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Discover the Pressure Cooker

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Cooking with a Pressure Cooker

I received my first pressure cooker in my early 20's.  It was a handy-me-down from my aunt that had already seen many years of service. It was a 4 quart Mirro-Matic that made quite a clamor when cooking. I was single at the time and I seldom used it, but once I got married I discovered some of it's finer points as I began cooking regularly.

This page is dedicated to cooking with a pressure cooker. You'll find handy information about how to use and care for them, pressure cooker recipes, as well as an opportunity to shop for a pressure cooker and related parts.

The Advantages: Or, Why I Love My Pressure Cooker

Pressure cookers offer a number of advantages over other methods of cooking.

  • They're fast. Slow cookers are nice, but they are just what their name implies: slow. In fact, pressure cookers generally cut cooking time by 1/3 over most traditional methods. Shorter cooking times can also result in energy savings as well time savings for you.

  • Meats come out moist and tender. When I prepare meats in the pressure cooker I never have trouble with them coming out dry or tough. In fact, I can often opt for a less expensive cut, because the pressure cooker always gives me good results.

  • Convenience. I have a number of recipes that are basically one pot meals so there aren't alot of pots and pans to clean after the meal. Slow cookers can sometimes do this, but I often find I have to cook the ingredients on the stove top first before placing them in the slower cooker.

  • Safety. Old pressure cookers were feared by many due to the built up pressure and the risk of burns from the heavy steam they can create. Pressure cookers have a variety of safety features such as quick pressure relief valves that make this risk minimal. They also don't splash or boil over.

  • They're quieter. Old pressure cookers would create quite a racket in the kitchen as the pressure built up and the pressure control would "pink" loudly. Modern pressure cookers are much, much quieter.


  • They are a healthy option. Unlike frying you won't be using a lot of extra fat and unlike oven roasting, boiling, or slow cooking you won't be losing as many vitamins and other nutrients due to long cooking times.

    • Who Makes Pressure Cookers?

    There are many manufacturers that offer pressure cookers. T-Fal, Oster, Deni, and Sunbeam for instance are in the market. However Presto, Mirro, Cusinart, and Nesco are better known for these products. All American makes well known electric models but Wolfgang Puck also has his name on some. Kuhn Rikon, Magefesa, and Fagor are newer names in the American market and are well respected.

    In the end, you need to find the features you want and the ones that match up to your budget as there are a wide range of options.

    Choosing a Pressure Cooker

    There are a number of things to consider when choosing your pressure cooker.

  • Capacity. Obviously if you're cooking for two, a 4 quart pressure cooker may suffice, but if you have a family, a 6 or 8 quart model might be a better option.

  • Special duties. For those who want to can, some pressure cookers do double duty.

  • Construction. Most pressure cookers are either aluminum or stainless steel. Aluminum is lighter weight and less expensive. Stainless steel is considered higher quality, more durable, and heavier. Certainly, with stainless steel there is no risk of aluminum leaching into the food. The most common pressure cookers are made for stove top use, but there are also electric pressure cookers. Electric pressure cookers are certainly portable but have the drawback of having additional parts that, should they malfunction, will render the pressure cooker useless (i.e. a heating element) and can be a bit harder to clean. Just as with any pot, finding one with heat resistant handles is useful to avoid burns.


  • Pressure control. Some pressure cookers have a single pressure control, which requires no adjusting. Others have a selective pressure control that allows you to adjust the pressure from 5, to 10, to 15 pounds or so. Obviously this gives you more flexibility. If the pressure cooker has only a single setting, 15lbs is recommended to assure the quickest cooking. The traditional pressure control that "jiggles" around is common with more affordable models, while higher end models sometimes use a pop-up pin to indicate the pressure inside the cooker. Both work well, although the spring indicator is even quieter as they release less steam during the cooking process. For safety, jiggle top pressure cookers typically have a pressure release valve which will "blow" if too much pressure builds up. (I've never had this happen, but certainly it could). Cookers with pop-up pins and dials however have other safety features which vent steam or, in case of excessive pressure build up, pushes out the gasket.

  • Accessories. Some pressure cookers may come with steamer baskets, a rack to keep items off of the bottom of the pot, and additional pots for inserting inside of the cooker itself for special items (such as desserts, rice, and so forth). Certainly a canning rack is needed for those who will use their cooker for canning. Some cookers will come with a gasket that goes along the inside of the lid to assure a tight fit, but some are designed to operate without this. Gaskets are probably the most frequently requested replacement part. Of course a pressure cooker with a timer is also a good idea, although if you're diligent, using any other timer in the kitchen can suffice.

    • A Few Tips On Using a Pressure Cooker

    The manual you receive when purchasing a pressure cooker will cover all the details on how to use it. I will include links to many of the most popular models on the market for online access to the manuals.

    However, in general:

  • Never fill your pressure cooker more that 2/3 full. Be especially careful when cooking foods that might expand, like rice. Avoid cooking foods that tend to froth a great deal. Pastas and so forth are examples.

  • Be conservative on the cooking time. It's easy to over cook foods in a pressure cooker, so err on the side of a shorter cooking time and adjust as necessary the next time you prepare the meal.


  • Use a timer. As stated above, it's easy to over cook foods with a pressure cooker.

  • Be sure to know the pressure level inside the cooker. Some pressure cookers read the pressure level more accurately than others, but no matter which type of pressure control it has, be sure you know what pressure level it is at or set on, so that you get the cooking time correct.

  • Be sure the lid is on snugly. Pressure can't build up if the lid is not on properly. Typically, if the lid handle aligns with the handle on the pan, and you get them latched, you're in good shape. If you have a gasket and there is excessive steam or water leakage before you reach pressure, you may want to adjust the lid and try again.

  • Never force the lid open, and don't try to open a pressure cooker that hasn't been allowed to release pressure. Read the manual about how to release pressure. Some cookers have to sit for 5 minutes or longer (the slow method) to normalize and others many need cold water run over them (the quick method).

  • Never attempt to remove the pressure control while the pot is still pressurized.

  • Don't allow the cooker to run out of water. Recipes and cooking tables will indicate the amount of water to be used. When first using a pressure cooker, it's better to err on the side of a bit more water to assure it doesn't run dry.

  • Don't leave the cooker unattended. Remember, it cooks fast.

  • Generally speaking, you want to cook at the lowest temperature that will maintain the desired pressure. Start out at a high heat setting until pressure is reached and then reduce the heat so that pressure is maintained. Generally a low or medium heat setting is all that is needed. A pressure control that jiggles or rocks, should do so gently, and only periodically once the pan has reached the desired pressure.

    • How to Use a Pressure Cooker: The Basics

    How to Use a Pressure Cooker
    by cookusinterruptus | video info

    38 ratings | 27,667 views
    curated content from YouTube

    Pressure Cooking Times

    If you're using a recipe, knowing how long to cook something is simple; it's stated in the recipe. However, if you're cooking an item without a recipe, then having a table to give you approximate cooking times is wise as overcooking can result in mushy food! Here are some handy online references.
    Pressure Cooker Cooking Times
    Find estimated cooking times laid out in easy to read tables for vegetables, beans, meats, poultry, seafood, fruits, and more.
    Miss Vickie's Pressure Cooking Time Charts
    Find more tables for cooking times when using a pressure cooker.

    Taking Care of Your Pressure Cooker

    After purchasing your pressure cooker, be sure to read the manual thoroughly and follow the care/cleaning instructions provided there.

    However, in general:

  • Keep the vent tube clean. Check it before every use by holding it up to the light and looking through it. Most can be cleaned by using a wire to remove any obstruction. Avoid cooking foods that tend to "froth" to prevent this blockage from occurring.

  • Clean the pressure cooker after every use. Generally, they should be washed by hand with warm soapy water but should not be submerged in water. If your cooker has a gasket that too should be washed and dried with each use.

  • Replace the gasket (if your pressure cooker has one) when it begins to leak steam consistently when cooking. The gaskets can dry out, crack, shrink, and so forth over time.

  • Store the pressure cooker with the lid off, particularly if it has the gasket. (I used to store mine with the lid resting on top of the pot, upside down.)

  • If using your pressure cooker for canning, getting the pressure gauge calibrated periodically can be an important safety precaution.

    • Stove Top Pressure Cookers

    If you don't see what you want here, you can see more pressure cookers at this link.
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    Electric Pressure Cooker

    If you don't see what you want here, you can look for another electric pressure cooker at this link.
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    A Pressure Cooker Canner

    If you don't find what you want here, try this link for additional pressure cooker canners
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    Using a Pressure Cooker for Canning

    How to Can Fruits & Vegetables : Tips on Using a Pressure Cooker for Home Canning
    by expertvillage | video info

    17 ratings | 12,745 views
    curated content from YouTube

    Pressure Cooker Cookbooks

    If you don't see what you want here, look for more pressure cooker cookbooks at this link.
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    Pressure Cooker Recipes: Beef

    The time is right for a fresh salad
    "I am hopeful a reader may be able to help," Tammy writes. Recently, I published recipes for pressure cooker baked beans in response to a request from Ed Prange. Ed reports that he used his new pressure cooker for the first time.
    Forget the wings, pass the meatballs
    As with Buffalo wings, you'll want to serve these balls with blue cheese dressing. A few weeks back, Roy Loweke of Sebring asked for a recipe to make pressure-cooker baked beans. Many readers replied and we ran recipes. Since then, we've had more ...
    The Feijoada From Ipanema
    I think the love is definitely important, but further investigation (involving many hours of cooking as many feijoada recipes as I could find) revealed that most Brazilians use a pressure cooker to serve one up in less than an hour.
    Your views on the news: The truth about McJobs & teachers on Facebook
    Its not rocket science or a great mystery to be able to cook stews,soups and loads of recipes with mince bulked out with bread crumbs or cheap cuts of meat. I was brought up with leg beef stew, ash (soup) dumplings, yorkshire puddings , oxtail ...
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    Pressure Cooker Recipes: Chicken

    Forget the wings, pass the meatballs
    To me, they look a lot easier to prepare and less work to eat than chicken wings. As with Buffalo wings, you'll want to serve these balls with blue cheese dressing. A few weeks back, Roy Loweke of Sebring asked for a recipe to make pressure-cooker ...
    The time is right for a fresh salad
    "I am hopeful a reader may be able to help," Tammy writes. Recently, I published recipes for pressure cooker baked beans in response to a request from Ed Prange. Ed reports that he used his new pressure cooker for the first time.
    The Feijoada From Ipanema
    Dragging our sack of sandwiches next to the cool, still Atlantic Ocean and chitchatting with regulars wasn't exactly a hard job; it just meant we had to wake up early and cook chicken and chop celery. At 11 am, I'd slide into a fio dental (those ...
    New Liberty raises local food IQ
    The workshops are held following the winter farmers market, which is also housed in the church basement and takes place from 9 am to noon on Saturdays. Upcoming workshops will be on pressure cookers (Jan. 21), root cellars and root recipes (Feb.
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    Pressure Cooker Recipes: Pork

    Spectrum student chef wins top honours
    It's a real pressure cooker and she did really well.? Cafeteria manager Michelle Darling commends St. Pierre on her ability to stay focused ? a trait many of her high school counterparts had yet to fully develop. ?She gets it,? Darling said.
    The Feijoada From Ipanema
    I think the love is definitely important, but further investigation (involving many hours of cooking as many feijoada recipes as I could find) revealed that most Brazilians use a pressure cooker to serve one up in less than an hour.
    Explainer House Call: What does sloth meat taste like?
    Everett prefers to tenderize the meat in a pressure cooker for 40 minutes, season it with cilantro, garlic, salt, and chili sauce, and add it to tacos. Some among the debaters in Ann Arbor reasoned that, since a sloth rarely moves more than a few ...
    New Liberty raises local food IQ
    The workshops are held following the winter farmers market, which is also housed in the church basement and takes place from 9 am to noon on Saturdays. Upcoming workshops will be on pressure cookers (Jan. 21), root cellars and root recipes (Feb.
    Powered by Google

    Pressure Cooker Recipes: Soups and Stews

    Braised oxtail with celery
    Oxtail can take anything from 1-2 hours to cook ? in a pressure cooker, however, it takes only about one hour, and you'll find there are no fumes in your house, either. Preheat the oven to 220C/gas mark 7. Season the pieces of oxtail and lightly dust ...
    Dutch Treat: Beef, Italian Style
    Maybe it's the weight of the lid, which serves as a low-level pressure cooker. Maybe it's the taste of the cast iron. Or, maybe, it's just because cooking in a Dutch oven is usually done outdoors and the surroundings are so beautiful that anything ...
    Delicious And Nutritious Beans Soup
    Boil for 35 minutes until soft and almost cooked ( if you have a cooker, it's even faster) pressure cooker. Cook your beef and stock fish with salt and seasoning, add the beans paste to the boiling pot of beef, stock fish and dry fish stir well.
    New Liberty raises local food IQ
    Upcoming workshops will be on pressure cookers (Jan. 21), root cellars and root recipes (Feb. 11), emergency planning (Feb. 25), extending the garden season on both ends (March 10), and seeds, bread and soup (March 24) and will feature presentations, ...
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    Pressure Cooker Recipes: Desserts

    Mother-daughter team from Roseville win TV cook-off
    Their camaraderie and cooking experience together helped give them an edge once the TV cameras started rolling. They'd first heard about the competition last summer on Twitter, and submitted a video of themselves making a cookielike dessert out of a ...
    Giants take tough road to Indy
    What began in a driving Northern California rain storm concluded with Candlestick Park turned into a pressure cooker, the intensity building with each successive snap as the Giants held their ground against a group that believed themselves the chosen ...
    Boys basketball: Huskies top Cougars, move closer to playoff berth
    ?We're under the pressure-cooker right now,? Reno coach Kyle Schellin said. Keenly aware of what was at stake Tuesday, Reno (12-12, 9-6) was loose during pregame senior night ceremonies and Schellin went with an all-senior starting lineup that featured ...
    Madrid Fusión 2012: Day Two
    With his book collaborator Maxime Bilet helping, Myhrvold demonstrated ? both live onstage and with video ? such processes as pressure rendering, in which he turned bacon into its fat and bits of crisp meat in a jar inside a pressure cooker (the ...
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    Pressure Cooker Recipes: Casseroles

    The time is right for a fresh salad
    "I am hopeful a reader may be able to help," Tammy writes. Recently, I published recipes for pressure cooker baked beans in response to a request from Ed Prange. Ed reports that he used his new pressure cooker for the first time.
    Powered by Google

    Pressure Cooker Recipes: Side Dishes

    The Feijoada From Ipanema
    I think the love is definitely important, but further investigation (involving many hours of cooking as many feijoada recipes as I could find) revealed that most Brazilians use a pressure cooker to serve one up in less than an hour.
    Your Students, Your Schools - Des Moines west
    Food labs have focused on international cooking and students are working on creating cookbooks from another culture. Eighth-graders began a crash course on money management in which they learned how to balance needs and wants while also keeping some ...
    Robin Ellis remembers Poldark
    It was called Poldark, and it aired over two seasons on PBS' Masterpiece Theatre.1 Robin Ellis shows off his cooking skills which led him to write a cookbook for diabetics. The Emmy and BAFTA-nominated miniseries, based on the beloved novels by Winston ...
    Community Calendar for Feb. 17
    The following events will take place at the Chicago Botanic Garden, 1000 Lake Cook Road in Glencoe. For more information call (847) 835-5440 or visit www.chicagobotanic.org. Registration for the 2012 summer day camp programs has begun.
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    Pressure Cooker Recipes: Vegetarian

    Cooking Basmati Rice Just Perfectly!
    Although cooking procedure of basmati is as same as any normal rice, some tips will help you to cook better and easier. Today, we will discuss on those cooking tips. Have a look. For pulaos, basmati needs to have the right consistency.
    The Best Indian Food in Chicago May Not be Where You'd Think
    The samosas, the dosas, the prices, the pressure cookers, the tea, the international groceries, the saris, and the families going out to dinner around 8 or 9:00 pm There are some good places here, especially for South Indian food.
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    Pressure Cooker Recipes: Diabetic

    Chefs struggle to stay healthy in pressure-cooker setting
    TV chef Paula Dean's announcement last week that she has Type 2 diabetes shed some light on a dark corner of the restaurant industry. For men and women working long, odd hours ? especially those struggling with eating-related addictions ? the ...
    Methi: Green gold in your kitchen
    There are hundreds of recipes that have evolved on this green gold. It is proven to be a powerful panacea in the treatment of diabetes and high blood pressure. Fenugreek also holds the promise to cure certain types of arthritis.
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    Pressure Cooker Canning

    You Too Can Can
    ... or using pressure cookers to can non-acidic goods, just sounds like too much work. Perhaps a class in canning fruits and vegetables will dispel the myths and give me the confidence to get in the kitchen and start making my own foodie gifts.
    Blue pea shortage signals profitable opportunities for high-quality crops
    "The natural gas burners give off a certain wavelength (infra red) that causes cooking from the inside." Peas are pre-soaked and each grain acts as a pressure cooker and as the moisture expands, heat travels outwards and cooks the starch.
    New Liberty raises local food IQ
    Upcoming workshops will be on pressure cookers (Jan. 21), root cellars and root recipes (Feb. 11), emergency planning (Feb. 25), extending the garden season on both ends (March 10), and seeds, bread and soup (March 24) and will feature presentations, ...
    Mother Earth News Tips for Affordable Better Food
    Preserve Your Own Food?preserving food is actually easier to do than most fear and does not require a pressure cooker. A large canning kettle (essentially a big pot with a special jar bracket and inner wall lips to hold the jar bracket), some canning ...
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    Pressure Cooker Instruction Manuals and Parts

    Presto Pressure Cookers
    Find Instruction Manuals for a variety of Presto products as well as replacement parts.
    Cuisinart Pressure Cooker Instruction Manual
    Get the instruction manual for Cuisinart's electric pressure cooker.
    Nesco Pressure Cooker Instruction Manual
    Here is the manual for the Nesco 3-in-1 pressure cooker.
    Fagor Pressure Cookers
    Find Fagor replacement parts here.
    Kuhn Rikon Pressure Cookers
    Find replacement parts here.
    Fagor Instruction Manuals
    Find links to PDFs for the various cookers by Fagor.
    Kuhn Rikon Instruction Manuals
    You'll find some Kuhn Rikon Instruction manuals here.
    Mirro-Matic Pressure Cooker Manual
    The instruction manual is available as a download.
    All American
    Find parts for All American Pressure Cookers/Canners.
    All American Pressure Cooker Instructions
    Find a PDF of the manual here.
    Cuisinart Pressure Cooker Instruction Manual
    The Cuisinart parts and accessories online.
    Mirro-Matic Parts
    A resource for replacement parts for Mirro-Matic pressure cookers.

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