Cooking with a Pressure Cooker is Cheap and Easy

If you have never cooked before with a modern pressure cooker you are in for a treat. Cooking with a pressure cooker is easy, fast and cost-effective. Incredibly, you can save as much as a two-thirds of your normal cooking fuel and you can save a similar amount of time for each dish cooked.

If you haven't yet bought a pressure cooker, see pressure cookers for tips on what's best to buy.

Using a pressure cooker for your cooking is a very green option because of the fuel savings you will experience.

Some advantages of pressure cooker cookery

One of the delights of cooking with a pressure cooker is that it allows you to tackle recipes which would otherewise be off-putting because of the length of time involved. Stews and even steamed puddings become a possibility, even in the most time-conscious homes.

Modern pressure cookers are user-friendly and don't require constant attention. Set them up correctly and you can go and get on with other things, for the most part.

Using cheap cuts of meat

If you like to use top quality organic meat in your green living diet, a pressure cooker is a great benefit because it enables you to use some of the cheap cuts of meat to make flavoursome stews and casseroles. Cooking with a pressure cooker lets you get every ounce of flavour and goodness out of the ingredients.

You can also make stocks for use in other recipes. Use the bones from cuts of meat or chicken to produce wonderful stocks which can be added to soups and other dishes to provide more nutrition and flavour.

Another way to use your pressure cooker to good effect is to make puddings which would otherwise require steaming for a long time.

Nutritional benefits

When cooking with a pressure cooker you retain more of the natural vitamin content of the food. This is because the food cooks for a shorter length of time, though at higher temperatures. This is especialy useful when cooking vegetables, as in conventional boiling a lot of the vitamin content is destroyed.

Your pressure cooker can be used to steam vegetables which preserves more of the vitamin and mineral content. Most pressure cookers have trivets for steaming as part of the equipment.

Pressure cooker recipes

Most of the recipes on Greenfootsteps can be adapted for cooking with a pressure cooker. Adjust the times to suit. For most dishes you will need from 1/4 to 1/3 of the cooking time.

Here is a recipe for Lancashire Hot-Pot to get you started.

Lancashire Hot-Pot

Times: about 15 minutes on high pressure (15lbs weight)

Ingredients

2 lbs potatoes

1 or two onions

2 or 3 sticks of celery

1/2 a pound of carrots

1 1/2 pounds of neck of lamb or mutton

1/2 pint of stock

salt and pepper

bayleaf

Method

Slice or cube all the vegetables. Put the ingredients into the pressure cooker with potatoes at the bottom. Add the stock and seasoning. Fit the lid and heat until it is at pressure. After 15 minutes cool quickly under a running tap to stop the cooking. (If water use is an issue, use a bowl of water which can then be kept for other uses.) Release the pressure. Check that everything is properly cooked and tender. Serve.

Bon appetit!

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