If the budget is tight or you’re in a hurry, a pressure cooker is a great way to make meals fast. It’s ideal for preparing healthy foods because it preserves flavors and nutrients, and tenderizes leaner cuts of meat. Even more, it cooks foods three to ten times faster than ordinary methods. Some foods, in fact, cook even more quickly in a pressure cooker than they do in a microwave!

Safety Comes First!

If you’ve put off buying a pressure cooker because of safety concerns, take another look at the pressure cooker. Today’s pressure cookers are of improved designs. They have at least one safety device, and sometimes up to three, that will prevent accidents. If you follow the cooking and safety procedures outlined in the manual that comes with your nice new pressure cooker, you probably have more chance of accidentally burning yourself on a hot pan coming out of the oven than having a problem with the pressure cooker.

Just remember the cardinal rule of pressure cooking – NEVER open the cooker while it is still under pressure!

Reasons To Have A Pressure Cooker

For healthy cooking on a budget, a nice new pressure cooker is a great investment. With just a little care, it will last through years of hard service. Some of the advantages of using a pressure cooker include:

  • Using less energy because it takes less time for foods to cook, saving money and energy resources.
  • It works at any altitude – all that’s needed is to adjust the amount of pressure and cooking times.
  • By using a rack, you can conk a variety of foods at one time, allowing the entire meal to be cooked quickly in one pot.
  • It saves money by tenderizing budget meat cuts, and saves time by cooking food so quickly.
  • Flavors and nutrients are preseved since food cooks so quickly in an airtight environment with little liquid.

Not only is a pressure cooker great for cooking meals, but it’s bigger cousin, the pressure canner, is absolutely essential for canning many vegetables and meats.

Choosing The Pressure Cooker That’s Best For Your Family

The biggest decision is whether to buy an aluminum or a stainless steel cooker. Aluminum pressure cookers are more lightweight and cheaper. Aluminum is also a good conductor of heat. Unlike most other aluminum cookware, however, pressure cookers aren’t availalbe with nonstick coatings. Those finishes just don’t hold up well under the conditions inside a pressure cooker.

Heaver than aluminum, stainless steel pressure cookers are also more expensive. The advantage is they have the same long lasting, lustrous finish common to most stainless steel cookware. To have the optimum cooking performance however, choose a stainless steel pressure cooker with a bimetal base, since stainless steel is a poor conductor of heat.

Choose The Pressure Cooker That’s Just The Right Size.

Pressure cookers are generally sold by their total liquid capacity. However, depending on what food is being cooked, in reality you can only use half to two thirds of their total liquid capacity. The most commonly available models come in the following sizes:

  • 4-quart: This is a good size for a single person or couple. This size can hold an entire meal for 1-2 people, but only a single course for a larger family.
  • 6-quart: This is a good size for families, and probably the most popular sized model for cooking.
  • 8-quart: For bigger families, this size works best. This size can also be used for pressure canning pint and half-pint jars.

Larger pressure cookers, such as the 17 or 22 quart models, are generally referred to and used as pressure canners. It would take a large group of people to warrant pressure cooking in such a large size.

Using A Pressure Cooker in A Healthy Kitchen!

For today’s hectic lifestyle and to cook healthy food, a pressure cooker is a great buy for your kitchen. It’s safe, convenient, and helps the cook prepare tasty, healthy foods. Sometimes a little pressure in the kitchen is a good thing!

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