I have to be honest. When I first heard of a pressure cooker I was more than a little surprised people kept something like this in their houses because it seems like a bomb waiting to go off if you ask me! Contrary to what you might have heard though, a modern pressure cooker that’s properly maintained is a very safe and efficient way to cook, and we’re all about efficiency here at the Garden of Light!
Back when I first started using ours life was all about fussy ingredients and preparation taking up too much of my time in the kitchen. As a busy on-the-go parent, cooking amazing meals was the last thing on my list of cherished evening activities after a full day of work. But once I found out how simple (or fancy) cooking can be with a pressure cooker, I was hooked. And you’ll be too, once you give cooking with one a try. Of course, at your own pace. Learning can be a challenge, even with the best of recipe books since these devices tend to cook things way differently than you’re used to.
Let’s get started with some advantages of using a pressure cooker for your next meal:
Pressure Cooker Cooking Advantages
1. Pressure Cookers are Cheap. And they pay for themselves…Right now, buying bone broth is about the best way to round out any meal with healthy minerals. But these commercial broth options are really expensive. And they really are not much better than just using a saucepan to thicken your own over 10-12 hours. Instead of wasting all that money or heating up your house for a whole day though, you can easily make gallons of your own bone broth in just 2-3 hours with a pressure cooker. With all the appliance companies looking to jump on the bandwagon of Instant Pot’s commercial success these days, you can bet that it’s a great time to find an affordable pressure cooker at your local retail store! They’re both affordable and a great way to save money on ingredients.
2. It’s quick. If you are running late, you can easily make dinner in the half an hour between when you finish your work and when you finally decide to open up that bottle of Merlot before you start binge-watching TV. Understandable, you say? We’ve all been too tired to really spend any time cooking, which usually results in an expensive tap on a restaurant delivery app. But if you’ve had a lovely day and just want to make a special dinner for your family with a pressure cooker, you can – poof, poof, pop and it’s done. You can also have a lovely lunch or breakfast with no effort at all, and very little clean-up work.
3. A little preparation. You don’t have to be a Gordon Ramsay level chef to cook amazing food with a pressure cooker. You don’t have to be a professional chef at all really. You can just take a few minutes or a half hour to get a lovely meal on the table. You may make a few mistakes the first few times you use yours, but in my experience it was easy to perfect recipes after 1-2 attempts. It’s not the end of the world if you have to resort to a frozen pizza as a quick save after a failed attempt! We’ve all been there using an oven or a grill, so don’t let this hold you back from trying your hand with a pressure cooker.
4. Heavy hitting. OK, this is the one point where preparation must be considered as a factor since it’s so much easier to get a roast done in a pressure cooker than anything else I’ve tried. Bigger meals work so well with pressure cooking! You can easily make a decent sized meal with a large beef or pork roast and maybe a few extra ingredients like potatoes and carrots. If you have an Instant Pot or similar device with the option, consider handing the brazing portion of the cooking process with the pressure cooker being your frying pan. Browning the meat on the outside whilst the rest of the ingredients are finishing up their saute keeps you from having to wash another dish!
5. No mess. You don’t have to be a breakfast-skipper anymore. Yawn, wipe your mouth, and rise from the bed an hour later or stay home in your pajamas for a few extra minutes with a low carb or low fat breakfast meal waiting for you thanks to your pressure cooker. They make perfectly fluffy quiches!
6. Go for the gusto. If you’re keen, you’ll find that once you’ve added the final touches, your dinner will cost a lot less than you’d expect. Spices tend to be more flavorful with pressure cooking, so you can use less of them and buy better ingredients with the savings.
7. Be careful though, only buy from those grocery stores that have a decent selection of organic, locally available food. You might save money in the short run, but lots of hidden costs can go unnoticed for a long time if we don’t take care of our health. Go for the all natural ingredients. By natural I mean not made from artificial ingredients or colors. Look for hot and fresh organic ingredients. Minimize on any artificial flavoring and artificial ingredients like MSG. Saving money is good and all and a pressure cooker will allow you to do so, but you should invest some of those savings into good health and nutrition for sure!
There you go! Now you don’t have any excuses holding you back from buying a new pressure cooker and trying out a few recipes listed below!
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