With today’s busy lifestyles and budget crunches, using a pressure cooker is a great way to make meals in a hurry. It’s ideal for preparing healthy foods because it preserves flavors and nutrients, and tenderizes leaner cuts of meat. To make it even better, it cooks foods three to ten times faster than ordinary methods. Some foods, in fact, cook even more quickly in a pressure cooker than they do in a microwave!
Safety Comes First!
If safety has been a concern and caused you to put off buying a pressure cooker, take a look at today’s models. Today’s models have improved designs, and have not just one, but sometimes up to three safety features that prevent accidents. Use common sense and follow the cooking and safety procedures found in the pressure cooker’s manual. That will make it more likely to burn yourself taking something out of the oven than have a problem with the pressure cooker.
To stay safe, just remember to never open the pressure cooker while it is still under pressure!
Why You Need A Pressure Cooker
In any financial climate, a nice new pressure cooker is a good investment for healthy cooking. It will repay you with many years of hard service in your ktichen. Some of the advantages of using a pressure cooker include:
- Using less energy because it takes less time for foods to cook, saving money and energy resources.
- Pressure cookers work at all altitudes. All that’s needed is to adjsut the amount of pressure and cooking times.
- To cook a variety of foods at one time, using a rack allows the entire meal to be cooked quickly in one pot.
- It cooks food fast so saves time, and tenderizes cheaper cuts of meat, so saves money, too.
- Nutrients are preserved it the airtight environment, and because foods cook quickly with so little liquid.
Not only is a pressure cooker great for cooking meals, but it’s bigger cousin, the pressure canner, is absolutely essential for canning many vegetables and meats.
Picking Just The Right Pressure Cooker
The first decision is whether to buy an aluminum or a stainless steel cooker. The aluminum pressure cookers are more economical to buy, and more lightweight. These types are good conductors of heat. However, unlike most other aluminum cookware, there are no pressure cookers with nonstick coatings. Nonstick finishes don’t hold up well in the high temperature environment of a pressure cooker.
Although more expensive than aluminum, stainless steel pressure cookers are also heavier. The good thing is they have the same long lasting, lustrous finish common to most stainless steel cookware. Choose a model with a bimetal base though, because stainless steel is a poor conductor of heat and the bimetal base will improve the cooking performance.
How To Choose The Correct Size Pressure Cooker.
A pressure cooker is usually sold by the total liquid capacity. However, depending on what food is being cooked, in reality you can only use half to two thirds of their total liquid capacity. The most commonly available models come in the following sizes:
- 4-quart: This is a good size for a single person or couple. An entire meal for 1-2 people can be cooked in this size, but it would likely only have room for a single course for a bigger family, such as vegetables.
- 6-quart: A great size for families, this is probably the most popular sized model for cooking.
- 8-quart: This size is best for bigger families. It can also be used for pressure canning pint and half-pint jars.
Larger pressure cookers, such as the 17 or 22 quart models, are generally referred to and used as pressure canners. It would take a large group of people to warrant pressure cooking in such a large size.
The Advantages Of A Pressure Cooker!
A pressure cooker is a great addition in today’s kitchens. It’s convenient, safe, saves money, and helps the cook prepare healthful foods. This is one kind of pressure in the kitchen that ends up being a good thing!
