Todd, Electric Pressure Cooker Follow Up.

[epaul]

You have lived with it for a while now.

Do you prefer the electric pressure cooker to a stove top pressure cooker?

Does the electric to come up to pressure as fast as a stove top type (I suppose this depends on how fast your stove top burner is)

Do you ever pop fuses?

If Kim wasn't watching, which one would you use?

Pros/cons/recommendations...

[Village Idiot]

I would take the electric over the stove top hands down. With the stove top you are controlling two things and with the electric you are only controlling one.

With the stove top you turn your stove to high and after the thing is pressuring, you turn it down to low, but you have to be sure not too low. The electric regulates itself.

What I've learned is that pressure cooking isn't just throwing stuff in a pot and pressuring it. It still involves cooking. The electric has a myriad of settings so one can, for example, saute onions and then brown meat before adding other things at the touch of a button. With the other, you're regulating the stove top.

You can also do things like steam rice in the darned thing, quicker than a steamer.

Yup, electric, hands down.

And if you get one, get this book that FC gave me for Christmas:

www.amazon.com/Pressure-Perfection-Editors-Americas-Kitchen/dp/1936493411/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1424899146&sr=1-1

It is from America's Test Kitchen, so they actually have tried every recipe, and have an explanation of how it works. This in combination with an electric cooker would absolutely delight you, epaul. I promise.

[epaul]

Actually, I got one last year right after I got done teasing you about yours (I'm drinking vinegar with my OJ now, as well).

I now am a big time pressure cooker cook. I even have a Miss Vicki cookbook. So far, I mainly use it for quick soups and stews and to make chuck roasts (it makes them so tender). But, the cat knocked the lid of mine off the counter and (dang tile) one of flanges bent. I will test out my repair later, but the thought of a possible need for replacement has crossed my mind, (and if the lid costs as much as I paid for the pot, I'm moving on).

[jdd2]

So electric PCs are the cat's meow.

Hmm... (the niggles)

We have a rice cooker (w/timer for dinner/breakfast) so we don't need a PC for that. (Actually we have two rice cookers--one larger one we rarely use now that the kids are gone.) They'll also do brown rice, but I strongly prefer to do that stove top. We have a 3qt pan that I've had since the mid-70s that does perfect brown rice without any fuss at all. Start it and ignore, and there's then an uninterrupted 40min or so to prep the rest of the meal. I wouldn't trust a PC to somehow do it "better", nor do I need to re-invent the wheel figuring out how to have a PC make brown rice come out the same. Not only is done right, but it's also done right so that it makes good fried rice on the following days. (Rice cookers also do rice for sushi, and it'd take some real salesmanship to sell a PC for that.)

While most PCs are large, electric PCs of equal capacity seem even bigger (to put it nicely). If you have plenty of counter-top/cabinet real estate, an electric one might be fine.

It seems to me that controlling the rattle on a stove-top PC is pretty much set and forget. (gas burners)

I often use an immersion blender on soups when they're a little past half done, and then towards the end add a roux or other thickener. Just my POV, but a PC would add hassle to those steps. And soups, while the start might have a basis/focus on certain ingredients, browsing the crisper, while adjusting so that it'll be more of a main or side (assembling on the fly), seems like what soup-making is. (And easier than following a recipe.)

If you've got a little used crock pot, you might consider dusting that off--there's a fair overlap between what a PC and that can do. Sure, you lose the PC speed, but do gain a different kind of convenience. (I've never tried them, but there are also some rice cooker recipes that have a crock pot kinship.)

[Village Idiot]

Feb 25, 2015 18:36:16 GMT -5 epaul said:

But, the cat knocked the lid of mine off the counter and (dang tile) one of flanges bent. I will test out my repair later, but the thought of a possible need for replacement has crossed my mind, (and if the lid costs as much as I paid for the pot, I'm moving on).

Don't even try to repair, unless you want to severely injure yourself. Get a new one, and move on. With an electric one.

[Deleted]

Like Todd, cats are stern pressure cooker critics.

[Village Idiot]

I'm slow on the uptake. Epaul revels in that.

[Cosmic Wonder]

Feb 25, 2015 18:36:16 GMT -5 epaul said:

Actually, I got one last year right after I got done teasing you about yours (I'm drinking vinegar with my OJ now, as well).

I now am a big time pressure cooker cook. I even have a Miss Vicki cookbook. So far, I mainly use it for quick soups and stews and to make chuck roasts (it makes them so tender). But, the cat knocked the lid of mine off the counter and (dang tile) one of flanges bent. I will test out my repair later, but the thought of a possible need for replacement has crossed my mind, (and if the lid costs as much as I paid for the pot, I'm moving on).

You let the cat on the same counter you prep food on? The cat that digs in the cat litter? Blech. One does not have these sorts of problems with dachshunds.

Mike

[epaul]

Anyway, I may have to get a new pressure cooker. I was carrying the lid bad to the cupboard when I tripped over one of the damn daschunds. Lid went flying and I darn near broke my neck. Pot is probably wrecked and I was laid up for two days. The dog was fine.

[Cosmic Wonder]

Feb 28, 2015 12:23:05 GMT -5 epaul said:

Anyway, I may have to get a new pressure cooker. I was carrying the lid bad to the cupboard when I tripped over one of the damn daschunds. Lid went flying and I darn near broke my neck. Pot is probably wrecked and I was laid up for two days. The dog was fine.

Glad the dog is ok. You had me worried there for a moment.

Mike

[Village Idiot]

Well, you should save the lid for something. It is a bright shiny object, after all.