Pressure cooker!

[ilai]

I stewed a large pot of pork, eggs, tofu, and mushrooms (滷肉、蛋、豆腐、香菇) yesterday afternoon, and filled my kitchen with the aroma of five-spice powder. The recipe I used called for a pressure cooker, but since I did not have one, I just let the stew sit for about three hours. While waiting, I looked online and found some $45 pressure cookers on Amazon. Now I'm really tempted to get a pressure cooker for yummy stews like this, which gets me an entire week's worth of lunches and dinners.

Or maybe a crockpot, whichever one is actually more useful.

Comments

[gnibbles.livejournal.com]

pressure cookers are scary.... crock pots are nice though. :)

[thomasyan.livejournal.com]

Pressure cookers make me think of Ivanova from Babylon 5: -"No boom today? Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow."-

[shumashi.livejournal.com]

So what are the advantages of a pressure cooker? I've never used one.

[jadia.livejournal.com]

It's like a time machine for your food. Things that take 3 hours to cook only take 45 minutes in a pressure cooker! I don't know how this magic works. It's something to do with *science*.

[shumashi.livejournal.com]

So why doesn't everyone use them?

[jadia.livejournal.com]

Sometimes you want to fry things instead of stewing/boiling them. Also, if you use it wrong, you could have exploded food all over your kitchen.

[schnerf.livejournal.com]

(this is ploamphed usurping schnerf's computer.)

Pressure cooker works on the principle that when you increase the pressure, the boiling point for water will also rise. So in a pressure cooker you can bring the temperature of a water-logged object to much higher than it would in a normal pot. Furthermore, pressure cookers are typically air-tight, so you have yummy steam action gently massaging the food. Together they make quicker and more even heating of food in less time. And meat tends to come out tender and ready to fall apart.

There are also allegedly ways to making barbeque (think jerk pork, where the meat is nice and easy to tear) in a pressure cooker, but I've never actually looked for recipes as such.

Personally, I don't find much use for the pressure cooker. I really don't mind slow-cooking my food in a crock-pot.

[76trombones.livejournal.com]

Yeah, what she (er, he) said. You probably did problems about the temperature/pressure thing back in high school chemistry class.

[narya.livejournal.com]

I decided that the crockpot was more useful for me because I like having the option of leaving something cooking while I'm not at home. I'd be hesitant to do that with a pressure cooker.

[ilai]

I should hope you wouldn't have to with a pressure cooker! :-)

Yeah, I don't know if a crockpot might work better for my cooking habits. I guess I shall have to get both and find out! :-)

[nuclearpolymer.livejournal.com]

Well, you should certainly own a crockpot. And if you buy it at Home Depot or BJs, you'll probably get a good deal.

[deadpuppy5.livejournal.com]

my mom makes good use of her pressure cooker. She has one with a valve though, that releases pressure if it gets above a certain point, so she doesn't worry about explosions or the like. We either didn't have a crock pot, or never used it, so I don't know how they compare.

[gnibbles.livejournal.com]

my parents have both, and they generally only bust out the (fucking huge) pressure cooker when there's a shit ton of food that needs preparing in a limited span of time. Generally we do soups and stews in the crock pot, put it in during lunch break, and have delicious soup ready by dinner time. It's really convenient. :) We also use the crock pot to make bean porridge, because beans are really fucking hard and take forever to soften up to a point where it's yummy. We use the pressure cooker also for foods that just don't fit in a crock pot, like pig's feet and such. :)