Electric Pressure Cooker

What is the most important part of a new appliance?

The directions, of course. So when I bought the new electric pressure cooker.. I got a wonderful price of 35 dollars through EBay.. you would think that I would have held on to the directions. Well no..

So I didn't want to buy another just yet. And I did not want a 35 dollar door stop... yet. So I figured that I could make something simple.  I just had to make sure that I had enough liquid in it that it wouldn't dry up and explode in the kitchen.

I have used pressure cookers in the past that sit over the stove and chirp chirp away for a hour or so and the result was pretty nice corn beef in less than the four hours it takes to make corned beef in a pot over a slow simmer. But.. its been a long time.  With this set up you take the whole pot and you run cold water over it until the steam subsides inside of the pot. Its easy then to separate the handles and out it comes. The key to this set up is to make sure that the seal is functional and that the little weight is appropriate for the the function of the food inside. You do your own timing when the weight moves up and down as it maintains its pressure.

Some of these concepts work with the new pressure cooker and some do not. The seal is still important. The area around the release needs to be clean. The pot does not go under the cold water before the steam is released. In the electric pressure cooker the pressure is allowed to release naturally if there are soupy kind of material in the cooker. If it is just meat that is cooked, a manual release button is provided at the top of the cooker that allows the pressure to release quickly. Caution is the operative word around  hot stuff so being careful is important as steam will burn.

I figured that I would make up some super rich chicken noodle soup. I took the dark meat pieces off a chicken (drums, thighs wings and backbone) and put them in the inner pot. I added a chopped up onion and a couple of smashed garlic cloves and a chopped up stalk of celery.  I added a quart of chicken stock and set the timer for 35 minutes.  When the process was through, I let it set with the cord pulled for about 20 minutes. I pulled the chicken parts out and pulled the meat off the bones. The stock was dropped into a pot of the stove where I added the 8oz of egg yolk free noodles. When they were finished I added the chicken off the bone to the bottom of the dish, put the noodle and stock over it.. and it ended up being a very nice chicken noodle soup. Its a soup that you still have to watch for little bones. A slice of french bread was used to soak up the stock. Sue needed seconds on this.

The next venture was with a 2.6 pound chuck roast. I browned it first with a skillet with a coating of pepper. It went into the pot with an added a chopped onion and 2 cups of beef bullion. It turned out great too at 35 minutes. I think that the next time I do the beef it will need to go to 45 or and hour and Sue really likes it broken down. It was perfectly acceptable as far as a roast beef could be. I sliced it cross gain like a corned beef. 

Even though it looks like someone kicked my red and stainless table top appliance in the side. All functionality seems to be there. Wolfgang Puck and HSN was selling these models for over a 100 dollars. Mine came from Ebay through a scratch and dent re conditioner.

I know that with limited counter space this appliance does not seem a viable option. It is if you don't want to use a crockpot or have to time to wait for a nice weekday dinner to be done from an economy cut of meat.

In the mean time I will continue to look for the instructions and recipe guide.

: ) Pat