Remember the Pressure Cooker?

Outdated? Old Fashioned? 

 
Not any more!!

Pressure Cookers are back in town!
                And so cool they are hot!                    

The pressure cooker is arguably one of the most useful and time saving, energy saving pieces of cookware that has ever been invented.
And in this age of austerity and environmental concerns it is making a remarkable comeback.
Once you have added a modern one to your kitchen you will wonder how on Earth you managed without it.
On this site we will discuss the pressure cooker, why use one, how to use one and where to get one.

Onwards and inwards...

What Pressure Cooker Do I Use?

What pressure cooker do I use?

Well I use this one.

This is one I bought in a shop in Southall, West London. Made by Masterchef it is wonderful. I have had it about 14 months and used it non stop almost every day for something or other and just about now the rubber seal is showing signs that it needs to be replaced. 

This is the rubber seal:

You will need to keep the info you had when you bought the pressure cooker, which I didn't or you will have to look it up online like I will. Or remember the shop you bought it in if you actually did the olde worlde thing and actually go to a shop and buy something....

This little shop on the Southall Broadway, London, UK, who's name evades me, is a real Aladin's cave for the curry enthusiast. It has dozens of different types and sizes of pressure cooker from the tiny 1 litre models to huge family tanks.

It is worth asking about them and having a good look. The lady in there was very enthusiastic and friendly. She was the one that told me that every Indian family has a pressure cooker and that it is by far the best thing for curries of all types.

Which of course also means any stew or one pot meal. 

The pressure cooker really does make the meat as tender as if you cooked it in a day in only around three quarters of an hour from when the pressure is up and the rubber seal is not knackered..... 

You will know when it is on it's way when you get little hisses you are not used to and perhaps one day, half way through a nice lamb curry it goes off like an old Puffing Billy and the steam squirts out of the side. Makes you jump......

I have used this cooker for endless curries and hot pots and thoroughly recommend it.

The way this one works is simplicity itself. You pop your grub in according to instructions. If you, like me, get very bored of instructions very quickly just remember that you tend to use a lot less liquid in pressure cookers than you do with ordinary pots and pans. If as a rule of thumb you do not have more than half a finger nail of water about the food then you should be alright. Even that is often too much. You will have to try quite hard to dry out one of these things so ere on the dry side.

You then just lay the top of the cooker over the bottom with the handles around an inch apart and gently, while pushing down slide them together. Then you pop the little nob on the top and within a few seconds a little red button will pop up. 

This is telling you that the pressure has started to build and it is time to turn the heat right down. On a gas ring that's as low as you can, on an electric hob it's 1. 

On an electric hob I find it better to have another ring on 1 and move it over as if the cooker is left on the hot hob it will built up too much pressure and it won't take long for the rubber to weaken and it will need replacing.

I think this is why my rubber seal has not lasted quite as long as it should have. I have an electric hob and over heated it several times before I got the hang of it.

Then you just leave it for as long as the recipe says. If you leave if for longer it doesn't matter that much as the food remains nice and moist. You will need to experiment with this.

Do not leave the thing unattended though. With all the pressure in there..... 

'"That she blows!"......When the time is up you can if you want just grab the button with a gloved hand and pull it off. This creates the famous blow of steam that makes all that scarey noise. It is a quick way to de-pressurise but necessarily the best.

If you want to get the top off quickly to add more food like vegetable once the meat has tenderised then go ahead. Or you want you veg out quickly.

But if you want really mouth wateringly tender meat then it is best to let the cooker cool down and the red button will drop on it's own.

Or you run it under the cold tap to cool it. But for meat, definitely let it cool.

My favourite meat in a pressure cooker is lamb, cooked under pressure for 45 minutes or more that comes out as soft and succulent as if it has been cooked all day in a clay oven....

Why use a pressure cooker?

I took a long time to come round to using a pressure cooker and tried all sorts of time and labour saving devices such as the microwave, skillets, the ramoska (more about these two later) but it was only while living on a narrow boat on a canal in London did the lack of space and time give me the urge to seek out something to speed things up in a galley kitchen with no oven.

The pressure cooker I found literally revolutionised my cooking as I discovered that anything from vegetables to the toughest beef, the mankiest goat or elderly elk could be cooked in the shortest amount of time redirecting time to me and my wineglass but fuel and to a certain extent, washing up.

Living where I was in close proximity to an Asian community, and my love of a jolly good curry, I quickly discovered that for generations cooks from India to every corner of the globe took their pressure cooker with them and that was the key to flavoursome curries and above all, mouth wateringly tender meat and intensely delicious gravies. 

The nice lady in the shop I bought mine from (more later...) said every Indian kitchen had one and they used them for everything.

And there they were, walls of them, shelves heaving with pressure cookers of every size from a pint pot to a massive barrel of a thing, from screw ons to slide ins, handles, no handles 

Having bought yours... with a bit of experimentation you will discover that the pressure cooker is a very versatile cooker as well and your diners will begin to look forward to that familiar hiss as the top is popped off and the magic box is opened and the jewels within are revealed.

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....