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If the budget is tight or you’re in a hurry, a pressure cooker is a great way to make meals fast. It’s great for fixing healthier foods due to the fact it preserves the flavors and nutrients, and it can tenderize leaner cuts of meat. As an added bonus, it cooks foods three to ten times faster than ordinary methods. It may surprise you to know some foods cooke even faster in a pressure cooker than they do in a microwave!

Staying Safe Under Pressure!

Don’t let safety concerns keep you from buying a pressure cooker. Take a look at today’s models. Improved designs of today’s pressure cookers means that have not just one safety feature, but sometimes up to three safety devices to prevent accidents. Use common sense and follow the cooking and safety procedures found in the pressure cooker’s manual. That will make it more likely to burn yourself taking something out of the oven than have a problem with the pressure cooker.

The biggest safety tip is to just remember never to open the pressure cooker while it is still under pressure!

Why You Need A Pressure Cooker

For healthy cooking on a budget, a nice new pressure cooker is a great investment. With a minimum of care, it can last through many 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.
• Pressure cookers work at all altitudes. All that’s needed is to adjsut the amount of pressure and cooking times.
• An entire meal can be quickly cooked in one pot by using a rack to enable cooking a variety of foods.
• It is a time saver since it cooks food so fast, and saves money by tenderizing cheaper, tougher cuts of meat.
• Because foods cook quickly with so little liquid in an airtight environment, the nutrients are preserved.

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

Deciding On The Right Pressure Cooker For Your Kitchen

The first 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. A nonstick finish just doesn’t work well in an pressure cooker, not being able to withstand the environment.

Pressure cookers made of stainless steel are more expensive and heavier than aluminum. 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.

Match The Right Sized Pressure Cooker To Your Cooking Needs.

A pressure cooker is usually sold by the total liquid capacity. In reality, however, only one half to two thirds of a pressure cookers total liquid capacity can be used, depending on what food is being cooked. The most commonly available models come in the following sizes:

• 4-quart: This is a good size for a single person or couple. An entire meal for 1-2 people can be cooked in this size, but it would likely only have room for a single course for a bigger family, such as vegetables.
• 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. It can also be used for pressure canning pint and half-pint jars.

There are larger pressure cookers like the 17 or 22 quart models, but these are generally used as pressure canners.  To use them for cooking would require a large amount of food, so it would only work for large groups.

Using A Pressure Cooker in A Healthy Kitchen!

A pressure cooker is a great addition in today’s kitchens. It helps the budget, makes meal preparation convenient, and preserves the nutritents in foods. Sometimes a little pressure in the kitchen is a good thing!

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