PRESSURE COOKERS: Love 'em? Hate 'em? Let's go to the poll!

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The way pressure cookers are designed is that the pressure inside actually holds the lid in place tighter. Unless you tried with all your strength, you couldn't remove the lid of a pressure cooker that's under pressure.

We don't use ours an awful lot, maybe 6 or 7 times per year. But the food that you make in it comes out sooooo goood. Our favorite is either pot roast of corned beef. It is falling apart good after only 45 minutes.

Remember, to get the best flavor and appearance from pressure cooked meats is to brown (or sear) the meat really good before adding the water and pressurizing the cooker.

Here is my favorite Pot Roast Recipe:

1 - 3 or 4 Lb Pot Roast
3 Garlic Cloves
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp Oregano
1/2 tsp Basil
1/2 White Onion, sliced into rings
1/4 Cup Vegetable Oil
Russet Potatoes to serve all
Carrots to serve all

Pour vegetable oil into cooker and turn up to high heat. Immediately add garlic
and a few of the onion rings. When oil is hot, put roast in, reduce heat to medium, add the spices to the roast and sear all sides of the roast until nicely browned.

When done browning, place roast in cooking position. Then put the remainder of the onion rings on top of the roast. Then add enough water to just cover the roast.
Cover the cooker and pressurize on high heat. When the thing on top starts jiggling reduce heat until the thing jiggles about once every 30 seconds. Cook this way for about 40 minutes.

Now depressurize by running cold water on the pressure cooker. Add your potatoes
and carrots and cover and repressurize. Cook for about 10 more minutes. Then turn off heat and let the cooker depressurize on it's own (about 10 minutes). Dinner is ready!

Sometimes we'll do the carrots separately in the microwave and put a brown sugar glaze on them. That goes very well with this dish.

Let me also say that if you come in the house on a cold, snowy day and smell this cooking your appetite will definitely go wild!
 
E for me. I've got bits and pieces from several (the bottom and rack from a mid-50s Revere Ware cooker...I think it had a flexible lid that kind of slotted in), my grandmother's Mirro, another Mirro from a garage sale, and a Chinese one from Sears 2 Christmases ago.

Lots of nice memories though...my mom only used it for boiling lots of potatoes (potato salad or Thanksgiving mashed potatoes) or once or twice for porcupines (!) which are meatballs with uncooked rice in them cooked in tomato sauce...recipe is in Joy of Cooking, I believe. My memories of her mother (my grandmother) using her Mirro was more using the bottom as a heavy saucepan to make candied grapefruit peel at Christmas time. Dodo made 2 kinds---the stuff that was encased in a sugar shell; and the stuff that was more translucent and rolled in granulated sugar. MMM good.
 
B

B. A high-school chum turned his back on a commercial pressure-cooker in a restaurant and it exploded.
Yes, skin grafts and the like. I do not know if the unit was being operated correctly.
That aside, I want one. My spouse is very skittish. I think we're gonna take the plunge.
I prefer an electric, and probably new. Is there a new one not made in China? I'll take Germany, Japan or anything else.
A vintage Presto electric would be the bomb... excuse the pun.
 
I think electric pressure cookers are a recent development, like in the last 10 years or so. I have never seen any before that.

What you could do is pick up a older Mirro or Presto cooker on Ebay for a cheap price just to try it to see if you like it before investing in a really good one.

I found a brand new never used 1961 Mirro (just like mom had)complete with recipe book and instructions for $35.00 last year. It was the heavy duty aluminum with the flat surfaces. But I have seen new SS Presto PC's out there for as little as $50.00. If we used ours more, we'd get a SS one. One thing is I like the jiggle, jiggle, jiggle sound a PC makes. The newer european ones don't do that.

We had a newer Presto a few years ago. It had these microgrooves that ran around the inside of the pot. After cooking all kinds of food debris was stuck in those grooves and most difficult to get out. Eventually it ended up in the garbage can.
It was only a 4 qt unit which even just for the two of us we found to be too small.

Safety features of pressure cookers:

The lid is held on by pressure.
They have safety valves that release pressure if it builds up too high.
If you don't have the lid on properly it won't pressurize.

The only place someone could screw up on is not having enough water in the cooker and the food could boil dry and burn. If that happened, the jiggle thing would stop jiggling.

So they are basically foolproof!
 
Now the things that scared me are the "broaster" cookers. You see them in fried chicken restaurants. They are like a pressure cooker, but you use oil instead of water in them. The chicken that comes out of them is excellent, but I'd be scared to use one in my home. Hot oil burns a hell of a lot worse than water.

I wonder if that's what happened to the guy above with the pressure cooker in the restaurant exploding?
 
It depends

Allen---

There were electric pressure cookers made by Presto in the late 60s-early 70s. Basically, just a Presto cooker with an element, Control Master, and legs to keep the element off of the counter top. I have two.

The new style of electric pressure cookers have been around since the 90s. I don't know much about them. No desire to drop the big, big bucks on one.

Lawrence/Maytagbear
 
Pressure cookers are VERY SAFE!

Specially now that we live in a world where everything ends in a millionaire sue.

Some decades ago, pressure cookers had nothing more than the safety screw (usually red, a screw that pops and relieves the pressure before the PC explode.

Thanks to the lawyers, nowadays the PCs have so many redundant safety devices that even intentionally it's virtually impossible to explode a PC.

Note that "explode" a PC is one thing, trigger the safety devices is other much different.The second situation makes a mess, but won't harm even if one is stand next to the PC. The first situation causes a huge destruction.

Answering: I love my pressure cookers, I almost always use them. And with proper atention, they aren't danger at all!

Something I'd love to have is one of those american style pressure canners. I'd love to make my own canned foods.
 
Electric vs electronic. While both are electric the newer electronic ones like mine are just say it again "Set it and forget it" . No timing to be done, just listen for the beep and the pot goes into "keep warm".
 
Smoker

There is one out now that supposedly doubles as a pressure smoker as well. Not sure how it works, but that might be cool!

Malcolm
 
Pressure Canning

Thomas,

Is home canning something that is done with any great frequency in Brazil? Just curious; having access to jars and such for canning is vital.

Hunter
 
A (sort of)

When I worked in a hotel kitchen 1 of our banqueet cooks was blanching vegetables in the pressure steamer when BOOM! the door latch failed on the top compartment and the door blew off. Out came a huge cloud of steam and the cook jumped over the table and hit the deck. I was in the dishroom (Hobart FT-820 equiped for those who like DWs) and heard the noise so went running and found the aftermath.
 

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