2010 The Year of the Pressure Cooker Declares Lorna Sass

My friend, colleague and pressure cooking mentor, Lorna Sass, the Queen of pressure cooking, shared the following blog post for me to share with you. I hope that you will agree that the time has come for the pressure cooker to make its comeback. As I told Lorna, sometimes it takes 20 years for something to become an "overnight" success. This year Lorna has a newly revised and updated version of her seminal book, Cooking Under Pressure. Please read on for what Lorna has to say...

For the Chinese, February 14 will begin the Year of the Tiger. For Mac users, it’s the Year of the Snow Leopard. For me, it’s the Year of the Pressure Cooker.

Just when I was about to give up hope that American cooks would ever give up their paranoia about the dangers of pressure cooking, some very good things began to happen.


Carolyn Russock pressure-cooked her way through the 20th anniversary edition of COOKING UNDER PRESSURE and wrote rave reviews of the 30-minute chicken broth and French-style beef stew, the 4-minute risotto, and the ultra-fast baked beans in a 5-day series for the very popular foodie blog, Serious Eats. Dozens of comments document the growing number of the people who are pressure cooking on a daily basis and understand that today’s cookers are 100% safe.

The same week, Paula Crossfield wrote an enthusiastic column for popular online blog, Bitten about how she became a pressure cooker convert. Again lots of enthusiastic cooks wrote in to sing their praises of pressure cooking.

An NPR piece on pressure cooking is soon to hit the national airwaves, and a few other major voices are about to get the word out that pressure cooking is not only safe, but terrific for what I call the four P’s: planet, palate, person, and purse.

Great for the planet because it’s so fuel efficient.

Great for the palate because the pressure-cooker mingles flavors quickly, giving food the soul-satisfying appeal of a long-cooked meal.

Great for the person because even the hurried or impatient cook can prepare healthy food in a flash.

Great for the purse because the pressure cooker is ace at tenderizing tough cuts of meat and cooking whole grains, beans and other inexpensive ingredients in record time.

How does the pressure cooker work its magic? In the vacuum-sealed cooker, water boils at 242 degrees Fahrenheit instead of the standard 212 degrees. At this higher-than-normal boiling point temperature, food cooks in one-third or less the normal time. That’s why many Top Chefs are relying on the pressure cooker to help them win.

I’m no Top Chef in any kind of competition, but last Sunday was so cold out that I was tempted to stay in bed and read. Then hunger struck. I didn’t want to go out and shop, so I decided to devise a hearty pressure-cooked soup from ingredients in my pantry.

In celebration of the Year of the Pressure Cooker, I put on my chef’s jacket and asked The Sweetie to make a video of the process. About 30 minutes later we were eating a mighty fine Curried Split Pea Soup that cost under $8 and made 4 hearty portions.

Take a look at the video and then let me know if you decide to help make 2010 the Year of the Pressure Cooker, all the while eating better, faster, cheaper, and more eco-friendly than you ever have before.

In the first video, I show you how to assemble the ingredients in the pressure cooker and lock on the lid. In the second, I show you how to release the pressure and stir in some last-minute ingredients for a punch for flavor and a fresh finish.

NOTE: Due to my technological inability to put videos on this site, I will refer you to Lorna's original post on her site so that you can see the videos or you can look at the You Tube video directly.

I hope that you'll help convert more people to the joys of pressure cooking. Please leave a comment on this blog if you love pressure cooking and tell me about your favorite dish.

Will Blog for Lunch, Dinner or Breakfast: Quickly in my Pressure Cooker

Some bloggers concoct recipes because they have a keen desire to publish and photograph them. I have a keen desire to eat -- at least 3 meals and a number of snacks a day. Since this is a blog about pressure cooking, I am not going to mention any raw food that I eat, but I do that, too.



Today, I did a take off of one of my own recipes for the pressure cooker: Green and Red Bean African Curry which is a riff on an African Curry recipe that I learned from Shuli and Ronit of Whole Spice, which is where I get the mighty delicious African curry powder.

Today the curry did not contain red beans (kidney) but did have marinated Zesty Lemon tempeh from Lightlife Foods, as well as potatoes. At the end of cooking I added some corn cut off the cob, which I cooked on the cob last night for 2 minutes in the pressure cooker.

The whole dish requires about 3 minutes at pressure. I say about because I used freshly dug potatoes and they sometimes only require a couple of minutes cooking. I do this dish in increments, using a quick release in between.

Here's what I discovered:

1. I was hungry and I ate a lot of this for lunch.
2. I prefer to marinate my own tempeh and do not care for the Lightlife but like the Turtle Island brand marinated tempeh better.
3. The dish really does taste better with kidney beans but I didn't have any, and wanted a protein component.
4. This curry, like many others, is highly adaptable and many seasonal vegetables could be added or substituted. I thought about adding summer squash or greens but that thought quickly left my head as I started cooking because I was so hungry.
5. I still love my pressure cooker and what it does for me, and how quickly it does it. I can have a meal in almost no time -- less than 15 minutes from cutting board to mouth.

And that's why I blog -- for meals. If you want the recipe for the African curry, please leave a comment or email me jill@pressurecookingonline.com.

If you are interested in learning more about pressure cookers or how to use them please visit my pressure cooking website.

Pressure Cooking Millet Stuffed Artichokes

Susan from Fat Free Vegan just wrote a wonderful post about Millet-Stuffed Artichokes. What Susan didn't say is that you can cook the millet in the pressure cooker in just 5 minutes at pressure. Read about cooking millet here.

Don't underestimate what your pressure cooker can do for you. It's the most amazing piece of cookware that I own, and use it almost daily. In fact, I just came back from visiting my mother and now she has a pressure cooker, thanks to her daughter (that's me). And I got to use hers. What a joy.

My sisters both have, and use, pressure cookers, too. If you want to help the people that you love eat better tasting and, possibly better-for-them, food buy them a pressure cooker and teach them how to use it. You can watch the beginning of my DVD here or watch my You Tube videos at TheVQ. I am also always happy to answer any questions that you have. You can leave comments here or email me at jill@pressurecookingonline.

Here's to a great PC experience -- artichokes and all.

Veggie Queen Cooks Under Pressure with John Ash

I am rushing off to the farmer's market to buy ingredients so that I can appear on the radio this morning. I will be demonstrating live, how to use a pressure cooker to make 2 of the recipes on my DVD Pressure Cooking: A Fresh Look, Delicious Dishes in Minutes. I will be on KSRO, 1350 am here in Sonoma County, on the Good Food Hour with John Ash and Steve Garner at 11 am PST.

I will be making Shane's Fabulous Lentil Soup and Market Fresh Breakfast Tofu, Potatoes and Vegetables. I have not yet done live radio pressure cooking but I am sure that all will go just fine. It's a beautiful day and we will be out at Bassignani's Nursery in Sebastopol on a live broadcast.

I am really excited to see what gems appear at the market this morning to go into my vegetable dish. That surely will help relieve the pressure.

Pressure Cooker Brown Rice Recipe

I don't need to write much about a recipe for pressure cooking brown rice because all it takes is rice, water and salt, and the salt is optional. So, I'll tell you a bit about using the modern pressure cooker while I am here.

1 cup brown rice, 1 1/2 cups water or stock

This kind of pressure cooker doesn't have a jiggler. It has a little button that pops up to let you know that the pot is at pressure. You can watch the button in action by clicking on the video on my website.

In my DVD Pressure Cooking: A Fresh Look, Delicious Dishes in Minutes, I cook red rice with lentils. I use a long grain red rice from Thailand which keeps turning out different with varying amounts of water and rice. So far, 1 cup of rice to 2 cups of water, cooked for 9 to 10 minutes with a natural pressure release seems to work fine, most of the time.

Here's the rub with cooking grains -- how they cook depends upon that batch of grains, how old it is, how it's been stored which effects the moisture level, and other intangible factors. So, following the recipe will work most of the time. You need a jumping off point so this might help.

Another tip: when cooking more than 1 cup of rice, reduce the amount of liquid by 1/4 cup for each additional cup of grain. Here's how this translates into cooking: for the 1st cup of brown rice you use 1 1/2 cups water and for the second cup you use 1 1/4 cups water. Two cups of brown rice requires 2 3/4 cups water in the pressure cooker. This works well for stove top cooking, too.

I do this because I do not care for soggy grains. Do you?

Pressure Cooked Hoppin' John to Start the New Year

Take a look at my blog post on my other blog (http://www.theveggiequeen.blogspot.com) for my version of Hoppin' John which I call Jumpin' John because I obviously do a vegan (no ham bone) version. It tastes great.

Happy New year to y'all.

Pressure Cooking DVD Gets Two Good Reviews

It brings me great joy to get people actually using their pressure cookers. It's a tool that can change your cooking life and lead you easily to healthier and more delicious eating, all while saving time and energy. It's green, lean and delicious -- a truly unbeatable combo.

Read what others have to say about my DVD. At GoDairyFree.Org Sarena made the black beans and loved them and the fact that they took about 10 minutes to cook, from start to finish (after presoaking). On Lisa Reviews you'll need to scroll down the page to see that Lisa realized I was telling the truth when I said, "If you can boil water, you can pressure cook."

If you've been afraid of the pressure cooker, I want to encourage to take the next step. Buy one and try it. It's one of the best holiday and New Year's gifts that you can give yourself.

But if you want to wait, Valentine's Day is a good time, too.

I am always happy to answer pressure cooking questions at jill@pressurecookingonline.com. My DVD is available on my website at http://www.pressurecookingonline.com/.