Chapter 2
The Pressure Cooker: Fact versus Fiction
In This Chapter
Tracing the evolution of pressure cookers, from bum rap to unbeatable value
Appreciating the many advantages pressure cookers have to offer
A late Baby Boomer, I had heard about pressure cookers but had never really seen one in operation until, as an undergraduate, I went to study in Spain. I shared a furnished apartment with three native Spanish students where, because I was the only one who knew my way around a kitchen, I became the appointed cook. In the kitchen was an 8-liter, jiggler-valve pressure cooker. Not sure what to do with it — and in all honesty somewhat apprehensive about using it — I at first put it away in the back of the cupboard.
A few weeks later, I went home with one of my roommates. The first thing I noticed as we walked into his family’s apartment was a terrible racket coming from the kitchen. There on the stove sat a very noisy pot with a valve that hissed and spit as it slowly spun around. After eating the delicious stew that had been made in the pressure cooker, my curiosity got the better of me and I asked tons of questions about pressure cooking. Before I knew it, I was using the pressure cooker three to four times a week and whipping up meals in about half the time!
Upon returning to New York, I bought an inexpensive aluminum pressure cooker. This was in 1979, and no one I knew owned a pressure cooker or had ever used one. Nevertheless, I cooked with mine as often as possible, amazing (and perhaps scaring) family and friends — back then, only health-food diehards and hippies were using pressure cookers, mostly to cook beans and grains. Now, a little more than 30 years later, more than 2 million pressure cookers are sold each year in this country alone!
I couldn’t live without my collection of pressure cookers. In fact, I have at least seven or eight in my pantry on any given day, depending on whether or not my “loaners” have made it back home from friends who frequently borrow them. My pressure cookers get me out of many a mealtime dilemma when 6:00 rolls around and I have yet to begin cooking. Depending on how many people I have to cook for, I may have up to four pressure cookers cooking away on my stove! The pressure cooker enables me to get dinner on the table, on average, up to 70 percent faster than other cooking methods.
Time savings are just one of the many benefits pressure cookers have to offer. I tell you about the others later in this chapter. But first, I dispel some myths that have repressed the pressure cooker’s popularity over the years.
Dispelling Fears about Pressure Cookers
No housewares product has ever been as misunderstood and underutilized in American kitchens as the pressure cooker. Even though pressure cookers are enjoyed by tens of millions of home cooks worldwide without fear and crimination, the United States appears to be the last place on earth where they’re so underused, yet ironically, so much needed.
Why is it, then, that while everyone else around the world relies on pressure cookers, many Americans think pressure cookers are dangerous and terrifying? To understand why so many Americans are leery of using a pressure cooker, you need to understand something about the history of the pressure cooker and go back in time to the period just before and right after World War II.
A pre–WW II timesaver
Based on the success and popularity of 10-gallon home pressure canners, introduced in 1915, inventors began playing around with the idea of a smaller, more user-friendly pot for cooking food on the stovetop in less time. One of the inventors was Alfred Vischer Jr., who, after much trial and error, introduced his Flex-Seal Speed Cooker in 1938 at a New York City trade show. It was the first time a safe, easy-to-use, saucepan-sized pressure cooker was made available for consumer use. Department-store buyers clamored to be the first in town to offer their customers this cookware wonder that afforded home cooks convenience and speed never before seen in the kitchen. Success led to competition, with other American and European manufac-turers introducing their own brands and models of saucepan-sized pressure cookers.
Timing was critical, however, because just as pressure cookers were riding the wave of popularity, manufacturing came to a grinding halt as the United States entered World War II, bringing an end to all civilian production of cookware. This stoppage didn’t hamper pressure-cooker use, however. Faced with limited food supplies and rationing during the war, pressure-cooker owners were encouraged by cookware manufacturers to be patriotic and share their pressure cookers with friends and family so that they, too, could enjoy the benefit of cooking cheap cuts of meat to tender perfection!
The untimely demise of the pressure cooker
At the end of the war, the success of the Vischer pressure-cooker saucepan (as pressure cookers were then called) and postwar consumer demand inspired 85 competitive brands of U.S. pressure-cooker saucepans to flood the market. Although that may seem like a good thing, it was actually the beginning of the end of the pressure-cooker boom — no pun intended!
With so many models to choose from, steep competition caused prices to drop, ultimately affecting the integrity and quality of the products. The all-too-familiar pressure-cooker horror stories that we hear over and over again date from this period — the late 1940s through the early 1950s. Some U.S. manufacturers began to produce inferior-quality pressure-cooker saucepans, and cooks were unhappy with the results. What once was the relatively safe pressure cooker, the home cook’s friend, was now exploding and rupturing, spewing hot food all over clean kitchens. One by one, companies began to drop out of the business, with only those dedicated to the pressure cooker’s development remaining in operation. The damage was done, however, and the pressure cooker’s fate seemingly sealed. It took close to 50 years for American consumers to even consider cooking with a pressure cooker again.
Design changes: A safer, more convenient product
While America was getting on with life after the war, Europe was rebuilding, literally from the ground up. Civil production of most housewares didn’t commence until the 1950s. Fortunately for us, though, our European counterparts continued using their old, prewar pressure cookers after the war. With rapidly growing postwar families and lifestyle changes due to advances in technology, European housewives were concerned with providing their families with traditional home-cooked meals in a relatively short time. Because of this demand and an ongoing interest in pressure cooking, major European manufacturers didn’t delay in improving the basic concept by developing new designs and incorporating improved safety features. (I talk about these features in Chapter 4.) Americans ultimately benefitted from these improvements and advances when major European housewares manufacturers began to ship pressure cookers to the U.S. in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Looking at the Benefits of Using a Pressure Cooker
If asked to give a one-word reason why I own and use a pressure cooker, my answer would be “fast.” Or perhaps “convenient.” No, most definitely “fast” and, well, also “delicious” and “healthy,” because so many nutrients and vitamins are saved when food is cooked in a pressure cooker. Using a pressure cooker helps me produce fast, convenient, delicious, and nutritious food! I guess I’d be hard-pressed to use only a single adjective. For such a simple product, pressure cookers provide an awful lot of bang for the buck! In the following sections, I address these benefits in more detail.
Fixing food fast
Pressure cookers use a combination of pressure and intense high heat from built-up, trapped steam in order to cook food 38 degrees hotter than a conventional saucepan or skillet. By doing so, they cut down on cooking time by up to 70 percent on average. If given the option of spending, say, 30 minutes or an hour and a half cooking, which would you choose? Easy answer, huh? Then why aren’t you using your pressure cooker each and every day?
Check out how much time you can save with just a few of the popular foods I list in Table 2-1.
The best way to begin using your pressure cooker is to leave it out on the stovetop. This way, you’ll be sure to see it when it comes time to cook. I can assure you that the more you use it and see how much time you save, the more cooking you’ll do with it.
Making cooking convenient and clean
Unlike microwaves and other new fast-cooking gadgets, pressure cookers don’t take up any counter space, nor do they require any special or expensive equipment. All you need is your gas or electric stove (halogen and glass cooktops work too) and a kitchen timer.
You can use your pressure cooker to make almost any conceivable type of food, as long as you prepare it with some liquid to create steam and pressure.
Cooking in a pressure cooker is also cleaner than using a conventional saucepan or skillet. First, because the pressure-cooker lid is locked in place, you eliminate the possibility of splattering cooking liquids all over the stove and surrounding areas. Second, when steam is emitted from a bubbling pot, it eventually settles on your stove and counters, leaving behind starch and mineral deposits. Because the steam is trapped in the pressure cooker, so are the starch and minerals.
Saving energy
Pressure cookers are energy efficient. Because they cook up to 70 percent faster on average and are on the stove for a much shorter period, by using them you ultimately reap the rewards of lower energy costs. Moreover, because all the steam stays in the pot while the food cooks, using your pressure cooker keeps your kitchen cooler in the summer than using conventional saucepans and skillets to simmer your food, thus reducing your need for fans or air conditioning. Just be sure to release the steam under a ventilator hood so the steam is vented to the outside.
Offering multifunctionality
When it was first introduced in the late 1990s, the electric pressure cooker had limited distribution and a high price tag. In the years that followed, technology improved, digital controls were added, and prices became more reasonable. Today, electric pressure cookers are the fastest-growing segment of the pressure-cooker category. Besides allowing you to brown food before cooking it under pressure, many of the newer models can also be used as an electric pot for conventional cooking by using the Brown and Keep Warm settings. But the most exciting aspect of electric pressure cookers is the capability some models have to be used as a slow cooker or a rice cooker. These features make this appliance essentially four products in one, eliminating the need to buy more than one gadget.
Doing food deliciously
Even though a pressure cooker cooks up to 70 percent faster on average than conventional cooking methods, you’re basically cooking the food in the same way, building on flavor and appearance as you go along by sautéing, browning, and finishing the dish under pressure so that it cooks thoroughly. The resulting food is cooked to perfection, and it’s tasty, too! And why shouldn’t it be? This is scratch cooking, after all, just sped up by about 70 percent!
Keeping nutrients in and contaminants out
At the risk of showing my age, I’ll ask this question: Do you remember a television commercial from years back for grape jelly that was cooked in a device that looked like a copper still? The gist of the commercial was that all the natural goodness was trapped in the copper tubes to keep in all the good flavor. Guess what? They were right, plus, the jelly probably had more nutrients in it, too!
Studies performed at the Analytic Chemical Laboratory at the Agronomic National Institute in Paris, France, show that valuable minerals and vitamins normally wash out and are poured down the drain when foods are cooked in conventional saucepans of water. These vitamins and minerals are retained to a much higher degree when steamed or cooked in a pressure cooker.
Because steam replaces the air space in the pot that isn’t occupied by food, the food doesn’t oxidize and change color as quickly. Furthermore, the longer food is cooked, the more color and flavor it loses. That’s why green veggies come out greener and carrots stay brighter when cooked in a pressure cooker, not to mention their more intense flavor!
Using your pressure cooker may also help you avoid food poisoning. All too often, you hear about outbreaks of illness related to food contamination. Food poisoning is avoidable, however, especially when you’re in control of your kitchen. I go over some of the safe cooking practices you should follow every day in Chapter 14. Nevertheless, you should know that because your pressure cooker cooks under pressure between 220 and 250 degrees (8 to 38 degrees hotter than boiling water), most harmful bacteria are killed off when meat is cooked until done (see Table 2-2).
Table 2-2 Cooking Temperatures of Commonly Prepared Meats
|
Food |
Safe Internal Cooking Temperature |
|
Ground meat |
|
|
Turkey or chicken |
165° |
|
Beef, veal, lamb, or pork |
160° |
|
Fresh beef |
|
|
Medium |
160° |
|
Well done |
170° |
|
Fresh lamb |
|
|
Medium |
160° |
|
Well done |
170° |
|
Fresh pork |
|
|
Medium |
160° |
|
Well done |
170° |
|
Poultry |
|
|
Chicken |
180° |
|
Turkey |
180° |