Pressure Cooking
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You may have heard stories about pressure cooker disasters. But those were very old pressure cookers, with safety design flaws. The new ones are designed very well. You can’t just take off the lid without reducing the pressure inside first, so they’re very safe, incredibly easy to use, and extremely versatile.

I was unaware of their versatility. I’ve used a small pressure cooker for a number of years to cook beans to perfection without the tinny taste of canned and to soften venison ribs into melt in your mouth ribs. But that’s about all I used it for. However, thanks to my new stainless 6-litre pressure cooker, my cooking world has expanded.

As I thumbed through the Starfrit manual that came with the cooker, I discovered some tasty recipes. Entire meals created in only 10 minutes of pressure-heating time. Recipes such as, Chicken in Red Wine (Coq au Vin), Indian Chicken Stew, Meatballs and Vegetables, Roast Pork, and Veal Scaloppini.

The pressure cooker also makes the most excellent chicken stock I’ve ever come across. Deep, rich, flavourful. And it takes only 10 minutes.

A big consideration with this type of whole-meal cooking is your choice of metal pot. Stainless steel is excellent. Aluminum will react with acidic food items, such as tomatoes and vinegar, turning the food a dark colour and potentially leaching aluminum into your supper.

Here’s a typical recipe:

Starfrit’s Chicken in Red Wine
Portions: 4 servings

Ingredients:
1 chicken (2 to 3 lbs) cut into individual portions or 2 to 3 lbs of chicken breasts
flour (enough to cover all the chicken)
2 tsp butter
1 bay leaf
4 large mushrooms, sliced
1 tsp salt
1/8 tsp pepper
1 garlic clove, minced
1/8 tsp thyme
1 tsp parsely, minced
1/2 cup dry red wine
1 can (8 oz) white onions, drained

Preparation:
Cover the chicken with flour. Heat the pressure cooker, add butter and brown the chicken. Mix the other ingredients (except the onions) and add to pressure cooker. Seal the cover. Place the pressure regulator over the vent pipe and cook for 10 minutes with the regulator rocking gently. Let the pressure go down on its own. Add the onions, cook over low heat. Thicken the sauce (optional).

Now I’m not one to really follow a recipe exactly, so I didn’t prebrown the chicken, I didn’t add wine, just water, and I didn’t use canned onions. I did cook a whole chicken cut up, with lots of herbs and some garlic thrown in. Then, once the pressure cooking was done, I browned the chicken in olive oil in a frying pan, with some fresh onions and salt seasoning.

Next time, I tried the Meatballs and Vegetables recipe because it adds potatoes to the dish and I’ve never pressure cooked potatoes before. However, for my variation of the recipe, no meatballs, chicken instead. For the vegetable part, I chose potatoes, sweet potatoes, and herbs, then added water and seasoning. In ten minutes, supper.

I used the stock that was left over in the pot the next day to make a quick chicken soup with gnocchis and garden broccoli.

Pressure cooking is perfect when if you don’t have much time to cook. You get good meals with the kind of rich flavour that often only comes from hours of slow cooking. So, I’d have to say, if I had to choose only one kitchen utensil to bring to a desert island, it’d be my new favourite stainless steel 6 litre pressure cooker. Hmm. I wonder how it cooks fish?

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Website Resources
FastCooking.ca
Miss Vickie’s Guide to Modern Pressure Cooking
Fabulous Foods then type ‘pressure cooking’ in the search bar

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Note: Since I’ve written this article I have had trouble with a design feature of the lid of the presented pressure cooker. There’s a cut out space that allows the rubber seal to weaken over time, which is likely why the pot comes with three rubber seals. So look for a pot without the cut-out. Though I suspect this is a safety feature on most of them.

Newest Note: Lagostino has a pressure cooker design, Endura, that avoids the rubber seal altogether. It works reliably and optimally. I can’t find it on Amazon.com. But it can be found at Canadian Tires in Canada and likely many places in the States. Made in Italy.

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Photo Credit: Jasper Greek Golangco
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