0 Members and 2 Guests are viewing this topic.
I am pretty sure my mom uses hers exclusively for mashed potatoes. I use it for that, but also for corn on the cob, black beans, and sometimes brown rice. I would use it for steel cut oats, but I put so much garlic and cumin in my black beans that my pressure cooker has taken on a slight odor. Cumin-flavored oatmeal is not delicious, just sayin.
Really? This surprises me. Is it stainless? If so, I thought stainless steel was more impermeable than that.We've only used it a couple times so far. I need to get over the idea that it's going to take more effort to get it up to pressure and cook that it would be to just throw whatever it is into a saucepan and boil.I'm going to make something (meal-foodish) this weekend; maybe black bean soup or a pot roast.
you mean less effort, right?
I mean that since I haven't actually used it (DH has), that I have it in my head that it'd just be easier to toss potatoes or whatever in a saucepan and boil them than to go to the hassle of getting the cooker up to pressure and then back down again.I told DH this last night and he assured me that it gets up to pressure in a couple of minutes.I have dried black beans and just bought the remaining ingredients necessary to make black bean soup. It's not going to be veg as I figured I'd make DH happy and add Andouille sausage. I'll probably make that tomorrow.The recipe calls for cumin seed and all I have is cumin powder. Hopefully it won't matter.
it is pretty easy and it does get up to pressure pretty fast, and then you just turn the knob to release the pressure and it releases, so you really do not have to do anything, or some recipes are natural release where you just take it off the heat and let it come down from pressure on it's own.
I like to run water over it to release.I second beans and risotto. It's also great for brown rice and stews.
most of the recipes i use call for either "natural release" or "quick release," not sure where running water over it would fall into those two? Or totally different method?
I think it's the same thing. Older models don't have a quick-release knob/toggle, so running cold water over the pot reduces the pressure, allowing you to open the lid with out getting scalded/have beans exploding all over your kitchen.
No - I have a newer model, so it has the relief valve thingy, but it's noisy and spews steam(and sometimes bits of other stuff) So I run water over a portion of the lid - same as quick release.
This is what the instructions say on ours, too. New.Today I cooked the green beans and corn on the cob in 2 minutes!We'll be having black bean soup with Cuban Andouille sausage and ham hocks (for flavor) sometime this week.I need to buy cumin seeds, though. Apparently using powdered cumin in a pressure cooker causes it to lose a lot of its flavor. We have a subscription to Cooks Illustrated and they had tested pressure cookers, which is what we used to make our choice. It's this one:http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00023D9RG/ref=oh_details_o00_s01_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1They strongly recommended an 8 qt, even for 2 people. The other one that was rated quite good was a lot more $$, so we went with the cheaper one.http://www.amazon.com/Fissler-Vitaquick-Pressure-Cooker-FIS5859/dp/B00873AOIU/ref=sr_1_44?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1378677571&sr=1-44&keywords=pressure+cooker