The Complete Book of Pressure Cooking. L.D. Michaels

Almost 60 years after it was first introduced to the general public, the pressure cooker is still undervalued and misunderstood. Although there is a hard core of enthusiasts who know and understand this highly useful kitchen aid, for much of the public at large pressure cooking is an almost forgotten technology. When did you last see a pressure cooker in one of the very large number of TV cookery shows? Why is it that stores hide their (rather limited) range of pressure cookers far away from their main displays?

I can think of two reasons. First, there is the urban myth that pressure cookers are dangerous and liable to explode – that has definitely not been true since the very earliest domestic devices of the 1950s, and even before then it required some fairly persistent carelessness. But second, the vast majority of instruction manuals that come with the cookers are dire. Typically, after dealing with basic maintenance issues, they simply provide a series of charts of cooking times for various foods and a few perfunctory recipes. They provide nothing by way of explanation. Worst of all, many do not even tell you the pressure under which they operate. Working pressures can vary from 7 psi (pounds per square inch) to 15 psi, and 12 psi is now widely used. But without knowledge of the pressure at which the cooker works, cooking times cannot be calculated, which leaves the reader reliant on the poor-quality recipes supplied by the manufacturer and with little opportunity to do what most cooks want – to be able to adapt and develop their own.

The fact is that the pressure cooker is one of the most useful kitchen aids around, and one of the least expensive both to buy and to run. It delivers not one but two cooking techniques unavailable elsewhere. The first is pressure steaming, where the food sits on a trivet above a small pool of water. It works like conventional steaming but with the benefit that it is much faster. With the second technique, pressure simmering or pressure poaching, the food is cooked in water, stock or other fluid that is itself pressurized. The pressure cooker enables you to prepare a wide variety of dishes much more rapidly than usual with more conventional techniques. In many cases the result is better tasting and better looking, and has improved texture and nutritional value. These relatively new techniques of cooking, which are more than just updated versions of what cooks have been doing for the last few thousand years, usually manage to preserve the inherent nutritional qualities of the food much more effectively than any other method of cooking. The shorter time taken brings advantages beyond simply less slaving over a hot stove, since you’ll be using less fuel for heating and will run less chance of greasing up your kitchen. In the years since the pressure cooker first appeared, cooks have discovered precisely what they can do with it – and what they can’t.

I’ve tried to write both for the cook who is just beginning and for the experienced one who probably thinks that pressure cookers aren’t any good for “serious” results. It can be used for all pressure cookers, no matter what make. I also include sections on electric pressure cookers, popular in some parts of the world and almost unknown in others. The book leaps the gap between simple instruction and proper explanation. The essentials of pressure cooking are easy, but there is no reason why the results should be any less good than the most skilled, proud and fussy cook regards as the best.

I don’t believe that pressure cooking replaces other methods of preparing food. I do believe that it

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