With three children under 4 years old, I’m all for quick and practical cooking. Something I can cook while one toddler is clinging to my leg, another trying to climb onto the kitchen bench, and another trying to ‘help-out’ with cooking.
Something I can whip up superfast, but is tender so kids would have it. So for the past year, I have been exploring pressure cooking, experiment with various Western and Asian dishes, including desserts like puddings and cheesecake.
What I absolutely love about pressure cooking is the speed of cooking, resulting in preserved nutrients and savings on my gas bill because of it. I can whip up dishes normally cooked hours in just a fraction of that time. Tender-melt-in-your-mouth dishes are done in minutes. I can use cheaper-tougher-cuts of meat and still produce tender flavourful dish. Asian style congee (from rice) only requires 6 minutes cooking time. Curry dishes, bolognaise sauce, beef casseroles, pot roasts are cooked under an hour. It is definitely energy smart cutting heaps off my gas bill, and much more economical overall.
Pressure cookers work by trapping steam created by boiling water, increasing the pressure in the pot. As the pressure rise, so too does the boiling point of the water which reduces cooking time.
I do a lot of pressure cooked dishes that I own two 6.5l pressure cooker pots, at least one of them is always on my stove top daily.
Some of our favourite family recipes are:
Beef Brinabon – Beef and Kidney Beans soup
Chicken in Ginger Soup
Milk Fish stew (Pindang Bandeng) *
Chicken congee (with or without mushrooms)
Beef Casserole
I will follow up this post with the recipes of these in the near future.
Various slow cooker recipes can be adapted to cook in the pressure cooker. Speedy.
* Milk Fish has fine bones which is a pain to eat, it is pressure cooked that the bones are soft and edible, while the flesh is still firm.
Excellent pressure cooking resource website:
http://www.pressurecookerrecipes.net/
http://missvickie.com/
