<p>Not sure what she was thinking, but my sister gave me a fancy electric pressure cooker for Christmas. Our mom had one that she rarely used especially after one unfortunate ‘explosion’ that resulted in potatoes on the ceiling!</p>
<p>I have no idea what to do with it. I am not much of a cook. I googled for recipes, but didn’t see much that seemed worth the trouble. Do any of you have any recipes that you recommend?</p>
<p>I live at a high altitude and so probably use a pressure cooker more than many people. (Water boils at ~198-200° here. Stuff takes f-o-r-e-v-e-r to cook.) I use a pressure cooker to make all kinds of stocks and soups, cook bone-in chicken breasts for other recipes (like chicken salad)–and bonus as a you get tasty chicken stock too, make pot roast, beef stew, carnitas, carne adovada (prefer the oven but sometimes 3-4 hours is too long to wait), corned beef & cabbage, and steel cut oatmeal. A pressure cooker makes cooking dried beans a whole, whole lot faster. My boss uses hers to make jams and jellies.</p>
<p>Basically, a pressure cooker is good for speeding up the cooking time for anything that gets boiled, braised or stewed.</p>
<p>The new electrical pressure cookers have a self-monitoring pressure relief valve and automatic temperature adjustment and so won’t explode.</p>
<p>I love my pressure cooker. It has taken 25+ years of eating my bad cooking to really appreciate the value of good stock in making delicious food. The pressure cooker is the ideal appliance to make all kinds of stock: vegetable, chicken, beef. Not only is the cooking time shortened, but the depth of flavor is unmatched when compared to just boiling ingredients in a regular pot. I usually make stock once a week from the carcass of the Costco rotisserie chicken (plus onions, carrots, celery). I am always amazed how the bones, when squeezed with my fingers, just disintegrate. This tells me that all the flavors are being extracted from them and that all the delicious flavors are not escaping, but are sealed within the cooker.</p>
<p>I also make a lot of soups/stews (especially bean) in the cooker. Again, everything is more delicious because the flavors are sealed rather than escaping from an open pot. I hope that you will give it a try and that you come to like your cooker as much as I like mine.</p>
<p>Oooh, call me superstitious , but I’d probably not use it.</p>