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.

Save Money with Your Pressure Cooker and Vegan Cooking

Having just paid $4.99 per gallon for diesel for my car, I am looking for ways to save money. Luckily I am already happily ensconced in pressure cooking.

I think that most people don't realize the many ways that the sky-rocketing fuel costs are going to impact them. It is going to mean rising food costs. So, to save money, you may have to go with my eating beans and grains once a week (or more) plan.

I'd like to see everyone adopt vegetarian or, even better, vegan eating at least once a week. OK. This may mean eating rice and beans but they don't have to be ordinary rice and beans.

Did you know that it only takes about 5 minutes at pressure to cook pinto or black beans (if they aren't really old)? More recently harvested beans cook more quickly but if you don't have the luxury of buying beans from a local farm or heirloom bean grower such as Rancho Gordo or Tierra Vegetables, you won't likely know the age of your beans.

Last week I demonstrated how to prepare red rice and beans (instead of red beans and rice) in the pressure cooker. The rice (which is whole grain) took 9 minutes at pressure and the beans took 4 minutes at pressure. You can season either any way that you like.

I also made a quick vegetable dish that included scarlet turnips, watermelon daikon, spring onion, garlic and yellow squash which took just one minute at pressure.

My complete meal hardly used any fuel at all, except for the cost of getting the vegetables. But these days I am on my bicycle so the energy that I burn is my own, therefore I am using my fuel well.

I encourage you to do the same -- get a pressure cooker, play with it and enjoy many meat-free days, saving time, money, energy and maybe even your health. And if you feel like it, ride your bicycle.