Tag Archives: Pressure Cooking

December 31, 2021 · 2:51 pm

Hammy New Year!

At our house, we celebrate New Year’s Day with ham, cabbage (or greens), black eye peas, and cornbread—tradition for good luck in the coming year.

Ham doesn’t have to be a laborious undertaking. I use a pressure cooker. This year I pulled out my oldest electric cooker, my trusty Power Pressure Cooker XL, because it still works great and its 8-quart capacity is perfect for my 6 pound, semi-boneless ham. (Unfortunately, Tristar stopped selling this model)

I borrowed a trivet from my Instant Pot 6 quart, added two cups water, and placed the ham on the trivet. That’s all that’s necessary, but I wanted to jazz it up a bit since, you know, it’s New Year’s Eve and I feel festive. So I inserted a few whole cloves and added some dried mango for a bit of sweetness to complement the savory pork. Any fruit works, especially pineapple and dried apples. Use what’s convenient for you.

Mangoes and cloves add interesting flavor notes.

Forty minutes later, the ham is hot and ready to serve (after the pot depressurizes, of course.) Plus the pot has a delicious broth* perfect for flavoring vegetables or soaking dried black eye peas.

I always use this method for cooking ham, and without any fancy additions. A good ham and a couple of cups of water for forty minutes in the pressure cooker is delicious on its own.

Happy New Year!

Slice and serve.

*Caution: don’t add salt until you taste the ham. It can be salty enough as is. Then season as desired.

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June 25, 2021 · 9:48 am

Chicken Taco Soup

We love taco soup but try to limit red meat. We still love our beloved taco soup, though, so I changed very little to develop the chicken version.

This qualifies as a Hasty Tasty Meal because many ingredients are in your pantry. I developed this recipe for the electric pressure cooker, yet it can be adapted for stovetop or slow cooker cooking.

Recipe

Chicken Taco Soup

Makes 5–6 servings

INGREDIENTS

  • 1.5 pounds Boneless skinless chicken thighs (fresh or frozen)
  • 1 onion, chopped
  • 1 can tomatoes and green chilies
  • 1 can corn
  • 3 cans beans, your choice of varieties *
  • 1 15 oz. can tomato sauce
  • 1 packet taco seasoning mix
  • 1 quart chicken broth (cooking liquid from chicken)
  • (Optional) toppings (cheese, chips, scallions, sour cream)

DIRECTIONS

  1. Place chicken in pressure cooker in 2 cups water. Add salt and pepper.
  2. Cook 10 minutes under pressure and then let pressure drop on its own.
  3. Remove chicken from cooking liquid. Pour liquid into a quart measuring pitcher. Add water if necessary to bring amount of broth to 1 quart.
  4. Heat pressure cooker pot and sauté onions. Add taco seasoning packet and stir, just a few seconds until the spices are fragrant. Turn off heat.
  5. Add broth and deglaze the pot.
  6. Shred chicken meat and add to broth.
  7. Open beans, drain, then add to pot.
  8. Add corn, tomato sauce, and diced tomatoes (do not drain) to pot.
  9. Pressure cook soup for 10 minutes.
  10. Carefully release pressure and serve with your choice of toppings.

Enjoy.

*This recipe uses garbanzo, black, and pinto beans

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May 26, 2020 · 5:08 pm

Stocks and Broths

In the past decade, there’s been an explosion of products containing bone broth. In fact, bone broths are touted as the latest health elixir. Well, guess what, folks: Bone broth is nothing but your great granny’s stock.

TV cooking personality Alton Brown defines stock as containing bones and water. Period. That’s it. No salt, no vinegar, no vegetables…just bones and water. Broth is created using stock with the addition of ingredients for seasoning, such as celery, onions, carrots, and salt and pepper.

Stock cooks for hours in order to extract all the flavor and collagen from bones. Then it’s strained and stored for future use. With a pressure cooker, I reduce cooking time to 90 minutes followed by natural depressurization. I store in pint-size freezer-safe jars.* After quick cooling in a sink filled with cool water, I refrigerate my jars of stock. The following day, I label and freeze the jars unless I intend to use the stock within a week.

Pint freezer-safe jar

*Freeze only in jars marked “freezer safe.”

Homemade stocks are better than store bought cans or cartons because you control the ingredients. Less expensive, too.

Broths made from homemade stocks are rich, healthy, and tasty. Stock can be used to make a quick gravy or sauce, or as the base for soup. It’s a perfect liquid for pressure cooking. It’s nutritious for dog food, too.

A couple of pounds of bones can yield a gallon of stock, although I usually use more. It isn’t an exact ratio. If you favor slow cooking stock, you’ll need a minimum of six hours. Over night works. When you open the stock to use it, you may find a layer of congealed fat at the top. Carefully remove this fat before using stock but don’t discard it. That fat (especially chicken fat) is rich in flavor and can be used to sauté onions, etc. in place of butter.

Vary your stock as you wish, depending on available bones. I love ham bone broth (stock) for making beans. Chicken stock is versatile and can be used in all poultry dishes as well as beef or pork. Beef stock is good for starting a vegetable soup or any number of beef dishes. Or mix your bones for a rich stock to flavor as you wish.

One last word of advice from Alton Brown. Skip the vinegar. It’s a myth that a teaspoon of vinegar accelerates the extraction of collagen. The amount of vinegar needed to have an impact would render the stock inedible.

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April 28, 2020 · 10:05 am

Quarantine Cuisine Day #27 – Oatmeal

Today we’re out of milk. The skim milk is gone, the unsweetened almond milk is gone, the evaporated milk is gone … we’ve even used the shelf-stable cartons of milk we typically stock for hurricane preparedness. No cold cereal today for breakfast.

Oatmeal to the rescue! Grocery stores frequently have oatmeal on sale as a BOGO (buy-one-get-one free), so we had two boxes of Quaker Old Fashion Oatmeal in the pantry. With a pressure cooker, perfect oatmeal is easy. Here’s how I cook it.

RECIPE

Oatmeal for two

Ingredients: 2/3 cups oats, 2 cups water, 1/4 tsp. Salt (or to taste), 1 1/2 tsp butter, and 1 cup water for the pressure cooker.

Directions: Pour 1 cup water into the pressure cooker pot. Add trivet. In a separate bowl or pot (any vessel that fits inside the cooker for pot-in-pot cooking), combine all other ingredients. Seal pressure cooker, set for 10 minutes, cook, and allow pressure to drop on its own. Do not vent manually. Carefully open the pressure cooker, remove the inner pot or bowl using potholders or mittens, and stir oatmeal vigorously. Serve immediately.

My husband eats his oatmeal with a Tablespoon of honey stirred in. I like to add cinnamon and stevia. There are endless possibilities to flavor oatmeal.

If you want larger servings (Ours are approximately 100 calories per serving , not including toppings), simply increase the amounts of oatmeal and water while maintaining the 1/3 cup oats/1 cup liquid ratio.

We will enjoy oatmeal again soon. It’s a hearty and satisfying breakfast.

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