SAVE TIME WITH A PRESSURE COOKER

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By Contributing Editor
Chris Clark

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If you equate using a pressure cooker to having crazy explosions in your kitchen if something goes wrong, you need to move forward several decades. The pressure cookers of today are nothing like the ones our grandmothers and great-grandmothers were using. Combined with some good recipes, the pressure cookers of today can easily save you time and money in the kitchen and they will reduce your energy consumption as well.

Let’s consider the traditional methods of cooking a beef pot roast. You can cook a pot roast at a low temperature in the oven for four hours or more or at a higher temperature for at least an hour. You can also use your crock pot to cook the roast for six to eight hours. All of these will produce a delicious result. If you want to save time and energy, you can cook that same roast in a pressure cooker in anywhere from 35 minutes to an hour depending on the size of the roast. Cooking for 35 minutes on the stove top compared to hours in the oven is going to save a lot of energy.

If you’re feeling unsure because of horror stories you have heard of people receiving burns and other injuries from pressure cookers, you simply need to make sure you buy a new pressure cooker. New pressure cookers (and pressure canners) feature special safety features that older models did not have. I cook with a Fagor Splendid model and it (like other new pressure cookers) has a steam safety valve in case it must release excess pressure or in case the regular stem valve is not working properly. There is also a special locking mechanism and once pressure builds up in the cooker, the lid cannot be removed until the pressure is released, either naturally or through the pressure release setting. Most incidents of injuries from older pressure cookers were the result of a blocked steam valve (and no safety release) causing too much pressure to build up or users who did not wait for the pressure to release and opened the cooker while it was under pressure, resulting in serious steam burns.

Your new pressure cooker is set up to protect you from these situations and all you need to do is take the time to read the instruction manual for your specific cooker so you understand what the different settings are and how to do things like lock the lid properly and release steam manually if you don’t want to wait for the natural release. Once you understand the ins and outs of your particular cooker, the fun can begin.

Lorna Sass is one of the modern-day pressure cooking gurus. She is the author of Cooking Under Pressure and Pressure Perfect. You can even find her on Facebook. I was lucky enough to receive her book, Pressure Perfect when I received my pressure cooker and it has been an invaluable resource. Unlike some forms of cooking where you can make it up as you go along and experiment easily, pressure cooking really does benefit from starting with a recipe. Once you have tried it out you can certainly substitute ingredients here and there but you need to make sure you keep your liquid amount right. Pressure cooking works by building up steam in the cooker and the steam cooks the food. If you can build up enough steam, or if you are cooking something, like rice, that absorbs the liquid as well, not having enough liquid will make quite a mess. No one wants soggy rice of course, but you also don’t want to open your pressure cooker, ready for dinner and find a rock hard lump of rice stuck to the bottom of the cooker because you didn’t use enough liquid.

That’s not to say that pressure cooking is difficult or somehow mysterious. If you use a recipe it is really quite easy and foolproof. You will have delicious food in a fraction of the time. You can cook cheap cuts of meat and the high pressure will make them wonderfully tender. You won’t have to heat up your kitchen for hours with the oven. It’s really a great kitchen tool to have around.

Here is the quick and easy lunch I am going to make for myself, found on the Pressure Perfect cookbook by Lorna Sass.

Shredded Meat Tacos with Lime Cilantro Cream

There are instructions for various cuts of beef, pork, turkey and chicken. I am going to use chicken so I will share those instructions.

2 pounds boneless chicken thighs or boneless split breast

1 ½ cups chicken broth
1 to 2 cups salsa
Corn or flour tortillas
For the lime cilantro cream
½ cup sour cream
1 tablespoon lime juice
2 tablespoons chopped, fresh cilantro
¼ teaspoon salt (optional)

Pour the broth into a 4 quart or larger cooker and add your choice of meat. Lock the lid in place. Over high heat, bring to high pressure. Reduce the heat just enough to maintain high pressure. For chicken, cook for 4 minutes at high pressure, let it sit and naturally release for 4 minutes and then quick release according to your cookers instructions.

Remove the lid, tilting it away from you to allow steam to escape. Transfer the meat to a cutting board and let it rest for a few minutes. Degrease the broth in a fat separator and reserve it for use in completing the dish.

Shred or finely chop the meat. Place it back into the cooker, including just enough of the salsa to lightly coat. If the salsa is very thick add about ¼ cup of the reserved broth. Cook over medium heat for a few minutes, stirring frequently until the meat has absorbed the salsa’s flavor and most of the liquid has evaporated.

Blend the lime cilantro cream ingredients together in a small bowl. Warm the tortillas. Serve the meat, tortillas and lime cilantro cream together along with any other toppings you would like.

Each recipe in the book includes variations as well as transformations which give you completely different flavors to incorporate into the dish. For the meat tacos, transformations include chili-seasoned meat for tacos, Cuban inspired shredded meat over rice, pulled barbecue meat on buns and mock mu shu chicken or pork.

And don’t think pressure cooking is all about meat. You can cook steel cut oats and other hard grains in 3 or 4 minutes, you can make cakes and desserts in your pressure cooker, and pressure cooking is a great way to speed up the bean cooking process too.

If you take the time to try pressure cooking you will not be disappointed. The time you save alone will make it worth it – up to 70% less cooking time for some dishes. The energy and money saved are great extras.