6 Lessons Learned From 2+ Years Of Pressure Cooking (KYF169)

I've been pressure cooking for more than 2 years. And guess what?

Pressure cooking is easy… but not as easy as everyone says.

So in today's podcast (video and notes are below, too) I'm sharing the things no one else tells you about pressure cooking.

Well, except for me… and Vickilynn and Haniya, who are helping me teach our Pressure Cooking eCourse. 🙂

Be sure to add your lessons learned in the comments!

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Video

I recorded this podcast live on Facebook Live last week, and here's the video from that! It's just like the audio file above, except you can see it, too. 🙂

Want to join the fun of the live recording? Follow me on Facebook or @TradCookSchool on Periscope. I hop on to record most Thursdays!

1. The Instant Pot makes pressure cooking soooooo much more doable.

I know this from experience. I first got a stove-top pressure cooker and I loved that. But it was pretty hands on. I had to be right there; and to be honest, it was a big of a drag. Because for something that was supposed to be so easy, I sure was having to monitor it a lot… (Not hard, just not that easy.)

Then I saw the Instant Pot and knew it was going to make pressure cooking so easy. It did not disappoint. I literally use it all the time. For eggs, reheating, whole chickens. Even if the dinner I’m cooking doesn’t involve the pressure cooker, I will still cook something in it while I can to free me up later. Example: last night we were barbecuing chicken. And potatoes were boiling on the camp stove. So I put a whole chicken in the Instant Pot and cooked that for today’s meals.

2. Use the saute function to pre-heat and save time!

You can pre-heat your cooker by putting in the liquid and putting on saute function while prepping your ingredients. Then it’s all hotter when you’re ready to pressurize. You can also pre-heat your ingredients or prepare them at room temperature. The less cold everything is when you start the pressure cooking cycle, the faster you’ll get pressurized. Sometimes, it can take up to 30 minutes to get pressurized!

3. Add more water if you lost too much during pre-heat.

Sometimes, you’re pre-heating the cooker with a bit of water and a lot of it evaporates by the time you’re ready to pressure cook. You MUST add more water or it won’t pressurize. (Pressure cooking is cooking with steam under pressure. In order to have steam, you must have water!)

This happened to me the other day. I lost liquid and then I added broccoli and it went through the cooking cycle but not under pressure. I couldn’t figure it out… tried to pressurize it 3 times until it finally dawned on me… not enough liquid!

4. Pressure cooking helps me beat the heat!

Our house gets hot in the summer and doesn’t ventilate. We do most of our cooking outside on the camp stove, or I take appliances outside and to use them. However, I am able to use the pressure cooker inside the house (even though sometimes I don’t) because it simply doesn’t output heat like the stove, oven, crockpot, or toaster oven. It’s amazing! When I need to release the steam, I can take it outside just for that (if I want).

5. You probably have most of what you need already.

Other than the Instant Pot itself, you probably have most of what you need already in your kitchen to make fun and interesting dishes! This doesn’t mean you might not make the occasional purchase, but you can do A LOT with what you have.

For instance, Pyrex glass storage bowls make great cooking containers. And a layer of parchment paper followed by aluminum foil makes a non-toxic cover. (We cover more accessories and necessities in the Pressure Cooking eCourse.)

6. Allow time for prep, pressurizing, de-pressurizing, and cooling down, too.

Even though the main premise of pressure cooking is that things cook faster, you still need to allow for prep, coming to pressure, de-pressurizing, and cooling down. So… it’s not a huge time saver but the results are worth it enough to do it. Especially the hands-free aspect of the Instant Pot. I still factor in the same amount of cooking time for dinner than I did before pressure cooking.

One of the biggies here is that the food is waaaayyyyy hotter when it’s done than with normal cooking. Therefore it’s really important to allow for 10 to 15 minutes so it can cool down enough for the family to actually enjoy eating it.

Links Mentioned

• Instant Pot Pressure Cooker
• 8 Reasons To Love Pressure Cooking
• The Great Big Pressure Cooker Cookbook
• Our Pressure Cooking eCourse

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