Pressure cooker

I use mine all the time, it's wonderful for making cheap tough cuts of meat nice and tender. I love doing potroasts in it, the meat doesn't shrink the way it does when you do a roast and the flavour is more intense. I also use it for precooking cheap tough stewing steak and kidney filling for pies, and I buy lots of things like dried beans, soak them overnight and cook them the next day in the pressure cooker, then freeze them to be added to soups. As it only takes a third of the time I save a lot of the bottled gas that our cooker uses.

My mum taught me to use a pressure cooker in my teens, so I have never had any fear of them. I have a small one now, having previously had a Prestige Hi-dome.

I got an excellent book from that supplier with a name like a South American river called "80 recipes for your pressure cooker" recommended by Nigel Slater and have had some success with 2 of them in the first week!
(It was chicken *soup *hummingbird - known jokingly as Jewish penicillin)

My auntie bought us a pressure cooker as a wedding present 40 years ago! I've replaced the rubber seal once or twice, but otherwise it's needed no special treatment. I use it fairly regularly, and love its simplicity. I make scouse - 750g stewing beef and kidney, carrots, onions, potatoes and beef stock, cook for 20 mins on full steam - to great acclaim! Served with pickled beetroot, obviously! Must try the Jewish penicillin soup!

Deserving , now that is good , you are posting on different forums in a more light-hearted manner!

Penst sounds brilliant !!

Pressure cookers terrify me .

Miracles do happen! After 40+ years of being together and observing me use a pressure cooker DH made a very good beef casserole on Friday for the first time! He has now seen how straightforward it is..so i am looking forward to more dinners that I have not made!

Wonderful piece of equipment, have been known to have two on the go at the same time. Use two microwaves as well. Not all at the same time you understand. As for recipes, as suggested, go online.Having used these things for so long, over thirty years, I find I guess how long etc. Remember DH saying in the early days that he hadn't tasted veg properly for a long time. The pressure cooker retains so much of the goodness and taste.

Interesting to find this old thread, having just made a scrummy stew in my old pressure cooker to sustain me for the next few days.
Have had my old cast iron Prestige pressure cooker for 34 years now, and it has fed many with delicious soups and stews in its time.

Today it is a beef stew, with every variety of root veg I could lay my hands on, inc. sweet potato, celery, mushrooms, a small tin of baked beans, half a tin of tomato soup, some gravy granules and garlic powder.

Took me 15 mins to prepare the ingredients, sweated off onion, celery and mushrooms in teaspoon of oil in the bottom, then added meat to seal it (all with ring on full). Soup and beans next, then all the veg, finished off with gravy granules and pint of boiling water.

Popped the top on, placed the weights...was hissing within 5 mins...20 mins later, all done!

Now off the heat and cooling down ready to open and pop in some dumplings.

Simmer with top on for an hour (not weighted, low heat), and I shall be full and replete by 1 o'clock .

Best of it is, there will be enough for at least 3 more meals, so I can freeze that for another day, or just re-heat for next few days until it's all gone......love doing that, as by the 3rd day it's like a thick, gloopy soup....yum yum, in my tum!

When I was cooking full time at our restaurant I would use my trusty pressure cooker 4/5 times a week,on Saturdays I would have the delivery of Beef and Pork and cut into 2kg pieces and use the cooker to do them in and then just roast them off in the oven for 1/2hr to colour,always had compliments as to how tendar the meat was,I use it now for cheaper cuts of meat when necessary and it has never failed me a most valuable addition to my kitchen.

Just reduce the cooking time of casseroles, stews etc., to 1/3, gracesmum and don't do any thickening using flour, cornflour or gravy granules () until you've released the steam and taken the lid off. You can then do any final touches as you would with a normal recipe.

If you need to cool your pressure cooker down quickly just put it in the sink and gently run cold water over it until the hissing stops and the red button pops back down.

Way quicker than a slow cooker, as well!

I love my pressure cooker! All sort of stews, casseroles, soups have been concocted in it!! Cheap meat cooks well in it and all goodness of veg trapped in it!

OK so that's clear - do not open while still under pressure!! But how to adapt existing recipes? Today's Jewish penicillin was very good - I started from scratch, raw chicken pieces, celery, onion, 2 carrots, a bay leaf and a fresh bouquet garni and lots of water and cooked it for an hour to make the base then made a cream of chicken soup from that with carrot batons and parsley. Now I need variety!!
BTW I think our mothers' generation knew a thing or two about saving energy/fuel, stretching food and generlly saving money as wellk as time. Way better than ready meals and microwaves.

feetle -

My grandmother borrowed a pressure cooker, back in the 50s, and decided to make rhubarb something or other - maybe chutney. She didn't follow the instructions, and took the weight off too soon. The rhubarb was wrapped round everything in the kitchen - door handles, light fittings, the ridges on the cupboard doors...

I remember an Aunt of mine who decided to cook beetroot, lifted the weight off too soon , beetroot juice all over the place !
She did not do it again , needless to say !

Reminds me, now I've unearthed my cuisinart, I must make my tomato and orange soup.

What? You made him lick his soup of the ceiling? How cruel...

Once,and once only, I took the weight off mine too soon and tomato soup hit the ceiling. Fortunately we had a very tall friend staying with us that weekend.

Mine gets a bit of a rest in the summer but soon it will be in almost constant use again. My mother wouldn't use one - she refused to believe they weren't dangerous but my MIL bought me one and showed me how to use it.

I remember one Sunday when some friends called round unexpectedly and we invited them to stay for lunch. Everything had already been prepared but MIL leapt to her feet and within a very short time extra potatoes and veg were stacked in correct order and steamed in a delicious stock which then made extra gravy.

Those were the days when steamed puddings were eaten without guilt and pressure cookers make short work of those.

I was brought up to use a pressure cooker. My mum swore by it and I have always used mine for soups and stews - though I haven't cooked meat for 30 years. Mum even used to cook rice pudding in hers and it was delicious.

I have had one for years. Useful for brown rice. It cuts cooking time by a third. Cooking "yellow" split pea soup. As a large steamer. etc. I have been known in my pre-vegetarian past to cook ox tongue in it.

Pressure cookers are wonderful bits of kit. I've had one all my adult life and I can't tell you the number of times it has come in very useful. I make soup 3/4 times a week in mine - usually vegetable - but Jewish penicillin is a doddle. They do differ but essentially they operate in exactly the same way. My current one is very unsophisticated, so this is what I do - you can adapt the principle to your own.

First lightly stir fry all your ingredients in the bottom of the cooker in a little olive oil, season and add any flavourings - herbs spices etc. Then pour in hot stock, chicken, vegetable, oxo, whatever - for soup I put in 2 pts. Close the lid as tightly as is humanly possible and put the weight on top of the valve. Bring up to pressure on high heat - this is signalled by a violent hissing noise and copious amounts steamcoming out of the valve - immediately turn the heat down to minimum - you just need to be able to hear a very light ssssinng. For vegetable soup allow 6 minutes, for chicken perhaps 8 minutes. When the time is up, reduce the pressure using whatever your machine has as a release mechanism - I put mine in the sink and allow cold water to run over it for a minute, but as I said mine is the most basic model. Carefully remove the weight and open the lid - the steam is mega hot - Voila! there is your delicious nutritious soup! You can now whizz it (vegetables) in a liquidiser if you wish and if too thick add some boiling water or milk. With chicken, I would just add milk or cream and serve. Don't be afraid. I can do a lovely casserole in half an hour and it tastes as though its been simmering for hours.

Thank you t!! I have worked that out now from what they say about what you do after cooking. All a bit alarming though. This one is a Tefal and years and years ago I had a Prestige with little metal bits you screwed on to the top. That one alas burned dry one day when, under stress, I accepted an invitation to a lunchtime barbecue and forgot I had put a piece of brisket in the pressure cooker! Came back to clouds of evil black smoke and a little piece of blackened stone (?) in the bottom. Not good and it put me off the things for years until DH decided that Heston Blumenthal had a good recipe for chicken stock. One trip to John Lewis and a book from Amazon later plus all the ingredients of course, he made chicken stock which probably cost more than vintage champagne. You can see why I need to get some use out of it to justify the expense!