose none of it's benefits in lost liquids and the tenderest chunks of meat you would ever not have to chew...

Of course we were oblivious to all this, until now.

Food takes a lot less time to cook in a pressure cooker than anything else as it is of course under pressure and less liquid is involved. So it does save energy as well as you are not cooking for anything like as long as would if you were boiling your spuds and you cook on a remarkably low heat.

For some reason some people think the steam is hot and scalding is likely but amazingly I have found this not to be the case and to pop off the top in your kitchen is fine particularly if you have an overhead fan. I tested the temperature of the steam several times and though I don't recommend this to anyone, I have put my hand in it and it's fine. Best not to try this at home as you might have a different cooker and the steam may well be at a different temperature. But used properly the modern pressure cooker is safe and nothing like the scary roaring steam monster of yore.

The only other method that is faster is perhaps the remoska, steaming (which you can do in a pressure cooker anyway) and the microwave. Which I am not going to waste time with here. As far as I am concerned, the microwave is great for defrosting, softening spuds, ready meals which I don't eat and heating those bean bags for muscle aches and pains but certainly not for cooking anything.

You can also cook different things at the same time if you are really clever and read the manual.

In there you will find other stuff on sterilizing bottles for baby and how it all works up a mountain but you have to find that out yourself as I am only interested in it for cooking something.

So are there any disadvantages? Not really. As it's a pressure cooker there is pressure involved so there is a potential risk if you throw it around.

You can't just pop it open and give things a quick stir and it is a little annoying when you realise half way through the cooking time that the meat is still sitting there in it's plastic bag behind the rice cooker and you have to take it off the heat, de-pressurise and begin again...

Best not to cook rice or rice like things in it. Try and find out for yourself but I wouldn't....