cooking with pressure cooker

[bee_pipes]

Do any of you folks use pressure cookers for cooking? We have a monster we use for canning, but I'm thinking that would be overkill for cooking.

What brand do you use? Presto?

What size/capacity? 4 quart? 6 quart? bigger? How many people did you feed with this size? What did you put in it? A whole chicken? Three chickens cut up?

I remember mom using one for cooking family dinners when I was a youngster. She'd do chicken and the meat would fall off the bones. Even the bones were soft and you had to be careful not to bite through them. I was thinking this might be real handy for cooking game and old poultry/stewing chickens.

Would love to hear your experiences.

Regards,
Pat

[NCLee]

Pat, I've had a Mirror for a number of years. I'm guessing it's about a 4 quart.

One of my favorite uses was to pressure cook beef for stew. Drop the pressure. Remove the lid and add the vegetables and seasoning. Finish cooking as if it were a regular pot. Really cuts down on the amount of time to get stew meat fall apart tender. Adding the veggies and finish cooking keeps them from going to mush.

Lee

[tufhelp]

Thanks NCLee, That turned on the light bulb for me. That was the main reason I never liked pressure cooked meals - mushy vegies. I never snapped to doing the meat and then the vegies, finishing off like using a regular pot. Great method!

[Anon001]

When I was growing up, every Saturday for lunch, we had pinto beans, cornbread, green onion and chow-chow. My mother would always cook the pinto beans in her pressure canner. It was a weekly ritual. She would wait until she exhausted the pressure, then add her seasonings, bring the pressure back up for just a few minutes. She always said that if you add the seasonings at the start, the skins will be a bit tougher than adding them later.

I have two 4 quart pressure cookers. One is old and one is fairly new. I use them for beans, black eye peas, and old chickens that would otherwise be tough. I also use it for some meat dishes that would otherwise be in a slow cooker. I will put them in the pressure cooker and it works great.

I like the pressure cookers because I can save a lot on the propane I would otherwise have to use simmering for long periods. Being on solar, I won't use a crock pot type of slow cooker.

You can cook a variety of foods in a pressure cooker/canner. My All-American pressure canner has a lot of recipes for foods to be cooked in addition to the canning.

[sbemt456]

Hi all. The pressure cooker is the best invention next to the pressure canner. I have a 4 qt and the other maybe an 8 qt(?) I think. I use mine for anything that needs long cooking and I dont have time to wait. They are the all around best when the power is out for use on the propane burner outside, you can have a complete meal ready in just a few minutes. You just have to be creative and experiment a lil bit.
Like Paul said you can have pintos in a hurry. Maybe takes 45 minutes start to finish from dried beans to on the table. And that includes the ham hock. :yes4: Beef stew with a cooked all day taste in 30 minutes or less, depending on the size of the cubes of meat. And the only way to cook a stewing chicken in my opinion.

Have a great day!

stella

[AlchemyAcres]

I use a pressure cooker to make all of my stocks (extracts).

Chicken, Beef, Pork, Turkey, Veggie, etc. it's the only way to go!



~Martin