Had the slow cooker. Rather than being confined to the back of the cupboard it just gave up the ghost. Thinking about pressure cookers now. In from work, chop some stuff up et voila, 20 mins later dinner is served. Any tasty recipes/recommendations?

Go for slow cooker again as pressure cooker is a lot of hassle.

Depending on what you cook with pressure cooker you might end up eating “raw” tasting stuff.

Slow cooker you just chuck in everything and let it cook for several hours without even having to care about overcooking.

I’ve had both, pressure cooker isn’t worth the arse ache. Slow cooker is the best thing ever!

I’ve got both they get used for different things as well they’re different. Neither get much use in reality though as cooking a meal doesn’t take take long.

Recipes for slow cooker very easy.

Go to Tecso Polish food section buy this. Cook whatever you wish but add about half a tea spoon of this. Delicious. Trust me it is good.

Kucharek seasoning 200g £.079.

Pressure cooker gets used for beans and bones and nothing else.

Do you make humous often . Pressure cooker is good for that.

Instant pot, surely?!

I have a pressure cooker but not a slow cooker – only use it for soups & stews though. A slow cooker has never really appealed to me – I’m not organised enough to prep something before work and the results of other people’s efforts that I’ve sampled haven’t been great. Not sure what the hassle factor of a pressure cooker is either – you bung stuff in, close lid and turn down the heat to minimum when it starts making a noise. OK de-pressurising takes a couple of minutes but that’s half the fun…

Our Instant Pot gets used at least once a week, often 4 or 5 times. Lots of Indian stuff, the odd tagine, soups, risottos. I love that potatoes in curries come out cooked but not falling apart. Most could be done a bit slower in a saucepan but would need a lot more attention – with young kids being able to kick it off and come back later (with it turning off and keeping it warm if we’re distracted) is a godsend.

Has lots of settings, including slow cooking and for rice. Huge community around them, lots of Facebook groups with endless recipes to try.

I think pressure cookers are a lot of hassle in a post microwave age…when you can buy ready cooked legumes if you don’t have time or keep in the cupboard…. they are pretty heavy and unweildly so the sort of thing you either use all the time or get stuck at the back of the cupboard I reckon and due to the options today more likely the latter after the initial fun.

There’s not much hassle involved with instant pot type pressure cookers. There’s all sorts of set and forget meals you can chuck in the pot and leave unattended.

Horses for courses

https://www.seriouseats.com/2016/10/why-pressure-cookers-are-better-than-slow-cookers.html

My old pressure cooker was a cheap aluminium thing (£25 quid I think) was OK but stews often ended up with stuff burnt at the bottom. I swapped to a https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00V31DJXK/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 (although it was on offer at £65) and it’s much better – also it’s designed to be used as a big stock pot to (comes with a normal lid and even a steamer tray) so hasn’t been confined to the back of a cupboard yet…

I don’t understand how pressure cookers are more faff than slow cookers… weird.

You still have to brown meat, but you can do it in the pressure cooker rather than making another pan dirty. So that’s less faff in my view.

I do meatballs in mine. Brown them off, chuck in stuff to taste, onions, tomatoes, herbs. Set to 15-20 mins. Open the valve. Done. Apparently you can chuck the pasta in too. Haven’t tried that yet. Oh and if you’ve done a large quantity, the pressure cooker then takes on the slow cooker role and keeps slow cooking for 24 hrs. By which time your food is extra tasty.

Currys are better in a wok/pan as they go a bit watery in the pressure cooker.

Just remembered a leg of lamb I bought in Lidl – browned off in the cooker, chucked in the flavours (gravy, mint etc) cooked for 20mins – that was superb, especially after the 24 hr slow cook.

i love my pressure cooker. Use it for pasta sauces a lot – half an hour at pressure can turn something from being “quite clearly a tin of tomatoes and some mince” to “tastes like it had all afternoon in the oven”.

I do find you often have to give it 10 mins at the end to boil off excess liquid though.

Pasta is hard to get right as it needs more liquid than you’d usually want to put in a pressure cooker, tends to end up burnt or too soft when I’ve tried but still works for a quick one pot meal.

<span style=”font-size: 0.8rem;”>Using it for the sauce is great though, tastes like it’s been simmering all day.</span>

That’s what I thought – and pasta isn’t exactly slow or hard to cook on the hob…

I was transfixed by a moment of online shopping telly last week when they were selling the Pressure King Pro. The woman chucked about 6 frozen chicken breasts in with some sauce or other and cooked them in 20 mins! Can’t say I’ve tried that either. Weird thing was too, they were demoing cooking some different things and how easy it all is, but never once mentioned opening the valve! Like it was a secret too dangerous to mention.

This thread gave me the impetus to buy a pressure cooker. My folks have had them for years, and I know they like them.  However, I’d never tried one for myself.  I bought one of the smaller (but expensive) ones, and gave it its first run today.

I modified a chicken casserole recipe I’ve made two or three times in a slow cooker.  The cooking time worried me, because the couple of pressure cooker cook books I’d browsed seemed to suggest differing timings for chicken dishes.

I also wasn’t too sure how to regulate the heat, but in the end it was fairly straightforward.  Preparing the meal was slightly less hassle than if I were using a slow cooker, and rather than the meal being ready in 6 – 8 hours, it was ready in 10 minutes!  Even though I knew what to expect, I’m still flabbergasted at the speed at which the meal cooked.  It also tasted great, and all the ingredients had cooked perfectly.  As Doris5000 said, it definitely seemed like it had been in the oven for hours.

No doubt it will take a while to learn how long to cook various dishes, but the first results are very promising.  I can see it being good when you want to prepare a meal and eat it almost straightaway, as opposed to a slow cooker where you prepare a meal, forget about it for hours, then come back to it to find it ready to eat.

Sounds good. Which pressure cooker did you purchase out of interest?

Since I last posted on here about not cooking the pasta in the pressure cooker, I experimented by lobbing it in with some meatball (turkey btw, £1 for 500g!) concoction. 10 mins, everything was perfect. Clever stuff.

I bought this one https://www.kuhnrikon.co.uk/duromatic-inox-frying-pan-titanium-non-stick

I’ll normally be cooking smaller portions. so didn’t need one of the really big pressure cookers.  I also thought it might be handy as a frying pan, and the non-stick coating might be better for browning food.  I got it for something like £206 which seemed like a lot of dosh for a pot, but I was keen to try it, and knew if I dithered I’d probably never get around to buying one!

Any recipes you could share deejayen? Along with method  and cooking times  The chicken casserole sounds good.

Yeah, interested in that recipe!

It’s not much of a recipe, and I’m far from being a whizz in the kitchen, but I’ll have a go at describing what I did…

Firstly, all the ingredients came from M&S. I’d normally use chicken thighs for a casserole, but in this case I thought I’d try a chicken breast. I bought one of their individual Oakham chicken boneless & skinless breasts.

Quantities – I was only cooking for myself, but I thought the ‘sauce’ would be enough for two. In the end , I probably ate more than half the sauce, and I’m not usually a big eater. If cooking for two I’d obviously use two chicken portions, and might slightly increase the other ingredients, or pad the meal out with extra side vegetables.

For veg I used:-

Half a medium sized onion, finely chopped.

One medium carrot, sliced (about 1cm or 1.5cm thick)

One medium Maris Piper potato, peeled and cut into slices of similar thickness to the carrot.

I measured out 150ml of M&S chicken stock (they sell this in liquid form in something like 500ml pouches).

Into the stock I put a couple of pinches of salt and about 10 twists of mixed peppercorns. Obviously, season to taste!  I also added ¼ teaspoon of dried sage.

I made up a little paste of (maybe a heaped teaspoon with a little warm water) of Carr’s thickening flour, and stirred that into the stock.

The final ingredient was 200g of chopped tomatoes. When I made this meal before (in a slow cooker) I used a bottle of ‘real’ tomatoes which M&S sell in their ‘import’ range, but in this case I used 200g of their tinned Italian tomatoes.

First step, heat the pressure cooker and add a little bit of butter. Dust the chicken breast in plain flour, and brown the chicken. Put to one side when browned. The non-stick pan worked well here, and I think one of the tricks to this particular pressure cooker is that the base is thick and spreads heat evenly, so it might also make a decent frying pan.

Reduce the heat slightly, and add all the veg to the pan to slightly brown, stirring every so often. It must have taken about 5 minutes or so. During this time I think I was measuring out the chicken stock etc.

Take the pan off the heat, turn the hob up to full, add the chicken to the pan, and then pour in the stock and tomatoes, and make sure everything is fairly evenly distributed around the pan. Put the lid on the pressure cooker, put it on the hob, and wait for the valve to rise past the second red ring.

At this point, start the timer (for 10 minutes). Turn the hob down to low. I read that when using an electric hob, to take the pan off the hob to allow the hob to cool (otherwise the pressure cooker on top acts as an insulator). It seems that the pressure cooker will maintain pressure for a little while even if it’s not on the hob. When the heat is reduced, put the pressure cooker back on the hob, and try to maintain the heat so that the second red ring is just showing. I’ll need to ask my Dad about this stage, or read up on it. If the pressure gets too high the cooker will start to hiss and let out a little steam, but it’s gentle, and not alarming.

While the meal was cooking I washed up the few dishes etc., heated up a dinner plate, and set the table. To make things a little easier I used a half a pack (one portion) of M&S’s cabbage, which I heated up in the microwave with two minutes to go!

After ten minutes I took the cooker off the hob, released the pressure by holding down the valve using the back of a spoon, then took the lid off. It looked great! I took out the chicken portion, and cut into it to make sure it was cooked and hot – it seemed perfect! Although not really necessary, I put the pan back on the hob and added a little more thickening flour and reduced the sauce slightly. I then served, or whatever the expression is for dishing up a self-made meal!

I was really pleased at how it turned out. The carrots had a lot of flavour, and the chicken breast was really nice, and not dried out at all. Also, although the above sounds long-winded, it didn’t take long to make, and I’d prepared it from scratch, eaten it, and washed up in less than an hour.

Horses for courses

Thats why mums go to Iceland.

Good stuff. Sounds nice and easy. The main problem I have with the pressure cooker is that the liquid does not reduce, so what I’ve put in there is sometimes too liquidy. For boiling things that’s fine, but for casserole/stews I want to thicken it up by reducing. I suppose I could cheat by using cornflour etc

have any pressurecookerists noticed a difference in how liquidy things are when you release the valve as opposed to just letting it cool down naturally?

Usually if you release the valve quickly you get a kitchen full of steam – does this equal less water in the stew?

Good stuff. Sounds nice and easy. The main problem I have with the pressure cooker is that the liquid does not reduce, so what I’ve put in there is sometimes too liquidy. For boiling things that’s fine, but for casserole/stews I want to thicken it up by reducing. I suppose I could cheat by using cornflour etc

Same issue with slow cookers, need to reduce it down for a while on the hob, which kinda defeats the purpose…

The only time I let mine cool down naturally all the oil floated to the top and looked a bit nasty. It wasn’t liquidy though 🙂

Opening the valve releases less steam than a kettle on mine. But it does have an auto valve that release a bit of steam as it cooks.

Yes, that’s why I used the thickening flour.  However, I did the same when using a slow cooker, and I don’t think the slow cooker reduces much, if any more than the pressure cooker.  I’m thinking that with the pressure cooker you could probably get away with using less liquid.

Thanks for taking the time to write that up deejayen. I like the fact that from start to finish for a home cooked meal you are looking at an hour. Especially when it is a casserole type dish that would traditionally have taken much longer.

Do you think you could casserole meat on the bone in it safely? Thinking chips/chicken thighs etc.

I’ve seen recipes for meat on the bone, including some for a whole chicken.  I think the cooking time needs to be increased, but I don’t think there’d be any problem with it.

I found it easier to reduce the sauce in the pressure cooker because the hob is already on, and you don’t have to transfer the food to a different pot.