A few years ago I read a blog post by Stephen Guyenet on Whole Health Source (a great site, by the way), claiming that people often told him that his post on pressure cooker changed their lives. I was intrigued. I did not grow up in a pressure cooker household.
My grandmother had a stove-top pressure cooker explode, which scared my mother away from them permanently (stove-top pressure cookers are legitimately terrifying, and I have no interest going near one). But the pressure cookers discussed on Whole Health Source were electronic stand-alone units – more like a rice cooker than the stove-top ordinance my mother remembered from her youth.
For those who are unfamiliar with pressure cookers, they’re a bit like slow cookers. The difference is that they seal in pressure (this is why the old fashioned ones sometimes exploded when left unattended), so they can cook food much faster than a regular stove or slow cooker. So things that would normally cook all day, can be cooked in under an hour.
We bought the Instant Pot Duo 2 suggested on Whole Health Source (here is Stephen’s Amazon affiliate link to the one we purchased) 2 years ago, and I have been thrilled with it (this post is completely unsolicited). Some members of my friends and family (especially my mother) would suggest that I am too thrilled with it; this post is not the first time I’ve proclaimed my love for pressure cooking (apparently I’m not the only one).
Below are the 3 reasons why I love my pressure cooker, and why it may be a good fit for you as well.
1. It makes yogurt.
That probably wasn’t what you were expecting. But it’s true. My pressure cooker has a yogurt making function. You pour in milk and a bit of yogurt at night, and you have a whole bunch of yogurt waiting for you in the morning. I’ve been making a 2L batch every couple weeks for 2 years, and it has worked every time (I am still shocked every time that it works).
Why make your own yogurt? We go through a lot of organic greek yogurt in our house, which costs a lot of money. But organic milk costs about half the price. So we buy 2L of organic milk, and we get 2L of thick organic yogurt the next morning for half the price. It’s also a bit less sour than the greek yogurt we buy at the store, so it doesn’t take as much sweetener to make it palatable.
2. It can cook dried beans (and pretty much anything else) in 40 mins
This may not seem like a big deal, but if you cook dried beans on a regular basis, it will change your life.
My wife is a vegetarian, and as a result we eat a lot of beans and legumes. We’ve got a ton of dried beans in the cupboard, but you can’t cook them quickly – they need to be soaked first overnight. And we always forget to soak them overnight. Which means we would often use canned beans instead. Which are fine, but they cost a lot more than dried beans. And sometimes we run out of canned beans.
In a pressure cooker, you can cook dried bean, chickpeas, etc, and they come out nice and soft in 40 minutes. So if you decide at 3pm that you want to make a chick pea curry for supper, you can actually do that. That’s really handy. The same goes for chili or any other recipe that would otherwise require that beans be pre-soaked before cooking (making chili from scratch with dried beans in under 45 minutes is an amazing time saver).
A pressure cooker also speeds up the cooking time for whole chickens, or stew, or pulled pork (see recipes below). Things just cook really quickly in a pressure cooker.
3. You can make soup and lunch meat at the same time
This was the reason I originally bought the pressure cooker. I didn’t want to eat as much processed lunch meat in my sandwiches (that stuff is really not good for you), but I also didn’t want to roast a chicken every weekend (I am technically capable of roasting a chicken, but it’s not something I’m terribly good at). My pressure cooker can hold a small (e.g. 4-5 lb) chicken. So every week or two I cook a whole chicken – it takes 45 minutes, and gives me enough lunch meat for the whole week.
The thing that I really love about using the pressure cooker for cooking chicken, is that it also makes soup at the same time. When I cook my chicken, I throw in a few vegetables too. While it cooks the chicken releases a whole bunch of delicious fat juices that seep into the veggies. Then when the chicken is done cooking, I cut up the white meat for sandwiches, and throw the dark meat back in with the veggies, and I’ve got a big pot of chicken soup ready to eat. So for about 20 minutes worth of work, and 45 mins of cooking time, I get enough meat for 5 sandwiches and 2 litres of soup.
Some starter recipes
I’m not a fancy cook (to say the least), so I really appreciate recipes consisting of “Put everything into a pot, turn it on, come back 45 minutes later and it’s ready to eat”. Below are 3 such recipes. These are pretty basic, but they taste good, and are really tough to screw up. Plus they don’t take much time to prep or cook, and you never need to watch the pot. So you can throw them together in 20 mins on a Sunday afternoon, then go play outside until they’re done (our pressure cooker keeps the food warm when it’s done, so we can leave it for a long time without worrying about it).
Pressure Cooker Chicken Soup
1 4-5 lb fresh chicken
1 medium onion
2-4 carrots
3 cloves garlic
1 lb potatoes
1 small turnip (optional)
1 bouillon cube
1/4 cup barley or rice (optional)
1 bay leaf
1-1.5 L water
Cumin, thyme, salt, and pepper to taste (I’d say 1-2 tsp, but that’s a guesstimate)
Chop up all the veggies, and place everything in the pressure cooker, with the chicken on top (if you have a rack, place it under the chicken, as it will literally fall apart as it cooks). Cook for 30 minutes. Once cooled, take dark meat off chicken, and place back into the soup. Cut up the white meat and save for sandwiches.
Beef stew recipe
Basically just replace “chicken” with “cubed beef” and follow the above recipe (I’d probably leave out the thyme and bay leaf as well). Once it’s cooked, you can simmer it and add a bit of dissolved flour to thicken it a bit if you like.
Pulled pork sandwiches
Here’s another recipe that I make all the time. It’s really delicious, and very easy.