Electric pressure cookers

A brief aside towards the cooking connection with gardening.

A sudden interest (from my gardening companion), who isn’t a cook, in slow cooker recipes from an NPR report on Hugh Acheson (via a new cookbook) had me looking into slow cookers (I haven’t ever had one). Acheson was writing about much more flavorful takes on slow cooking than I’d read about (and I read a lot of recipes).

So I was rather amazed to stumble on all of the Instant Pot/electric pressure cookers that combine a slow cooker with what is a truly remarkable modern pressure cooker. I remembered my Mom’s stovetop pressure-cooker from decades ago. Scary.

But the Instant Pot mini that I bought (thinking I could entice my gardening companion into learning how to cook a few healthy things) — well, it’s been amazing.

I never thought that a new electric kitchen appliance would be so interesting. I’ve pressure-cooked all sorts of things, from meat to butternut squash to brown rice to beans (which I’d stopped cooking on the stove-top, because it was so time-consuming, and tedious on our gas stove.)

Whether I can get my gardening companion to pay attention about how to cook in it — well, I’ve made him pay attention a couple of times, but I think I’ll just need to put together my personal version of easy, dump in the instant pot dishes, based on the recipes that I’ve gathered online, and thanks to Hugh Acheson’s and Melissa Clark’s cookbooks.

He seems impressed by the speed and tastiness of the results so far, so maybe I can get him to be potentially self-sufficient (I worry about what might happen if he was suddenly on his own!)






Comments

  1. I like the idea of a pressure cooker. I've never used one. But I also like the idea of a slow cooker, which is kind of the opposite cooking approach. I do have a slow-cooker crockpot, and I use it all the time for roasts, chili, soups, Italian sausage/sauce/peppers, you name it. So convenient to put all the ingredients in and then the food is ready when it's time for supper! Combining a slow cooker with a pressure cooker--now that's an interesting concept!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I enjoy hearing from fellow nature lovers and gardeners. Let me know your thoughts.