What to Cook in Your Pressure Cooker
At Food52 there are so many great conversations on the Hotline — it’s hard to choose a favorite. But we’ll be doing it, once a week, to spread the wealth of our community’s knowledge — and to keep the conversation going.
Today: Plunk in your ingredients, seal the lid, apply pressure, produce dinner.
If you aren’t already a loyal devotée of the pressure cooker, chances are you hold it at arm’s length, confused and skeptical of its magical powers. A machine that cranks out slow-cooked meats and chilis in a fraction of the time must surely be sinister — a science oven that sucks all the goodness out of your food. Besides, everyone knows that half the pleasure of a braise is the sense of having earned it after an interminable wait.
Yet, throughout human history, certain too-good-to-be-true gadgets have proven to be, well, true. There was fire, the wheel, and the long-awaited portable watermelon fridge. Now, we’re (re)discovering our pressure cookers. Plunk in your ingredients, seal the lid, apply pressure, produce dinner. Cara Rosaen was just gifted one, and she turned to the community for cooking inspiration:
MTMitchell’s pressure cooker is a kitchen workhorse: “I make anything that requires braising or a long time to cook — our favorites are short ribs, lamb shanks, and chili with dried beans.” She finds she needs little to no tweaks from the original cooking instructions, but did point us to some good-lookin’ pressure-cooker recipes.
Flirty Foodie uses hers to make everything from rustic minestrone and pasta e fagioli to octopus salad, and sfmiller seconds the perks of pressure-cooking tough cuts of meat, risottos, and stews.
Pressure cookers are great for more than just one-pot meals — you can also follow sfmiller’s lead and use them to prep ingredients like “dried beans and grains that take forever to cook in a pot (unsoaked pintos to tender cooked beans in about 30 minutes, start to finish), and especially for making stock (really good chicken stock in about 35 minutes, start to finish, and beef stock in about 2 hours, including bone roasting time).”
For everything else, sfmiller recommends Hip Pressure Cooking as “a good resource for all things PC.”
Serves 6
1 olive or vegetable oil for sauteing
1 medium onion, chopped
2-4 cloves garlic,minced or crushed
3/4 cups dry cannellini beans
1/4 cup dry garbanzo beans
6 cups water
1 bay leaf
2 teaspoons fresh thyme
2 teaspoons fresh rosemary
2 teaspoons fresh oregano
1 1/2 salt
1 teaspoon pepper
2 cups chopped tomatoes (or 1 can, with juice)
1 cup cut green beans, fresh or frozen
1 cup zucchini, sliced and quartered
2” piece Parmesan cheese rind
1 small napa cabbage (about 10 oz)
1/3 cup soup pasta (e.g.ditalini, orzo, tiny shells)
1/2 cup red wine
shredded Parmesan for garnish
Heat a heavy 4 quart (or larger) pot over medium-high heat. Add enough oil to coat bottom of pot. Add onions and garlic; reduce heat to medium. Saute until onions are translucent.
Add beans, water and bay leaf. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low. Simmer 1 1/2 hours, or until beans are just barely tender.
Add herbs and seasonings, tomatoes, green beans, zucchini and cheese rind. Return to boil briefly, then reduce heat to low and simmer an additional 30 minutes.
In the meantime, thinly slice and chop cabbage. Add to soup along with the pasta and simmer 30 minutes.
At this point the soup can be refrigerated (or left on the stove with the heat off for up to 2 hours). Reheat before serving. When ready to serve, add wine and taste for seasoning. Serve topped with grated cheese if desired, or pass cheese at the table.
Note: Vegetables can be changed, added to or deleted. Amounts are only suggestions. Dried herbs can be used in place of fresh - cut amounts by 1/2.
What do you like to cook in your pressure cooker? Tell us in the comments!
This article originally appeared on Food52.com: What to Cook in Your Pressure Cooker
