It's All About Speed ... and Flavor

[mycubanrecipes]

When it comes to cooking a great meal from scratch in the least possible amount of time, nothing beats a pressure cooker. All you need is a great recipe, fresh ingredients, and a little time and patience, and you will eat like a king. I prefer stainless steel cookers; they are quite durable and very inexpensive. They do make aluminum ones, but I stay away from any cooking gadget made from aluminum. One other advantage associated with pressure cookers: the food prepared with them tastes better because they seal in the flavor while the food cooks. Check it out.

[CM]

A pressure cooker is a must when cooking dried beans - either that or a crockpot so that you can leave them to cook overnight. I love my Kuhn-Rikon pressure cooker because it cooks silently without making a lot of noise. But I also enjoy using other pressure cookers I have, and each seems to have its' purpose. If you're going to be busy, an electric pressure cooker with a thermostat is handy, and then you can remove the cover and finish cooking as you would in a slow cooker, adding other ingredients that you didn't want to have pressure-cooked. I also have a tiny vintage pressure cooker that's only 2.5 quarts that's perfect for a handful of beans or good for making carrots or potatoes in just a few minutes.

I don't mind that it's aluminum - it works just as well. The worry about cooking with aluminum was just a scare from the non-stick surface companies and the govt. has debunked those rumors saying that you get more aluminum from eating baked goods that contain aluminum in their leaveners. Restaurants use aluminum cookware all the time. Just don't make anything like tomatoes or pasta sauce or high acid foods, which I save for the non-enamelled cast iron pans anyway; cooking tomatoes in iron pans releases a tiny trace amount of iron into the sauce and increases your iron intake in a safe way. And one of my favorite pressure cookers is an All-American brand (aluminum) because it doesn't use gaskets and is built like a tank to last forever. I have a few vintage Mirro cookers that are nice too, but their gaskets wear out after a few years and are sometimes difficult to find replacements for.

I also like to use a pressure fryer, (an old Chicken Bucket) for making the best ever fried chicken! Just like KFC (but much better!)