I think they were most popular in the UK post-war. The Prestige with the whistling weights was the one.

Every kitchen in India uses a pressure cooker!

For meats and pulses ie dahl?

Some of the Pressure cookers used in India are of larger capacity - pefect for delivering large and complete family meals:

top tier = steaming vegetable
middle tier = rice
bottom tier = dals, lentils, dried peas and beans

so all the three course are cooked in at the same time in single pressure cooker - ready in about 20 minutes plus a few more minutes for finishing!

Mushy rice and veg?

Millions eat rice and vegetables cooked in a pressure cooker. And no, they are NOT mushy!


check out this users's experience where the best tasting rice is cooked out of a pressure cooker, way better than over stove top, or a rice cooker:
http://justhungry.com/pressure-cooker-love

It was only a question.

I posted a link to this very page upstream but your reason to include it is incorrect.
The user is absolutely not saying that the best tasting rice comes from a pressure cooker. She is saying that she happens to prefer the texture of BROWN rice when she cooks it in a pressure cooker, precisely because it becomes more glutinous (mushy) that way.
Not the best example to come up with to fight your not-necessarily-mushy-vegetables argument - not that I need to be convinced, I know very well that a pressure cooker can make vegetables perfectly. Mmmmm, nearly pumpkin season!

Considering how pressure cookers have been used in Spain for the last few decades it seems entirely logical to me how much of the world uses these. Thanks to everyone who has been answering the "does anyone else use a pressure cooker" question. Very interesting to me and not hugely surprising that the answer seems to be that at least half the world does (or would very much like to if they could afford one).

I wonder if Korean rice cookers come under the pressure cooker category?
They are supposed to be different from the conventional Japanese rice cookers because of the preference for rice cooked this way.

Really interesting!

It's the pork ribs tomorrow. Unless coached otherwise, I plan to pressure cook the ribs in my version of an unthickened terryaki type sauce for around 20 to 25 minutes so to hopefully infuse / penetrate some of the flavour into the ribs. I then plan to thicken the sauce and cover the ribs and bake until sticky.

Rice will be courtesy of Mr Zoji!

I love my pressure cooker. It makes cooking large cuts of meat (i.e. roasts) really quick and easy. The secret is to let it cool down naturally or the meat will seize up and be really dry and tough.

My most recent dish in it is beef tongue in a sake-soy-ginger type broth. Then reduced the leftover broth from cooking the tongue into a glaze with caramelized onions and julienned sweet peppers.

It's one of the most used pieces of cookware I have in my kitchen. I par-cook ribs, trotters, ear and makes lots of lentil and beans.

"Mushy" vegetables may be the result of overcooking, but with certain vegetables, such as carrots, potatoes, etc., you can help keep them "firm" by adding a small amount of vinegar to the cooking water. Vinegar actually reinforces the pectin in the cell walls of certain vegetables.

I find lemon or lime juice is more versatile when cooking vegetables. I do use vinegar occasionally, but that's only when I specifically want to add a vinegar taste. A drop of mirin and sake (together with a tiny little bit of lemon juice and grated rind which I add for flavour) as well as some dashi are fantastic for kabocha pumpkins.

The website may help you in some degrees.

Actually having a pressure cooker stoved in the cellar. It was a gift in the past, never used. Might consider using it after some tips in this thread...