Step 2: Take your pressure cooker out of its box.

I am not being trite, I promise. I have heard a fair few stories – some of them from you – about pressure cookers and other kitchen gadgets purchased, only for them to sit in the box for weeks, months, in extreme cases, even years! This postponement of the inevitable (or is it inevitable? Do they sometimes end up in charity shops, unopened?) frequently comes from nervousness  – people love the idea of what a pressure cooker can do and how much time, money, fuel and water they will save. However, when faced with the reality of using one for the first time, the fear factor so often associated with pressure cooking kicks in. If this is you, then hopefully this post will help.

Even if fear is not the main driver, I understand how the prevarication happens, as I have been guilty of it myself. Sometimes the thought of grappling with something new and unfamiliar can become insurmountably exhausting and intimidating.

Confession time – this happened to me with my first electric, counter top model. It was an Instant Pot and I was at that time (a decade ago) quite sceptical to the point of mental block. It is true to say that at that time I only had eyes for my stove tops. The Instant Pot sat in its unopened box for months. The box, which was huge, became a handy bit of extra workspace for me and I think I only opened it when my husband rightly lost patience over constantly tripping over it and had Stern Words. At this point it made it to the counter,  only to spend another few months acquiring oil splatters, dust and general kitchen detritus before I finally switched it on. It looked used even though it wasn’t. Then of course the day finally came when – and I have no idea what the impetus was – I used it for the first time, realised in seconds it was basically the same as a stove top in terms of mechanism and haven’t had a problem since. My point being, whenever you actually do start, you can never quite understand afterwards what the fuss was all about and why it took you so long.

(An aside – skip this bit if you have heard it all before, I have talked about it A LOT elsewhere. But I was lucky not to have this issue with my first stove top. I bought the same model as my sister-in-law – a Prestige - and had watched her use it. She had made a quick feijoada with a bag of dried, unsoaked black beans in less than an hour from start to finish and I was astounded and impressed and that was pretty much all it took to make me fall in love with pressure cooking. Thank goodness she is a good cook! Andreia – Brazilian by birth – explained to me that pressure cookers were indispensable in Brazil – that the first thing most people did when they got home from work was pressure cook beans for dinner. This is the same all over the world – anywhere pulses and other non perishable dried goods are eaten as a major staple, you will find pressure cookers. And as many of these places have hot climates, the bonus is that pressure cookers help keep houses cooler during the hotter months simply because they are faster and the hob isn’t on for as long as it would be if the same things were cooked conventionally. This is becoming increasingly relevant in the UK too).

The takeaway from this might be if you can go to a demo, do, it could make a world of difference. As I say, I was lucky, I had a very positive, first hand experience which made me excited to get going. But I know that there are many people – and I expect some of you are amongst them – who are terrified of using pressure cookers for so many reasons. There is no doubt they have a ferocious reputation – when recording R4’s The Food Programme recently, Sheila Dillon asked a roomful of people attending a cooking class how they felt about pressure cookers and they overwhelmingly and unanimously talked about how scared they were of them. There were colourful and hair raising descriptions, one person said that her mother used to make her go into the garden every time she released the pressure “just in case”. I have heard all the stories – explosions, lids welded onto ceilings, kitchens spattered in food, hissing, steam belching, weights jiggling. Not to mention the complaints about overcooked food. This used to annoy pressure cooker aficionado Marguerite Patten no end. She was one of the first home economists to demo pressure cooking – in Harrods no less - and once told me firmly that badly cooked food was the fault of the cook, not the pressure cooker. Something I have sympathy with when I am told about vegetables such as brussels sprouts being cooked for 30 minutes – much longer than they need conventionally, let alone under pressure.

However, going back to safety – and this is very important - the horror stories very much apply to the old style models and not the new generation, reengineered pressure cookers which are very safe, sleek, highly efficient and quiet! To explain why they are safe I need to briefly explain how they work.  A pressure cooker is basically a specially modified saucepan – a souped up saucepan if you will, cooking at temperatures of up to 120C.  The modification is in the lid – it is weighted and  has a seal (gasket) which lines the inside rim. These two adaptations work together to make sure that any steam stays inside the cooker; as the steam builds up, so does the pressure which makes the temperature rise. The problems used to arise when the steam continued to build up pressure and couldn’t be contained within. This is when you get stories about lids blowing off. The reason this used to happen was because the old style pressure cookers would only have one safety valve, there to make sure the steam could come out safely if necessary. This valve could very occasionally get blocked, by an errant bean or some foaming starch, and there was no back up.

The new generation reengineered pressure cookers, whether stove top or electric, have a myriad of safety features to prevent this from ever happening. If your pressure cooker does go over pressure – and this will only happen because of human error, I will explain how, below  – then there are numerous ways in which the steam can safely escape. I test every single model I buy/receive to make sure this is the case by allowing them to go over pressure and making sure I can see the steam coming out from all the different safety valves. The worst thing that can happen is that your pressure cooker might boil dry, but that is no different from allowing a saucepan or casserole to do the same.

How does a pressure cooker go over pressure? Well, this only applies to stove tops as with electric models this part of the process is automated, but it is very simple. A pressure cooker will go over pressure if you leave it on a high heat once it has reached high pressure. It needs very little heat to maintain the high pressure. So all you have to do is stick around while it comes up to pressure, then reduce the heat. Once you have done this you can leave it all day long, safely without issue. Every single time I have talked through an accident someone has had with an old style pressure cooker, it is because they have left it alone and not reduced the heat.

Pressure cookers are like many other pieces of kitchen kit – you need to learn how to use them safely and treat them with respect. Next week I’m going to talk you through how to use them properly. If you are yet to take yours out of the box, now might be a good time.