Pressure Cooking

How many still use the pressure cooker? My family loves a cross rib cooked up in it.......I always love the fact that they take off at high speed when it's time to take the lid off. Feels like I'm dealing with a live grenade! :S

This message was edited Oct 3, 2005 1:24 AM

I still use mine sometimes, but I don't attempt to open it until the pressure has gone all the way down. LOL! I like to get the beef for noodles ready in the pressure cooker. It makes it so tender and the broth is great. I also do potatoes for mashing if I'm in a hurry. I love to make fresh applesauce in the pressure cooker. No fuss, no muss.

I don't have one, but have over the past year thought when I could've used one. I have a crock pot, but haven't used that for a couple of years.

Yeppers we do that here too Shirley but always hurry the process up by angling the dohickey on top so the pressure drops really fast. I'm always sure it's safe to remove, and I eye the little stick to make sure it's dropped, but family still take off to the basement or the living room and I start feeling very alone! ;)

Linda I love the pressure cooker....have a crock pot too but am never organized, or awake, enough for it in the morning. Anybody have great recipes for either? Ours consists of the dreaded sodium containing Campbell's consume soup and cream of mushroom, lots of onions, potatoes, carrots and turnips. Quick, easy and all love it......great when you get home from work at 6:15.

My husband has and brought with him to the marriage, a pressure cooker. It is His! And he can have it . I, like Pam's family, find other things to do when that little "dohickey" starts "rockin' & Rollin' and hissin' like a banshee!!! I still have vivid memories as a child of when that little metal satelite took off and hit the ceiling one day. The lid was loose or something, anyway, there was quite a mess, all over everything! They've made me nervous ever since. But DH makes the best homemade stew in it. The stew meat is so tender and moist. But, I have to admit, when he goes...so will the Pressure Cooker!

LOLOLOL....you'd get along fine with my family Donna!

My DF told stories of his best friend's mother removing the lid right away and then seeing the amazing sight of all the food attached to ceiling....luckily no one was hit by the lid!

Do you have DH's recipe???? :)

I still have my pressure cooker. Don't use it very often anymore, just forgot about it. But I use my pressure canner every year, mostly for my tomatoes. Have used it for meat and fish and soup also. It is the safest way to can the low acid tomatoes we grow now. Now you remind me, I'm going to get a stew going this week. Haven't used the crock pot for a long time either. Never did make good use of it.

This message was edited Nov 29, 2004 9:24 PM

echoes please copy the recipe here! I love it but think I could use it a lot more than we do.

I'll try and get DH's recipe for you too.

Recipe? from me? you must mean recipe for me. Throw browned (burned) meat chunks in pot, add veggies, water and cook till water evaporates and the mess burns on a little. Add more water and some brown colouring stuff and thicken. See who's hungry enough to eat it.

Thank you Donna! :D

LOLOLOL echoes!

Actually, I struck out for you as well, Pam. Apparently DH's recipe's similar to Echoes. Throw the meat in to brown, cut up veggies (anything and everything in the fridge), salt and pepper, chopped onion, water and seasonings. When cooked, add flour/beef oxo mixture to the liquid and thicken Ta Da!!

LOL.....Well I will just have to make a stew....with anything and everything in the fridge!!! Could be reallllly interesting! ;)

you guys should apply for the space program - they need creative types LOL

Ah nothing like living on the edge! Guess I'll break down and look at the cooking section.

You weren't supposed to be looking, Lynn! LOL

I never did use one???????????

Been ages when I used one of those and haven't owned one since I moved to Canada about eighteen years ago.
Maybe I should use one again for my "Sauerbraten" or "Leberknödelsuppe", but then again I'm not in a hurry when cooking.
Should just get one to make my own KFC Panamon Creel style meals LOL.

Milan

This message was edited Nov 30, 2004 12:47 PM

Come on Milan post those recipes! The KFC Panamon Creel style meals has really piqued my curiousity!

Since we also have some very diluted German blood I'd really love your recipes for "Sauerbraten" or "Leberknödelsuppe",

Just after I gave birth to DD my Boss sent her mother to our house...she was German and made us wonderful noodle dishes, sauerkraut, etc. Everything was from scratch.....full of calories and tasted wonderful! :D

This message was edited Nov 30, 2004 11:30 AM

Hehe first I gotta get a pressure cooker than I can experiment with those chickens :)

you snuck in......have a request for a few other recipes as well. (see above)

When are you buying the pressure cooker???? :D

No prob, I'll p-mail you the recipes. I may even mail you an ingredient that is not available here for the "Sauerbraten" (better name for it would be Franconian Sauerbraten), it can be substituted but it's just not the same without it. The "Leberknödelsuppe" (not run of the mill, lets call it boehmian family recipe Leberknödelsuppe) is simple and straight forward, no hard to get ingredients involved.
Are you interested in a recipe for a good (at least I think so :) Sauerkraut?
My collesterol is already going up just thinking of the food LOL.

Milan

Oh yes!!! So's mine now! Thank you so much for the offer Milan! :D

My father talked about his father and grandmother making many of these recipes. We have many of the pots still that he soured the cabbage in. He also like making homemade rootbeer and Dad has many stories of bottles exploding.

One recipe I fondly remember Boss's mother making (chloresterol will go through the stratisphere now).... was blanched beet leaves wrapped around a small amount of risen dough (like a cabbage roll), cooked in oven and then put in a casserole dish with large pats of butter and cooked till butter melts and is nice and bubbly. Remove from oven and add large amounts of sour cream.........deadly dish but ooooooh soooooo gooood! Fresh dill on top.

This message was edited Dec 1, 2004 6:40 PM

Okay, got a napkin to catch the drool on my desk now :)
Haven't fermented my own Sauerkraut for a long time and the recipe is for making the Store bought canned variety more edible :)
Give me some time for writing the recipies down, it's much easier to cook them then to write them down :) (use a handfull of this and a pinch of that LOL)

oooops spelling edit


This message was edited Nov 30, 2004 3:08 PM

LOLOL!

Thank you Milan, I'll be very happy to wait!

edited to say *not* spinach leaves but beet leaves....will correct the above. :S

I do sometimes making stew.
Mine is T-fal (almost 7 years old). Becase it sticks and burns at bottom,I personally don't care
so much.
Which pressure cooker do you use?

A really, really old one! Probably made out of aluminum.

Milan, please post those recipes for us. Not just for Pam who has some kraut blood.

edited for wine spelling

This message was edited Dec 1, 2004 6:25 PM

I, like Echoes, have a pressure cooker, but I haven't used it in awhile. I really don't know why, since it does such a good job tenderizing meat. I still use it for cooking a corned beef brisket or for chicken giblets. Gizzards will be tender enough to eat with a fork if cooked about a half hour. I usually rinse them and check them over, then add them to the pressure cooker with some dehydrated onion and a bit of chicken base and some water. When they are done, I make a cornstarch gravy with the juice. I've always loved gizzards... it's the only way you can fit 20 chickens in a pressure cooker!

Thanks for the suggestions Carol.....hadn't thought about cooking corned beef in it. :) You are right about it tenderizing.....prolly one of the best/most underused kitchen tools we have.

My mother always used her pressure cooker... I think it was a Mirro or a Presto. We didn't have microwaves in those days, and the pressure cooker was a fast way to prepare supper if you got busy and ran out of time... remember the days of frozen meat and no microwave? She used to take her pressure cooker off the heat then set in the sink and slowly run cold water over it until the pressure released.

Mom was a dyed in the wool dime store shopper, and sometimes we'd shop a bit too long. She'd run home and slap something in the pressure cooker, and begin her simulated cleaning maneuvers. First, she take all the dirty dishes out of the sink and put them in a plastic dish pan she'd stuff under the sink. Next, she'd start setting newspapers all over the kitchen floor. When my dad got home, she'd caution him to walk on the papers, as she had just mopped the floor! LOL! Thanks for the memories!

LOL...you brought many back as well! My mother also used the pressure cooker alot. Now I wish I had paid more attention to what she put in it. Probably can't remember too much because she didn't trust the thing and made us leave the kitchen when it was in use. Funny thing I've never done that to my family but DH is the first to run so his mother probably shooed them all out too.

Love you mother's cleaning...saw a girlfriend do the same, only she'd stick her dirty dishes in the oven sometimes. Forgot once they were in there and turned the oven on to preheat. :S

I'll bet the dishes were a bit crusty when they came out! Ah, the price of deception! LOL! I guess the pressure cooker was just about the fastest way to make a cheap cut of meat tender. My mother loved those blade chuck roasts and often cooked them in the pressure cooker until the meat fell apart. I truly think my mother's major interest in a cut of meat was the amount of gravy she could squeeze out of it.

LOL, Your Mom sounds like the kinda lady, I would have liked, Weezi. A smart cookie and a keen shopper. We would have gotten along famously! :D

I still love dime stores, though it's been years since I've seen one. We used to have a Woolworth in Anchorage, but I think it's gone now. Dime stoves must have gone the way of the pressure cooker... we all remember it, we just don't go there.

Ah yes, I remember Woolworth's and accross the road was Kreske's on 100st street in downtown Edmonton. Both were great Nickle and Dime's. Down the street was the old Tegler Building where I went to my first dentist as a littel girl Not only are the stores and old buildings gone, but the streets were torn up, made "one ways" and now joined to make one big block between Jasper Ave and 102 Street. Used to work in the Oxford Tower that overlooks that spot now. Sorry if I got caught up in the memories!

We used to make trips to Gary, Indiana, some 30 miles from our home. Along Broadway, there were dime stores with soda fountains, old fashioned movie theatres, photo studios, a medical building, Sears, Penney's, and much more. I haven't been there in years, but I understand the whole downtown area is boarded up. How sad!

I remember those soda fountains too. They were the best!