PRESSURE COOKING. Hints, tips, recommendations, recipes, or should I not bother?

I love my pressure cooker more than my slow cooker. I cook almost every night with mine.

I usually take a meat (chicken, roast etc), brown the exterior in the bottom of the cooker with some fat, add in a liquid (stock, broth, water etc) depending on the flavor I want, and voila a great meal in usually under an hour when the same meal would have taken hours on hours in the oven or crock pot. Throw in some rice and some veggies and you have a great meal in the time it would take to call take out.

You can also cook frozen meat in a pressure cooker it just takes longer to get the pot up to pressure.

The pressure cooker I own is the manual one that was very cheap on Amazon.

I'm thinking about getting one too. A friend of mine has fed me several meals cooked in hers, and they were all delicious. The texture comes out great.

Idk why, but my brain thinks of pressure cookers as the sexier version of slow cookers.

I had one in the 80s (they were compulsory wedding gifts around that time!) and seem to remember using it a lot for stew and chilli in the winter, not so much in the summer.

I wouldn't bother getting a small one though, just batch cook and freeze in portions.

ETA: Now I think of it, I did use it in summer - for boiling tins of condensed milk to make the toffee for banoffee pie!

We have electric one and love it. We use it 4-5 x a week and food is flavorful and cooked quickly ! Haven't used my crockpot in months !

TerryMyfitbitsnbobs wrote: »

MelanieCN77 wrote: »

I have an electric one and I use it most days, sometimes twice. It's the best.

Which make?

I have the Instant Pot, 5 quart, LUX I think, 6 in 1. My routine lately has been to work out after I'm done with work for the day, go set something up in it to cook, and by the time I'm showered and changed dinner is ready. I can crack a beer and chill while it keeps things warm or eat right away. I love how hands off it is and how I don't have to think so far ahead like with the slow cooker.

I got one from my mother in law last Christmas. I figured it would end up in the gadget graveyard in my basement but I use it almost every day. Steamed veggies, rice, hard cooked eggs, pasta and sauce in one pot - no draining! Tonight was chicken and rice and it was easy, fast and delicious! The kids devoured it. The flavor and texture are so much better than the slow cooker.

I got a cookbook from Americas Test Kitchen called Pressure Cooker Perfection that has a lot of great recipes and tips that make it easy to cook your existing recipes in a pressure cooker.

I have both a pressure cooker (old-style, range-top, "jiggle top," 8L capacity) and a slow cooker. Use them both frequently in mostly the colder months. This week, made a tasty, healthy beef stew in the pressure cooker (used chuck roast I trimmed myself, saving about $1.25/lb for better meat than the store-packaged "stew meat") and a chicken-mushroom-barley stew in the slow cooker. 2 meal preps = 4 days' dinners for 4 people. The pressure cooker is great for many things, such as quickly cooking a load of brown rice or beans - in addition to actual one-pot meals. I've made cacciatore-style chicken with frozen breasts in about 12 minutes in the pressure cooker. I recently caught one of the shopper channels with late-night demonstrations of the popular electric pressure cooker (500 channels and nothing to watch, LOL!). The infomercial makes a great case for the pressure cooker, and the electric pushbutton versions look a little more convenient/flexible than my old trusty. Oh, and being 8L, the pressure cooker pot is one of my larger heavy pots for other cooking needs.

I have an Instant Pot and use it very often- newest reason is for quicker potatoes.

I've messed up plenty of meals in it, but I love my Pot and use it at least once a week. Unless I'm pressed for time (11 vs 3:30 mins), leftovers heat much better in it as well

I love my pressure cooker. It is awesome to have something that tastes like it took hours in a fraction of the time! I got the stovetop Fagor recommended by America's Test Kitchen. I also enjoy their pressure cooker cookbook, the recipes are good and there is also info on cooking times to help you branch out and do your own thing. The recipe books by Lorna Sass are also great.

Power pressure cooker XL is the kind we have.

If you eat a lot of beans, it is a godsend. Dried beans turn out perfect in about 40 min - no planning or soaking needed. I have an instant pot and love it.

I have an Instant Pot and I am so in love with it I'm thinking of taking it on a honeymoon. I make carnitas in it (starting with a frozen pork shoulder) in 40 minutes; I'm making oxtail stew tonight (starting with 2lb frozen oxtails) that should take about half an hour; I make beans and chilies and soups in it in ~30 minutes (starting with dry beans).

Sometimes I dump an entire bag of russet potatoes in with a little salted water, steam them for 10 minutes, and stick 'em in the fridge to eat all week. I like putting a layer of veggies in with a bit of water, lemon, and dill; put a layer of foil over the veggies (leaving a gap at the edges), put frozen salmon filets on that, season the filets, and steam the whole mess for ~7 minutes.

You can do a whole squash in the Instant Pot with much less hassle than the oven requires. You can also do a whole chicken, if you have the bigger IP, and it comes out so fall-apart tender you might want to cry a little.

I also make pretty much any slow-cooker recipe in the IP, except I start with frozen/dry/whatever ingredients and cook for 10-30 minutes (depending on the recipe) instead of starting thawed/canned and cooking for 8 hours. It's the best.

I have the Pressure Power Cooker, I think it is a 5 or 6 quart. I use it all the time to make hard boiled eggs (we pickle our own) and they are so easy to peel no matter the freshness, plus it only takes 5 minutes at pressure. I have used it for pork loin, pork roast, frozen beef roast, meatloaf, frozen and fresh chicken breasts, and pinto beans. My husband was very skeptical about the meatloaf, but now it is one of his favorite meals. I like to make the meatloaf in the bottom and put the steamer tray in with gold potatoes to steam for mashed potatoes.