Monday, November 15, 2010

The Joys of Pressure Cooking

What a cool adventure this pressure cooking is!! Besides the energy (and time) savings, it has really freed me up in terms of dinner preparation. In times past, I dreaded the idea of coming home and having to cook dinner. To be painfully honest, some days, it was just more than I could face.

In fact, in an effort to make dinner preparations easier to manage, I recently made up a spreadsheet with about 2 months' worth of dinners, complete with instructions like "thaw pork", or "soak beans", for the next day's meal. It does help, although I find that I usually only follow it for a few days at a time.

Enter the pressure cooker. Now, if I haven't planned ahead, I can toss in some frozen chicken or pork, (I cut it into bite-sized pieces before freezing, and pack in no more than half-pound packages), and add some sauce and a little water. If I don't have any rice cooked and haven't planned ahead for (homemade) garlic bread or the like, I might put the rack (came with the pressure cooker) on top, put in some quartered, seasoned potatoes (I make a foil "bowl", making sure there's clearance all the way around), and let 'er go. In a very short time (about 30 minutes), dinner is ready.

Dried beans are amazingly quick, too. Conventionally soaked or "speed soaked" (thanks, Lorna Sass!!), they cook in anywhere from 3 to 15 minutes. If you're speed soaking, the whole thing, soak to table, can be done in 30 - 40 minutes!

There are so many advantages to pressure cooking: Saves time, energy and nutrients; tenderizes inexpensive (tough) cuts of meat as well as the crockpot; takes about a third the time and uses about a third the energy of conventional cooking methods; cleanup is generally pretty easy -- because you're cooking with steam, things tend not to stick as they might with dry heat...

And an unexpected bonus is that it's actually opened up our daily dinner options. Even if I haven't planned head, I can still put virtually any meal that might be cooked on the stovetop, and even a lot of things that are usually cooked in the oven, on the table in record time. The key is that the dish must either have enough liquid in it to make the required steam, or it must be cooked in an ovenproof casserole or steel bowl (or canning jars!!) covered with foil, with water in the bottom of the cooker. For example, we recently attended a concert, and got home right around dinner time. On the drive home, I decided to cook beans. As soon as we walked in, I tossed a cup of beans into the cooker with 3 cups of water and brought it to pressure. About 40 minutes later, we were sitting down to a hot, homecooked meal that was much better (and healthier!) than the restaurant fare we would probably otherwise have had -- and we saved money, in the bargain! I can spot ribs on sale in the local paper, pick some up on my way home from work, and have a nice ribs & garlic mashed potato dinner on the table in less than 30 minutes from when I walk in the door. We haven't had occasion yet, but it's nice to know that, sometime when we're in the middle of a project and dinnertime is suddenly upon us, we can save the $25 or so we might otherwise have spent on a bucket of chicken, and have a nice hot, quickly home-cooked meal, instead.

And if it wasn't enough that you can cook a complete meal in one of these babies, you can also whip up a dessert, as well. DH is not a big dessert fan, so I've been perfecting the art of making custard for one. It's amazingly easy: Put 1/2 cup of milk, an egg, a little sweetener and a little vanilla in a small ramekin or canning jar (both work equally well), mix thoroughly and grate a little nutmeg on top. Put in the cooker with the required amount of water, turn on the heat & cook 8 minutes at high pressure. Quick release the pressure, take the ramekin out, and, viola -- custard for one!!

With so many advantages to this kind of cooking, I'm puzzled when folks, as they typically do, show only polite interest!! Maybe it's because of the reputation these cookers once had, or because it would mean an initial extra expense. But modern pressure cookers are very safe when used according to the manufacturers' directions, and experience has shown me that the time and money these amazing things save quickly more than makes up for the initial expense -- even if one were to purchase one of the more expensive models, with all the bells and whistles!!


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