Kitchen Essentials: Pressure Cooker

You should definitely get a pressure cooker! Yes, you! You can do it! Why should you? Because you will make delicious cheap nutritious food in a fraction of the time it normally takes! Carrots, celery, or potato stews cook in five minutes instead of forty five. You can take a cheap cut of meat and make it super tender.

The contraption itself is cool. It’s got interlocking metal parts, gaskets and valves. It has a Steampunk vibe that is really trendy now. Instant Pot is a huge trend out there too, which is basically an electronic pressure cooker, steamer and slow cooker in one. Personally, I prefer to keep it simple, but once you learn your Instant Pot, you can follow any pressure cooker recipe.

The sound of the pressure cooker is one of my clearest childhood memories. I can still hear the pneumatic clunk of the pot locking shut. I hear the subtle pop of the pressure indicator valve clicking into place. I hear the more pressing hiss of the main valve, telling us the pot is at full pressure. Then, I hear my mom’s feet hurrying from wherever inside the house she is multi-tasking, rushing to reach the kitchen and turn the stove burner down. Occasionally she would take a little longer to make it there, and the pressure hiss got so violent, I thought it was going to explode. I can see why the Pressure Cooker is like the urmetaphor for any and all stress.

In my twenties, I lived with roommates in apartments for years and never once used a pressure cooker. I don’t know why, but it always scared me. Maybe my mom should have taught me to use one, but she never did. Now that I’m a mother, I can only assume she didn’t teach me how to use one because she was scared. She didn’t want me anywhere near it. I finally bought a pressure cooker because I missed eating beans so much.. If I grew up with one, and was still a little scared of it until my late twenties, I realize it’s a very high bar for me to convince you readers to get one.

I’ll tell you what helped me: The pressure cooker can’t explode. That’s right. It sounds counter-intuitive, and especially after the Boston Bombers (remember them?) literally made bombs with them, I doubt anybody will believe me. Maybe the old generation pressure cookers did explode, but the new ones come fitted with a plastic safety valve. It’s basically a plug that with enough pressure will come shooting out of the top of the pan, which will cause it to rapidly depressurize.

That may be little comfort to many of you. Oh, don’t worry! The pan won’t explode, but watch out for a sudden projectile launched from your pressure cooker, which could ricochet and hit god-knows-what. Yes, it’s true. Pressure cookers are a little bit dangerous, but once you get used to operating one, you will see that the danger is fairly limited. In other words, let’s say you fall asleep while your pan is pressurized and you forget to adjust or turn off your burner. Well, the worst that can happen is that your stew sprays out of the safety hole all over your ceiling. Granted, not ideal.

But this has literally never happened to me, and I highly doubt it will happen to you either. So don’t worry. Go online and get yourself a pressure cooker. I personally like the Presto 6 qt Stainless Steel. It’s simple, mechanical, and will get the job done. I realize that “Instapot” contraptions are really popular suddenly, and if you want to stick to your Instapot pressure settings, by all means use your favorite pot.

In my experience as an increasingly ancient person, I find that mini-pots with lots of buttons and settings tend to break down when you least expect it. Especially in the kitchen, some sauce or food can get into a device and slowly break the electronics. I find that fully mechanical pressure cookers, which don’t have electronics, tend to last longer. Perhaps most importantly, they are easier to clean than Instapot type contraptions.

One day when my ship comes in, I will get an in-the-wall pressure cooker. My aunt Madeline has one in her home in Switzerland, and it looks awesome! The Europeans are going through a very futuristic kitchen trend, where nothing has any knobs or buttons on it, and you’re just supposed to magically figure out how your appliances work. But when my ship comes in, I suppose I will pay someone to help me understand my inscrutable futuristic appliances. For now, I love my 1940’s technology cooker.

How often do I use my pressure cooker? I use it literally every week. Sometimes multiple times a week. Used correctly, it’s really a space-age device. Dry beans, which would normally take eight (yes, eight) hours to cook on your stove top cook in 10 minutes. Yes, you need to wait for the pan to pressurize and then depressurize, but that only adds another ten mins or so.

Remember that on a fully mechanical pressure cooker, if a valve gets stuck, there is no sensor or digital readout to tell you what the problem is. You will need to troubleshoot yourself. Luckily you’re dealing with an exceedingly simple machine. It’s a locking mechanism with three valves that can let out pressure: The main pressure valve, (2) an indicator valve, and (3) a safety valve. Operating a mechanical cooker is like sailing. You’ve got to make manual adjustments (albeit very few, I would say). It’s just not an Instapot experience.

I want you to be able to operate your pressure cooker during a blackout. When the apocalypse comes, I want you to be tenderizing the stray dogs for dinner

A note on depressurizing