Any One Use Pressure Cookers ?

[toggleswitch]

Fasolada tromeri kathe vima kai porthi!

...or in the vernacular:

Fierce bean soup.
With every step a fart!

Yankee Bean Soup:

Boil a pound of Great Northern beans in adequate water for 10 minutes. Repeat up to three times. This is said to make beans less gassy....

Meanwhile in a frying pan sautee one onion in a 1/4 cup oil until yellow/wilted.
Add 1 cup (8 oz / 230ml tomato sauce). MUST BE "NO SALT ADDED." SALT HARDENS BEANS! Sautee for a few minutes.

Combine drained beans, water and contents of fry pan. Bring to a boil. Add celery, carrots and potato. Cook until beans are soft. This may take over an hour, stove-top. Add salt after cooking is complete. Some add pepper and parsley as well.

I'd say this works best in a 5 or 6 Qt/L pot. Of course a half pound of beans makes a nice 3qt soup.....just halve your other ingredients!

 

[toggleswitch]

Boil a pound of Great Northern beans in adequate water for 10 minutes. Repeat up to three times.

Meaning drain add new water and repeat.........

 

[sudsmaster]

Take a hint from the native americans

Soak the beans overnight. Save a little of the soak water in the fridge. For the next batch, use the saved soak water to inoculate the beans. The beneficial microbes will help reduce the flatulent factor in the final result. This has actually been shown in scientific studies. Cooking can't really get rid of the factor, as it is a type of sugar that we can't digest but various gas-producing bacteria in our guts can and do digest. I have also found that whole grains like brown rice help to balance things out, so to speak.

Also, it can take some time to adjust to a diet of beans, whole grains, veggies. Apologize to your family and co-workers in advance ;-)

 

[toggleswitch]

Silent but deadly.

As I understand it beans are a complex cabohydrate meaning they have both a carbohydrate component and a protein component.

Asking the body to digest both simultaneously was what I believed the difficulty to be.

To digest a protein the body secrets an acid.
To digest a carohydrate/starch the body needs to secrete an alkaline /base....

Having both components to digest at one time makes digestion difficult and gassy and helsp support the need for a good air-freshening spray on the toilet tank.

The Fit for Life Diet by Diamond (his and her first name I forget) says this:

Have a protein a green vegetable and a salad at one meal
Have a carb a green vegetable and a salad at another meal. It really does cleanse the body, IMHO. It's just culturally difficult since we in America eat hambuergers on a roll, meatloaf with bread crumbs, meat and bread sandwiches, etc. Butter is a fat, so that helps. It can be eaten with either group.Of course any veggie that demands butter, like corn and peas, is a starch.

and if all else fails take BEANO!

Still for a healthy low-fat inexpensive and filling meal Yankee Bean soup it is!

Does lifting the covers when cutting one loose in bed make it less offensive? *LOL*

 

[sudsmaster]

Actually I find my digestion improves on a bean/veggie/brown rice diet, vs. a typical diet of meat/refined starch/etc.

The "flatulence factor" (scientific term) in beans is primarily due to a type of carbohydrate called an oligosaccharide: oligo for "few", and saccharide for "sugar". These sugars are linked together in the oligosaccharide by bonds that humans lack the enzyme to break. So they are indigestible by humans. When the oligosaccharides hit the lower gut, there are plenty of bacteria able to break the bonds and the result may be excess gas.

Soaking the beans helps to leach out the oligosaccharides. But it's also been shown that soaking overnight can enable a harmless bacteria to attack the bonds in the beans themselves. In other words, it's a type of fermentation. Other fermented bean products, like tofu from soybeans, are not flatulence causing becaus of the frementation process. Of course one must discard the soak water and cook in fresh water, and of course cooking until the beans are tender is required for optimal digestibility. The trick - which native americans have practiced for centuries - is to save a little of the soak water to introduce into the next batch of beans, increasing the chance that the oligosaccharides will be even further reduced.

Don't know if the bean protein is particularly indigestible. Do know that soy flour - from which the protein has been removed - can have high levels of the oligosaccharides that cause flatulence. And a lot of our processed foods contain soy flour these days.

 

[tomturbomatic]

I'm glad that chickpeas are not loud & explosive. I love hummus.

 

[jamiel]

With the Arab population in Detroit, hummus is very popular...no potluck is complete without a big tray. A coworker makes delicious hummus and says the way to do it is to cook a big batch of chickpeas, then freeze the unpureed beans...that way you can get the fresh citrus/herb flavor right before you make it.

Jl

 

[sudsmaster]

Received the gasket kits today, and installed in the 16 qt Magic Seal and 4 qt Presto pressure cookers. The old relief valve in the Presto was a bit scary - all hardened so I had to crack it apart with a pair of pliers to remove it. Probably wouldn't have done its job as a safety release valve. The lid gasket was ok, but replace it anyway. The Magic Seal lid gasket and pressure release valve were still somewhat pliant, but replaced them as a matter of course (keeping the old ones just in case).

Also got an instruction book for the Magic Seal canner so I know what to do on the test run. Just have to clean and polish up the Magic Seal before I do a test run with it.

 

[mattl]

Bean soup!

Washernut -- Bill -- made some bean soup based on your recipe and I have to say I was impressed. I guess I never let it cook long enough before. I used the bone and some of my leftover Honey Baked Ham. Soup turned out a rich dark color with a very good taste and texture. It's a keeper! I'll be making it again soon! Thanks.

 

[drhardee]

Helicaldrive...

Steve (Helicaldrive),

The next time you're at that store, if you wouldn't mind, please check for me to see what the price on that avocado Presto unit is! If it's not outrageous, I just might ask you to snatch it up for me, or I can ask my sister in St. Louis to get it if she's in that neighborhood. She lives in House Springs, but works downtown.

 

[sudsmaster]

Just got back from Orchard Supply Hardware. They have a 23 qt aluminum pressure canner for $99, and an 8 qt Presto for $49.

Bought the "Ball Blue Book" on canning. Interesting read!

 

[joeekaitis]

I"ve photo-documented the preparation of garlic mashed potatoes using a pressure cooker. Whaddya think?

 

[petek]

Do you just steam the potatoes or are they covered and boiled in the pc?

 

[joeekaitis]

They're pressure-steamed in the basket above the water.

 

[petek]

I usually boil mine in the pc.. how many minutes do they need to steam once you start timing?

 

[tomturbomatic]

Gaskets for original Revere Ware Pressure cookers

The pressure pans were made in the 40s & 50s and have the cover that slides under a flange: There are 7 new recently manufactured gaskets for sale on eBay. I just bought one. I'm sorry I cannot give you a direct link because when I try, it brings up my transaction page. Search Revere then Kitchen then go to page 5 and it's near the bottom or you can use this number Item number: 190187829636

When I found my cookers in the 80s, Revere gave me the name of a rubber company that had sold relacements, but they no longer had the gaskets so this is a find. Tom

 

[joeekaitis]

''I usually boil mine in the pc.. how many minutes d

I steam them for 6 minutes, turn off the heat and open the pressure release valve. Mashin' tender every time.

 

[washernut]

Matt,
Glad you liked the recipe....a friend of mines mom makes her scalloped potatoes in her pressure cooker. I'm going to try and get her recipe....I will post it when I do. It sounds very interesting to me .

Bill

 

[petek]

I wouldn't mind that scalloped potato recipe to try out.

 

[rp2813]

My sister got that same avocado Presto for a wedding gift in 1972. She used it once, apparently didn't know what she was doing and the thing ran dry. She was afraid to ever use it again. I think it probably ended up a garage sale item. I got my mom a 4 quart avocado Mirro and she barely used it. I have it now, and when I'm doing small things that's the one I use, otherwise it's the larger Presto.

Pressure cookers require a bit of attention from the user to start. I hang around until the weight starts to jiggle, then adjust the flame, set the timer and walk away. I've never done anything huge like a pot roast in one but want to try. I really like the way they cut the cooking time dramatically and also produce succulent results.

The explosion stories are all from the old days. Even PC's pushing 40 years old have safety valves. The main thing to be sure about is that there are no gasket leaks. My Mirro seems to have a trouble spot near the handle and if that's spewing steam, I have to work with the lid to make it seal as pressure builds, even with a new gasket. So if steam is escaping from anywhere it shouldn't be, abort the process if it doesn't stop on its own fairly quickly. Otherwise you'll end up with no water and a burned mess.