Does anyone else use a pressure cooker?
 

I have just bought a pressure cooker. Does anyone else use one? I bought it for winter!

Don't try to bring it as a carry-on, or checked luggage.

I haven't used one for years, but as a teenager, cooked stews, pinto beans, and the like in them.

Tee hee!

I plan to cook proper puddings ie with suet pastry and thought this was the way to go. The first is going to be a lamb and veg pudding ie a sort of Irish Stew in suet. I can't decide whether to cook the stew first and then put it into the suet pastry when cool or put the meat and veg in raw! Decisions, decisions!

My wife donated ours to a fundraiser when I wasn't looking:mad:.

Really though, the only things I used it for were beans and artichokes. Dry unsoaked pinto beans ready to mash into refried in 90 minutes and jumbo artichokes done in 7-8 minutes instead of an hour.^

I have two electric pressure cookers, and needless to say, I love them! But don't just save it for winter, its also good for making dinner on hot summer days when you don't want a lot of heat added to the kitchen -- I use mine to make corn on the cob, cook frozen hot dogs, make hardboiled eggs in the morning, anything where I want to cook, but don't want to add a lot of heat into the kitchen (because I'm using a contained unit with so little hot water / steam involved, it keeps the kitchen much cooler than it would otherwise be).

Pressure Cooker
 

Use it for ribs! Pressure cook them for about 20 minutes and then grill them on the bbq. They become super tender and the meat falls off the bone

My sister does that, too. Makes the meat really tender...

See also http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/dinin...light=pressure

I mostly use it to make free stock every week.

I get a box of vegetables delivered weekly from Riverford. Part of their minimal packaging policy is to let the vegetables keep the natural "wrapping" that supermarkets trim off so that more of the vegetables will fit neatly on their shelves.

Others might throw these extra leaves away but I scrub them, add some dried mushrooms and herbs, and put them in the pressure cooker, bring to the boil and then simmer at the very lowest gas setting for 45 minutes.
Once the cooked vegetables (except those shiitake mushrooms which I slow braise with soy sauce) are squeezed dry they go into the compost bin, nice and compact. The resulting stock is perfect for making quick and delicious soups; ideal for someone who makes bread.

Pressure cooker is great for beans (another great accompaniament for good bread) . As well as making hummus, there are a ton of typical Spanish dishes (such as Olla Gitana) that can be cooked in the pressure cooker. Pressure cooking is extremely popular in Spain, mine came from there and was a wedding present to my parents back when Franco was still running the country. So long as the rubber gasket is changed periodically I have no reason to doubt that my own daughter will use it.

Nice article with more information and suggestions here:
http://justhungry.com/pressure-cooker-love

I'd personally be very interested in learning which other countries besides Spain have a high usage of pressure cookers in people's homes. It's not an obvious question and requires a fair amount of local knowledge. From the cuisine, I would have thought South Korea would be a contender (and I am sure they are worth their considerable weight in gold in North Korean cities where energy for cooking can't be depended on - for similar reasons I've considered taking the pressure cooker out camping)

They're fairly common in French households.

^ Makes sense.... Mmmmm, lentilles

Interesting to see other users!

What do you think?

I'm going to make suet pastry, line a pie bowl - but do I put the meat and veg in raw or do I pre-cook the mix and then put it in cold?

Thanks.

To clarify - you mean to make the bread with the stock or eat with it ie soup?

I would definitely NOT put raw meat and veg in the pastry, they release a lot of water as they cook, and could turn your pastry to mush. At a minimum, I would cook the meat (minimally) and par-boil the vegetables.

Many thanks. Should I basically make the complete lamb stew first, and then when cool put it in the suet - or must i just part cook it?

Thanks!

.... can I also bounce another idea of FT'ers?

I experiment a lot!

I'm thinking of making my first meat pudding in the following way.

I'm thinking of doing a sort of mild Lamb and Sweet Potato Curry (may substitute carrot to preserve a bit of bite as the sweet potato will mush ....) with some coconut milk and sugar - and then put that cooked mix fairly dry into a suet pastry that I made in the normal way but also have mixed some slowly braised and caramelised red onion in with. So a sort of mild lamb curry in a caramelised red onion suet pudding crust.

I don't know whether anyone else can picture and taste this but the idea seems to work in my head. Any views appreciated.

Love mine, I make chicken stock, soup etc etc... but don't cook veggies in it since I like my vegetables el dente.

Well, I don't know how long it would cook in the oven after being assembled, but generally speaking, you'd want to prepare the lamb stew most of the way, but not all, beforehand. If its fully cooked when it goes in, it might be overcooked when it comes out.

Interesting idea.....

Why would you want to make it in a pressure cooker?

Everyone I know in Brazil uses one almost every single day.

For at least the stew portion of the dish, a pressure cooker does wonders. First, you can cook it faster, using less energy. Second, a pressure cooker will tenderize meat like nothing else does, and I've also found its excellent for rendering fat out of the meat, which can either be removed, or used to flavor the rest of the dish. Moreover, its excellent at gellatinizing connective tissues, which means increased flavor. The pressure cooker can coax flavors out of dishes I can never get through conventional means.

I missed this part earlier, so let me just add, both carrot and sweet potato can turn quite soft if its cooked long enough to cook the lamb stew meat. What you may want to do if that's an issue for you is to cook either carrots or sweet potato (or both) separately, by themselves, and add 1 tablespoon of white vinegar to the cooking water for the carrots/sweet potatoes. Vinegar will help strengthen the pectin bonds in the carrots/sweet potatoes, helping them retain their shape and stiffness, and you won't taste it in the final product.

You are being very patient with me - which I really appreciate. For some reason my Tefal 5 had no recipe book at all - just some basic instructions. It seems to have two pressures 5 and 12 I believe.

Could you give me some suggestions with my first Giant Lamb Curry Dumpling re timings. I expect it to be experimental so please don't be shy. For simplicity I'm leaving sweet potato and carrot out - so it will be lamb and sliced red onion - so think of it as lamb in suet dumpling pastry pudding 'ish.

My main motivation for my new pressure cooker explorations is that I love the flavour of cheaper cuts but want to improve texture which I think this approach will give me. I make a lot of lamb and beef curries for example. Sous vide over softens.

Any help appreciated.

Used extensively in South Asia (India, Pakistan etc.). Specifically for lentils and meat dishes.

Make the bread separately and have it with soup.

I do occasionally use the pressure to make bread. It's a great way to cook and soften rye grains. They take nearly an hour to cook and it's better to post-soak them overnight (they don't get any softer in the bread whilst being baked). Much, much quicker with a pressure cooker.

Two words -- Pot Roast!

Just to balance the replies a little: no I don't use a pressure cooker ;)

they seemed to be relatively common in HK when I lived there. We had one. Even though our 2-bedroom was only about 500 square feet ;)

If you travel. Bring 2 pressure cookers. Check one and bring the other as a carry on. :p

No problem at all, happy to help. I love to "evangelize" the pressure cooker way of life. But to answer your question, I need to know what cut of lamb you're using (lamb shanks?) and how many pounds you have. (If you don't already know which cut you're using, as in, you haven't bought it yet, ideally, to get the most out of a pressure cooker, you'd want to select a cut that has a lot of connective tissues in it, so it'll create collagen, which will in turn improve the flavor. That means working muscles, like legs, shoulder, neck bones, etc.)

Many thanks!

It will be around 500 gms of cubed leg.

So how long for the diced leg and onion please .... and then once cool and inh the suet pastry in a pudding bowl how long then please?

Thanks agin!

:)

Use ours for pork ribs as well. The compliments to the chef never end. I use it but my wife is deathly scared of the device. Our dogs find the appliance quite mesmerizing :D

I seem to remember them being very popular in Caribbean cooking....can anyone confirm?

I don't think they're all that popular in the UK.....my mother used to use one to negative effect. In Argentina they don't seem to be very popular either.

My grandma used to make beef stew in them. I remember it being on the stove all day...

We use our's mainly for canning excess garden veggies ie: green beans,tomatoes etc...
Never thought about actually cooking something in it before.

Sorry - a change of plan from 500 gms of lamb to Laverstoke Park Diced Buffalo Braising 400g .....

Hope you can help with some timings on 5 or 12 pressure ....

Well - my first experiment with it turned out really well. A buffalo bourguignon with potato, carrot, onion, with fresh thyme in a suet pastry.

It was enormous but really quite delicious.

:)

if falling off the bone ribs is your goal, kudos.

Most BBQ aficianados I've read would say no to fall off the bone rib texture, there should be come chew. I view I subscribe to.



What cuts of tough meats are pressure cookers used for?

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I'm doing some ribs tomorrow, so have a porky interest! :)

My method up to now is marinade in my own mix for a day or two then put the ribs and marinade into a foil sealed tray and let the slowly cook sealed for a couple of hours and then open them up to caramelise for the last 40 minutes or so. I'm still looking for something softer so I'm looking forward to the experiment tomorrow!

I'm really just playing for playing's sake with the pressure cooker. My sous vide has been interesting but can over soften. Long slow cooking I think is best overall. But I do like puddings in winter and I think this is going to be ideal.

It has always seemed to me that all my favourite meats taste wise have been the cheapest cuts but you have a toughness trade-off. The pressure cooker I think will help. I'm looking forward to experiment with pork belly in various Asian styles.

Just playing really. :)

oh yeah !!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was thinking char siu.

Be careful of pork belly, the fat layer can melt very fast in a pressure cooker.

Char Siu (叉燒）is not pork belly. Roast pork（燒肉／燒腩）is the belly.

http://norecipes.com/blog/chinese-ba...pork-char-siu/

http://rasamalaysia.com/bbq-pork-recipe-char-siu/

http://appetiteforchina.com/recipes/...-pork-char-siu

http://www.sbs.com.au/food/recipes/char-siu-pork-belly

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Char_siu

http://m.wikihow.com/Make-Char-Siu-(Cha-Shao)

http://www.google.co.uk/#q=pork+bell...e=off&start=30

http://foodgynie.blogspot.co.uk/2012...ork-belly.html

etc

Pretty much all of the char siu I have had has been pork belly and I always use pork belly and find it perfect.