Pressure Cooker Help

[LindellProStaf]

I hope you don't mind me bringing this old post back up.  The wife and I have been talking about getting a pressure cooker for years.  We just have done the water bath for pickles and want to do more canning.  Well a guy needs to do research you know.  That is as much fun as the purchase as far as I am concerned.  As we sit here having our morning coffee I said, well let me check HSO.  The boys there will have some info for us on pressure cookers. lolol   I love it.  This page is great!  I read all of this post and will read the other posts as well. Now I will be looking for fun things to practice on. Everything that came out of my Grandmas pressure cooker was fantastic.  

[reinhard1]

I don't own one myself and have never used one but I have friends that do use them and love them.  I'll be interested in further comments myself.  good luck.

[LindellProStaf]

Aha.  I  now know the difference between a pressure cooker and canner.  I guess we are buying a pressure canner.  We want to do qts of veggies.  I would like to get a pressure cooker too someday for cooking meals in.  I suppose a guy can cook meals in a canner too although it is quite a bit bigger.  

I love chuck roasts.  That with potatoes and carrots and onions is what I have in mind..

[delcecchi]

Aha.  I  now know the difference between a pressure cooker and canner.  I guess we are buying a pressure canner.  We want to do qts of veggies.  I would like to get a pressure cooker too someday for cooking meals in.  I suppose a guy can cook meals in a canner too although it is quite a bit bigger.  

I love chuck roasts.  That with potatoes and carrots and onions is what I have in mind..

If you REALLY love pot roast, a pressure canner could cook like 6 at a time. 

The new pressure cookers are nice....

From Cooks Illustrated

Overview:

Pressure cookers can be intimidating. Before I began testing them, I had heard countless stories about ­exploding ­cookers—usually ones belonging to someone’s grandmother. This made the whole enterprise seem mysterious and dangerous, or at least very messy. But after spending weeks testing 12 models of pressure cookers, I can report that they are as safe as any other cookware—and definitely worth getting to know. Pressure cookers are surprisingly simple to use and in less than an hour can produce food that tastes as if you spent all day over the stove. You don’t have to tell a soul that your savory, fork-tender pot roast, pulled pork, short ribs, or stew cooked in record time—and most of that time was hands-off. Dried beans are creamy and tender after just 10 minutes under pressure. Risotto needs just 6 minutes under pressure to reach the perfect consistency. Recipes once saved for weekends, or the slow cooker, can be started when you get home from work.

Pressure cookers function based on a very simple principle: In a tightly sealed pot, the boiling point of liquid is higher. As the pot heats up, pressure begins to build. This pressure makes it more difficult for water molecules to turn to vapor—therefore raising the boiling point from 212 to 250 degrees. Why does this matter? The steam generated in the cooker, which can be at temperatures up to 38 degrees higher than what's possible in a normal pot, makes food cook faster. And because the pot stays closed, cooking requires much less liquid than usual, and flavors concentrate. As a bonus, this method also uses less energy: Once pressure is reached, you cook with the heat turned down as low as possible, and cooking times are short.

Pressure cookers have been around for a long time. In 1679, French mathematician and physicist Denis Papin invented the “steam digester,” the earliest-known pressure cooker; still, it wasn’t until the beginning of the 20th century that smaller pressure cookers were introduced for home cooks. After World War II, demand boomed for pressure cookers, and some accounts note that unscrupulous manufacturers made shoddy cookers that were prone to explosions. Older cookers had “jiggle tops” that rattled and puffed while they cooked. Today’s models use spring-loaded valves, which are silent and vent mere wisps of steam when pressurized. In other words, today’s pressure cookers are quieter and simpler and have many more safety features than your grandmother’s cooker did.

Across-the-board improvements over the years didn’t necessarily mean that all models would work equally well, and we wondered what characteristics to look for in a good pressure cooker. They certainly look similar, resembling large metal saucepans or stockpots, but with heavy lids that have removable silicone rings, called sealing gaskets, around their inner rims. We selected sturdy, nonreactive stainless steel over aluminum cookers and came up with eight stovetop cookers—most with an 8-quart capacity—from a wallet-friendly $65 or so to a whopping $280. (We tested four electric pressure cookers separately. Ultimately, we preferred the stovetop models. See “Electric Pressure Cookers” under related content.) We used each of the models to prepare risotto; chicken stock; beef stew; Boston baked beans; and thick, meaty tomato sauce with pork ribs. Since plenty of recipes call for sautéing food in the bottom of the pot before sealing the lid for pressure cooking, we checked evenness of browning by cooking crêpes in the pan bottoms.

Sizing Them Up

While 6-quart cookers are popular, we soon realized the value of more capacity. First, you must never fill a pressure cooker more than two-thirds of the way (lines indicate the maximum level), which limits the available space. Some recipes don’t fit in 6-quart cookers, including ours for chicken stock (for our test, we had to cut down the recipe). And if you can make 3 quarts of stock in the same time it takes to make 2 quarts, why not buy a pot that allows you to produce a bigger quantity?

The shape of the pot was equally important. Low, wide cookers provided a generous cooking surface, helping food brown thoroughly and efficiently before the cook closes the pot. Wide pots also let us brown meat in fewer batches. And testers found this shape easier to see and reach into while ­working. The narrowest among our cookers was a mere 6 1/8 inches across; most were around 7 1/2 inches, but the best performers had interior cooking surfaces of 9 inches in diameter—almost as much space as you get across the bottom of a 12-inch skillet.

But shape plays another role: Stovetop pressure cookers are made with a thick metal disk base (an aluminum disk covered by stainless steel, attached to the pan bottom) to retain and regulate heat. Every manufacturer warns that you must keep the heat source directly under that disk, since flames licking up the sides of the pot will damage the locking mechanisms in the handles and the sealing gasket around the rim. Trouble is, because that disk base is expensive to make, manufacturers keep it as small as possible: In many of our models, the disks were even smaller than the bases of the pots, which ballooned out over the burner. In these models food routinely scorched wherever the base did not shield it from direct heat, and later we spent more time scrubbing those pots clean. Using a smaller flame under a smaller disk also means the pot heats up more slowly, taking minutes longer to reach pressure—minutes that you’ll need to wait by the stove. Straight-sided pots with broad disks performed best in our cooking tests, and cleanup was easier with them.

This leads us to the next point: steady heating. With stovetop cookers, you bring the contents up to a boil, wait for the pressure indicator to show that it’s at high pressure, and then turn down the heat as low as possible while maintaining pressure. This operation was dead easy with some pots but tricky with other models, in which the pressure tended to drop after we turned down the heat, forcing us to hover, adjusting it up and down like a yo-yo. Cookers whose pressure dropped too readily produced meat, beans, and rice that were not sufficiently tender by the end of the cooking time; after tasting these, we had to close the pot and bring it back to pressure for several minutes to finish the job, introducing guesswork. What made the difference? The bottom thickness of the cookers ranged from 4.64 millimeters to 7.24 millimeters. The top two performers were the thickest, both more than 7 millimeters thick. These cookers’ wide, thick bottoms retained heat well, resulting in quickly reaching pressure, followed by steady, hands-off cooking.

In pressure-cooker recipes, cooking times begin only after you reach the desired pressure, which is indicated with a pop-up stick or button on the cooker. Maddeningly, some manufacturers set these indicators deep in a hole, making us lean over the cooker to see them, while others were confusing to interpret. The best models had pressure indicators that were brightly colored, prominently raised, and easy to read at a glance from several feet away.

Getting Steamed

Pressure cookers always require a minimal amount of liquid in order to generate the steam that cooks the food. As the cookers heat up, valves in their lids generally release a trickle of steam right until the moment they come to pressure, but a few continued venting lightly throughout cooking. Cookers that allow less evaporation are less prone to scorch during cooking from loss of liquid. Though evaporation loss didn’t affect the final quality of the particular dishes we tested, it can be an issue in recipes that call for only a small amount of liquid. Therefore, we gave points to models with little evaporative loss. When we heated 32 ounces of water for an hour at high pressure, the average loss was just more than 2 ounces. But one model lost 5.6 ounces—more than 1/2 cup of water, or 17.5 percent of the total. Many of our preferred models, on the other hand, evaporated only 0.8 ounce.

Finally, we measured the temperature reached by each cooker at high pressure—after all, temperature correlates directly with pressure. “High pressure” for a pressure cooker is considered to be 15 pounds per square inch (psi) above atmospheric pressure, which is reached when the liquid in the cooker is boiling at 250 degrees. The majority of pressure-cooker recipes call for this standard. But most of these cookers never achieved that temperature. We boiled water for 30 minutes at high pressure with each model and measured the internal temperature. We found that our three top-performing cookers reached or came closest to 250 degrees, but as we went down the lineup, cookers’ top temperatures steadily declined: The lowest reached only 230 degrees, which is 6 psi. (The bottom-ranked cooker was the exception—it failed on other factors.) It was no great mystery, then, why we’d found the cooking results less satisfying in our bottom-ranking models. Food wasn’t fully cooked at the designated time in these pots, forcing us to close the lid and repressurize, unsure how much longer to cook. (One took 10 extra minutes, adding almost 50 percent to the original cooking time.)

After testing was complete, we had a clear winner. Sturdily built, with a low and wide profile, steady heating, an easily monitored pressure indicator, a convenient automatically locking lid, and low evaporation, this cooker was a pleasure to use and produced perfect finished dishes. It was also the only cooker in our testing to reach 250 degrees, or 15 psi, at high pressure, so it should perform accurately in all standard pressure-cooker recipes. But at its price, it’s an investment. Our Best Buy performed nearly as well at a fraction of the price. It is similar in shape and size to our winner, and while it’s not as expensively constructed (it is lighter and feels more “economy”) and its peak temperature under pressure fell slightly short of the 250-degree target, its cooking results were very good. Above all, it’s easy to operate, even if you’re new to pressure cooking.

Methodology:

We tested eight stovetop pressure cookers. They are listed in order of preference. All were purchased online.

Weight: We measured the total weight of each cooker with its lid.

Bottom Thickness: We measured the thickness of the bottoms of the cooking pots. Thicker bottoms generally held more heat for steadier cooking under pressure.

Cooking Surface Diameter: We measured inside across the bottom, indicating actual space for cooking.

Highest Temperature: We measured the temperature inside the cooker under high pressure for 30 minutes and noted the peak temperature reached. Because temperature is directly related to pressure, this indicates the pounds per square inch (psi) of pressure generated by each cooker. Since recipes calling for “high pressure” are designed to cook at 15 psi, which is achieved at 250 degrees, pots that could reach 250 degrees were rated higher.

Cooking: We prepared our pressure-cooker recipes for risotto, Boston baked beans, chicken stock, a meaty tomato sauce with pork, and beef stew, rating the dishes’ tastes and textures and the cookers’ steadiness of heating and evenness of browning (which we also checked by making crêpes). 

Ease of Use: We evaluated shape, size, weight, and handle comfort; the design of locking mechanisms, pressure indicators, and steam-release mechanisms; cleanup; and other features that enhance user-friendliness.

Evaporation Loss: We added 2 pounds of water to each cooker, weighed the whole cooker with water inside, and boiled it at high pressure for 1 hour, checking the weight at 20, 40, and 60 minutes to determine the amount of water that had evaporated. Cookers with lower evaporation levels rated higher.

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• Highly Recommended - Winner

  Fissler Vitaquick 8½-Quart Pressure Cooker 

  Solidly constructed, with a low, wide profile that made browning food easy, this well-engineered cooker has an automatic lock and an easy-to-monitor pressure valve. The only cooker to reach 250 degrees at high pressure, it cooked food to perfection in the time range suggested by the recipes.

  • Cooking ★★★
  • Ease of Use ★★★
  • Evaporation Loss ★★★

  $279.95 

   

• 

  Highly Recommended - Best Buy

  Fagor Duo 8-Quart Stainless Steel Pressure Cooker

  Performing much like our winner at a fraction of the price (though lighter and less smooth to latch), this cooker has low sides and a broad cooking surface; its pressure indicator and dial are easy to monitor. Falling just short of the 250-degree target, it performs well nonetheless.

  • Cooking ★★★
  • Ease of Use ★★★
  • Evaporation Loss ★★★

  $109.95

• 

  Recommended

  Presto 8-Quart Stainless Steel Pressure Cooker

  The lowest-priced cooker in our lineup, this flimsier model has a hard-to-monitor recessed pressure indicator and bulging sides that encourage scorching. Still, its low, wide profile was good for browning and stirring; it cooked meats and beans well. This model has no low-pressure setting, the usual temperature for cooking grains.

  • Cooking ★★½
  • Ease of Use ★★
  • Evaporation Loss ★★★

  $64.54

• 

  Recommended

  Tramontina 8-Quart Heavy-Duty Pressure Cooker

  A narrower cooking surface forced us to brown meat in more batches, but the red pressure indicator was simple to monitor and its controls are straightforward. The cooker didn’t reach 250 degrees, so we wound up with slightly too-firm beans, beef, and risotto at the end of the cooking time.

  • Cooking ★★½
  • Ease of Use ★★
  • Evaporation Loss ★★

  $99.95

  BUY NOW
• 

  Recommended with Reservations

  Kuhn Rikon Duromatic 8½-Quart Stockpot Pressure Cooker

  This cooker’s small disk bottom caused scorching and forced us to keep flames low, delaying reaching pressure. It is deeper and narrower than we prefer. The pressure indicator was easy to monitor, though the pressure often dipped, forcing us to hover to adjust the temperature. That said, this model produced tender beans and stew.

  • Cooking ★★
  • Ease of Use ★★
  • Evaporation Loss ★

  $179.99

• 

  Recommended with Reservations

  Fagor Futuro 6-Quart Pressure Cooker

  While this pot’s design was light and maneuverable, with a low, wide shape, its 6-quart capacity (the biggest size available) was a drawback. Bulging sides hang over the disk bottom, leading to scorching. Beans and beef weren’t properly tender at the end of the cooking time.

  • Cooking ★½
  • Ease of Use ★
  • Evaporation Loss ★★½

  $95.73

• 

  Not Recommended

  Magefesa Practika Plus Stainless Steel 8-Quart Super Fast Pressure Cooker

  With a tall, moderately narrow pot that overhangs its even narrower disk bottom and a hard-to-interpret, recessed pressure indicator, this model created extra work. Its valves made odd noises; it sometimes struggled to retain pressure and took longer than other cookers to make tender beef stew and beans.

  • Cooking ★½
  • Ease of Use ★
  • Evaporation Loss ★★

  $77.84

• 

  Not Recommended

  WMF Perfect Plus 8½-Quart Pressure Cooker

  While solidly built, this cooker had a tall, narrow shape that made more work, as did its fussy extra valve. One sample stopped working properly halfway through testing. While the food wasn’t bad, it was not worth the effort. For the price, this cooker should be perfect.

 

Edited September 6, 2015 by delcecchi

[reinhard1]

Thanks for the great information as usual Del !!!!.  good luck.

[LindellProStaf]

I would be in chuck heaven, cooking a half dozen chuckies at one time....    hhhmmm     :-)  

[reinhard1]

You mean like the meal I'm making today?  My wife's mom has her 90th birthday today and that's what she wanted.  good luck.

[delcecchi]

Well, then here are some tips if you are pressure cooking them

Pressure-Cooker Pot Roast

From Cook's Illustrated | January/February 2014

 

Why this recipe works:

Most pressure-cooker pot roast recipes sell themselves on speed alone, often producing overcooked vegetables, fatty meat, and bland, watery gravy. In order to put the pressure cooker to work for us, we made a few key adjustments. First we split the roast into two smaller pieces to speed cooking and allow for better trimming of fat. We decreased the liquid in the pot to account for very little evaporation. And we also chose to purposefully overcook the vegetables and then puree them into the gravy for better flavor and consistency. Finally, we added some baking soda to encourage the flavorful Maillard reaction in the pressurized pot.

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Pressure-Cooker Pot Roast

Pressure cookers are back and better than ever. Too bad one of the appliance’s most classic dishes hasn’t seen the same improvement.

 

Serves 6 to 8

If using an electric pressure cooker, turn off the cooker immediately after the pressurized cooking time and let the pressure release naturally for 10 minutes; do not let the cooker switch to the warm setting. To adjust for differences among pressure cookers, cook the roasts for the recommended time, check for doneness, and, if needed, repressurize and cook up to 10 minutes longer. A half teaspoon of red wine vinegar can be substituted for the wine.

Ingredients

• 1 (3 1/2- to 4-pound) boneless beef chuck-eye roast, pulled into 2 pieces at natural seam and trimmed of large pieces of fat
• Kosher salt and pepper
• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 4 pieces
• 1 onion, sliced thick
• 1 celery rib, sliced thick
• 1 carrot, peeled and sliced thick
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 cup beef broth
• 2 teaspoons soy sauce
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 tablespoon red wine
• 1 sprig fresh thyme

Instructions

1.  

   1. Using 3 pieces of kitchen twine per roast, tie each roast crosswise at equal intervals into loaf shape. Season roasts with salt and pepper and set aside.

   2. Melt 2 tablespoons butter in pressure cooker over medium heat; refrigerate remaining 2 tablespoons butter. Add onion, celery, carrot, and baking soda to pot and cook until onion breaks down and liquid turns golden brown, about 5 minutes. Stir in broth, soy sauce, and bay leaves, scraping up any browned bits. Nestle roasts side by side on top of vegetables in cooker.

   3. Lock lid in place and bring pot to high pressure over high heat, 3 to 8 minutes. As soon as indicator signals that pot has reached high pressure, reduce heat to medium-low and cook for 55 minutes, adjusting heat as needed to maintain high pressure.

   4. Remove pot from heat and let pressure release naturally for 10 minutes. Quick-release any remaining pressure, then remove lid, allowing steam to escape away from you. Transfer roasts to carving board, tent with aluminum foil, and let rest for 20 minutes.

   5. Meanwhile, strain liquid through fine-mesh strainer into fat separator; discard bay leaves. Transfer vegetables in strainer to blender. Let liquid settle for 5 minutes, then pour defatted liquid into blender with vegetables. Blend until smooth, about 1 minute. Transfer sauce to medium saucepan. Add wine, thyme sprig, and 2 tablespoons chilled butter and bring to boil over high heat. Cook until sauce is thickened and measures 3 cups, 5 to 8 minutes.

   6. Remove twine from roasts and slice against grain into ½-inch-thick slices. Transfer meat to serving platter and season with salt to taste. Remove thyme sprig from sauce and season sauce with salt and pepper to taste. Spoon half of sauce over meat. Serve, passing remaining sauce separately.

    

 

A Great Pot Roast for Every Cooker

Most recipes don’t take into account that internal pressure and evaporation loss vary from one pressure cooker to the next. For a pot roast recipe that works in every cooker, here’s what we do.

DITCH POTATOES; PUREE CARROT

Even when we used our best test kitchen tricks, getting the vegetables to cook consistently in different cookers was nearly impossible. So we add only carrot to the pot with the meat and then puree it with the final cooking liquid for a sauce with much improved body and flavor.

USE NATURAL RELEASE

Letting the pressure drop naturally is gentler than quick-releasing the pressure, which can cause the tender meat to fray. But pots don’t naturally release pressure at the same rate, and the food continues to cook as the pressure drops. To ensure consistent results, we let the pressure naturally drop for 10 minutes and then quick-release any remaining pressure (at this point, it won’t be enough pressure to do harm to the roasts).

FINISH SAUCE ON STOVETOP

The amount of steam vented during cooking varies from one pot to the next, and the amount of liquid that the food releases will change from one attempt to the next. For a sauce with just the right consistency (and a deeper flavor), we reduce the pureed cooking liquid and carrot mixture in a saucepan on the stovetop under a watchful eye.

 

Problems Under Pressure

 

Modern pressure cookers are safer, quieter, and more intuitive than the models from 50 years ago. But that doesn’t mean that all models perform the same. When we tested a dozen bestselling stovetop and electric pressure cookers last year, we made a key discovery: No two pots reached the same internal temperature. At high pressure the internal temperature should be 250 degrees (this is because at increased pressure more energy is required to make liquid boil, and more energy translates into a higher temperature).

Yet temperatures varied from as low as 230 degrees to as high as 253 degrees. This variance can make a huge difference not only on the cooking time but also on the final results of a recipe. In most cases, you’ll need to do some trial and error before you get perfect results from your pot. (Note: In the test kitchen, we use our Best Buy, the Fagor Duo 8-Quart Stainless Steel Pressure Cooker.)

[leechlake]

Happy 90th birthday to Mom...thats a great one to make it to.  Feed her like a Queen...

[LindellProStaf]

Thanks Del.  My wife just informed me that she ordered me a pressure "cooker".  The first thing I will try is the recipe that you just posted..   That looks great R1.  I have never seen 3 chuckies lined up like that before...   YOU SIR ARE THE MAN!!!

She ordered me a Presto 01362 6 qt Stainless Steel pressure cooker.  Stainless is better on a flat top stove.  Everything my grandma made in a pressure cooker was awesome.  Now I will start practicing with my own.  It was on sale too on Amazon. $43.99.  I wonder what my wife is working up to..??...   

[delcecchi]

Good luck.  Let us know how it turns out. 

[LindellProStaf]

Will do Del.  She told me the more cooking toys or tools that I have the more I cook instead of her.   Sounds good to me.

[LindellProStaf]

Although she is a good cook, she likes me to cook more.