Pressure Cooker

[BlackDuck]

My wife said she wants a pressure cooker for Christmas. I don't know anything about them, so I'm asking the good people of the Borg what they think. If you've got one, how do you like it? If you had one, why don't you use it anymore? Are they easy to use and is the food good? ANY info (good or bad) would be very much appreciated.

I just don't want to spend money on something that I have a feeling will end up on the shelf in the basement.

[FrozenInTime]

I'm getting old... grrrr, re-read your post, sorry, pic not a pressure cooker. Pressure cookers, I use ours quite a bit during the late summer through fall. I do a lot of canning with it. Both water bath and pressure can. I have never cooked a meal in it but it more than paid for it's self in canning veggies/meats every fall.



We use ours 3-4 times a month. I make a killer beef stew and pot roasts. I fired mine up this morn with a pot roast, cook it on low for 8 hours. It will be done just in time for my awesome better half to get home from work and sit down to a nice savory supper. I use a nice red wine in place of using water. I will remove everything from the pot and use the juices to make a nice brown gravy to pour over the roast... dayum, now I'm hungry.... lunch is gonna come early!

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[FrozenInTime]

Must add, when using one of these critters (pressure cooker) it must be baby-sat the whole time it is on heat. Let the heat get too high, well, very bad things can happen. When mines on the stove, I am within a few feet of it period. Don't want to walk out and hear ka-booom. Also, they come in different sizes, from pint to quart. The quart size takes quite a while to hit target pressure, the pint size is quicker. For a small family, pint size is more than enough. From what I've read, that post roast I'm making would be done in an hour or so instead of taking 8. I don't like the taste of fast food, I don't think it is as good. I grew up with mom cooking alot of meals weekly in one of these things. If you get one, get the better one, there is a difference in safety and gauge quality.

[BlackDuck]

Thanks FIT. I was always skeptical of them also and thought they could be dangerous.

I guess my wife wasn't talking about the old fashioned kind of pressure cooker you put on the stove top to heat up. She was talking about one of these new ones called Instant Pot. Looks like they are a lot more than just a pressure cooker.

[John Sand]

Modern pressure cookers have a safety.
I bought a couple of pressure cookers at yards sales. (One of then is 20qt, and was my first brew kettle) I have not used them recently, but I found them amazing for meal prep in short order. My former girlfriend (now wife) called me one day feeling poorly and asked if I would make her chicken soup. It was too late in the day for a slow cook. I had just enough time to go to the market, buy chicken and vegetables, and use the pressure cooker. The soup came out great, the girl fell in love with me. (It's not just cooking, I'm very lovable)
As for the Instant Pot, Amazon users seem to love it.

[FrozenInTime]

That thing looks like a programmable crock pot. To be honest, it would probably sit in my basement getting dusty. BUT, after 36 years, one thing I have learned, if the wife wants it, she gets it. Whether she uses something alot, or not, sure makes life real easy when I want another *toy*! Just go for it. If she does not use it much, ask her every once in a while for one of her special meals she makes in it, it will make her day and, well, what goes around comes around.

[Whamolagan]

I recommend the instant pot, we use ours all the time. What is cool about them is if a stew you are making is not quite done in time for dinner, you can put under pressure and speed up the process in a jiffy.

[BlackDuck]

Whamo....the Instant Pot is exactly what my wife is looking at. Other than stew, what do you make in yours? Any cons to owning/using yours?

[berryman]

I don't really have a lot of good advice to add to the OP, but I like telling stories.......My Mom did a lot of cooking and canning in the old style stove top pressure cookers when I was growing up, I'll never forget the rattling sound they made while the steam was escaping. She not only canned with it, but cooked dinner in them too. A tough piece of meat was tender after. Canned venison is really excellent done in a pressure cooker. My Mom tried for 25 years to convince my wife to use one and would have shown her how, but my wife and is good at cooking and canning in her own right is scared of pressure cookers and doesn't want any part of them. She said she had a bad experience with them when growing up, (I think an explosion). Now my Mom has passed away and my wife and I are going though her stuff to clean her house out, and wait for this......... so far we have found 7 stove top pressure cookers in the house and we are just starting on the old farm house, might be more.. I think the new electric ones are very safe and easy to use and would do a good job on a lot of different cooking.

[bpgreen]

I bought a power xl at Costco and use it pretty frequently. I rarely use my slow cooker anymore.

[berryman]

That thing looks like a programmable crock pot. To be honest, it would probably sit in my basement getting dusty. BUT, after 36 years, one thing I have learned, if the wife wants it, she gets it. Whether she uses something alot, or not, sure makes life real easy when I want another *toy*! Just go for it. If she does not use it much, ask her every once in a while for one of her special meals she makes in it, it will make her day and, well, what goes around comes around.

Ha Ha you got this thing figured out too. My wife wanted a bread maker and it was all the thing back when I don't know when.. It makes really great bread and easy to use, just add the ingredients, push a few buttons and come back later and have some home made bread, reminds me of some of the new beer making machines getting popular now. It sit's in a closet somewhere now, but every once and a while I will ask her to make some bread with it...Sorry BD, no more derailing your post, carry on back to pressure cookers...........

[John Sand]

I don't really have a lot of good advice to add to the OP, but I like telling stories.......My Mom did a lot of cooking and canning in the old style stove top pressure cookers when I was growing up, I'll never forget the rattling sound they made while the steam was escaping. She not only canned with it, but cooked dinner in them too. A tough piece of meat was tender after. Canned venison is really excellent done in a pressure cooker. My Mom tried for 25 years to convince my wife to use one and would have shown her how, but my wife and is good at cooking and canning in her own right is scared of pressure cookers and doesn't want any part of them. She said she had a bad experience with them when growing up, (I think an explosion). Now my Mom has passed away and my wife and I are going though her stuff to clean her house out, and wait for this......... so far we have found 7 stove top pressure cookers in the house and we are just starting on the old farm house, might be more.. I think the new electric ones are very safe and easy to use and would do a good job on a lot of different cooking.

I love this story. I have my grandmother's Kitchenaid Mixer, and a couple of pie plates. My mom bought me my first iron pan over thirty years ago.

[berryman]

I have my grandmother's Kitchenaid Mixer,

Found one of them too, this a on going thing for us, we keep finding stuff she had and most of the time more then one of everything. We have our work cut out for us on this project, I will leave it at that so we can get back to help BD with the pressure cooker deal as per the OT, But can tell sometime about all the old stuff we have inherited and a lot and sometimes wonder where to start.

[mashani]

If you like Indian dal type soups, or any type of bean soups, instant pots / pressure cookers can "get it done" in half the time or less, IE 45 minutes instead of 2 hours. Every Indian family I know has one. So do I because I make dal or kitchari all the time.

I also use it for pressure canning vegetables from my garden, pickles, etc.

Do I use it for much else? Not really. But I make some sort of dal pretty much every week, so it's worth having one for me.

Modern pressure cookers are safe and have multiple ways of relieving the pressure. They should not blow up in your face.

Now my mom used to make all sorts of things with them, they are good for making tough meat types of things not so tough, etc. But since I live in the vegetable kingdom, that doesn't provide any use to me personally.

[Dawg LB Steve]

I've used ours to can starter wort, use a canned pint of high gravity and add bottled water to get to 1.040.

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