Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Full steam ahead: Pressure cookers are cool
Fear not! This generation of pressure cookers combines new safety features with steam's well-known efficiency.
Food writer Lindsey Nair
- lindsey.nair@roanoke.com | (540) 981-3343
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The other day, a monumental event took place in my kitchen.
The slow cooker, with its chipped, plastic handle and cheerful flowered design, was removed from its home in the cabinet and carried to the basement.
Then it was replaced by my sleek, stainless steel European pressure cooker.
When I admitted this via e-mail to Vickie Smith, the Web's (if not the world's) foremost expert on pressure cookery, she replied:
"Another convert ... BWAHAHA!"
But although two of my friends are also in love with pressure cookers, it seems we are still in the minority.
Most cooks I know are terrified of the things. At the first mention of a pressure cooker, their minds are filled with images of dangerous, exploding bombs.
Why else would some situations be called "pressure cookers"?
According to Smith, a Californian who just published her first book, "Miss Vickie's Big Book of Pressure Cooker Recipes," the unsafe pressure cooker is extinct in modern society.
"There are so many safety features built into these things," she said. "You would have to do it deliberately to get something like that to engage."
A history of violence
To understand why pressure cookers have had a bad reputation for so long, we need to take a little trip back in time.
According to Smith's book, the first pressure cooker invented was a cast iron model built in 1680 by Denis Papin. Explosions were a common occurrence.
In the early 1800s, canning became the chief method of food preservation. And by the early 20th century, huge, industrial pressure cookers arrived on the scene for that purpose.
By the time World War II rolled around, kitchens across America had household-sized aluminum pressure cookers, which were used regularly.
But Smith says the war -- and its demand for metal -- had a profound impact on the future of the cookware. Production stalled and many households even donated their pressure cookers to the war effort.
Post-war, the demand for pressure cookers again skyrocketed. Many companies that had been producing warplanes started making the cookware, but they turned out cheap, shoddy models.
"These postwar pressure cookers earned a bad reputation -- they turned into exploding bombs, often redecorating the kitchen in red beets or green pea soup," Smith wrote.
Timeline
- 1680 — Denis Papin creates the first version of a pressure cooker. Called a "steam digester," it was cast iron and had a locking lid. Explosions were common.
- 1795 — Frenchman Nicholas Appert invented canning in glass jars. Fifteen years later, Englishman Peter Durance patented the use of metal containers instead.
- 1812 — The first U.S. canning facility opened in New York.
- 1902 — The first commercial pressure cooker — a huge, industrial version — was patented for canning in the U.S. Three years later, 30-gallon and 10-gallon models became available.
- 1915 — Light, aluminum pressure cookers became available on the market for home cooks.
- 1938 — Alex Vischler introduced his Flex-Seal Speed Cooker. The 4-quart pressure cookers quickly grew in popularity and became a mainstay in American kitchens.
- 1941 — World War II started and the manufacture of pressure cookers stalled. Metal was needed for the war effort.
- 1945 — After the war, pressure cookers again swelled in popularity. But the post-war models were cheap and poorly designed. They often exploded, turning the term “pressure cooker” into a synonym for imminent disaster.
- 1970s — The pressure cooker experienced a surge in popularity, but many cooks simply unpacked their mother or grandmother’s shoddy 1940s version. The negative stereotype persisted.
- Today — After years of popularity overseas, high-quality European and Asian pressure cookers have appeared in American kitchens. American models, too, are better designed and incredibly safe and easy to use.
Source: "Miss Vickie’s Big Book of Pressure Cooker Recipes," by Vickie Smith
The pressure cooker became the black sheep of the kitchen. A brief resurgence in the 1970s was doomed by the fact that many cooks were still using unsafe hand-me-down models.
Smith says it took a long time for the stainless steel European versions to gain a foothold in America.
When she put up her Web site, www.missvickie.com, in 1999, it was mostly visited by friends and family. Within two years, she had to buy her own domain and learn HTML coding to keep it up.
Now, her visitor count totals more than 2 million.
If that number is any indication, the pressure cooker may be on the verge of making a big comeback.
The benefits of pressure
"You should buy a pressure cooker," a friend told me. "You can make a pork loin in, like, 15 minutes!"
When the gushing began, all I could think about was my mother's big, aluminum monstrosity. She used it exclusively for canning, so it seemed to be chittering and spitting away on the stovetop all summer long.
As a result, our pantry was always lined with jewel-toned jars of green beans, dilly beans, tomatoes, salsa, venison and jelly. The end results were delicious, but the process -- and the pressure cooker -- seemed like a big pain in the you-know-what.
Before I finally gave in and bought my 6-quart Fagor just before Super Bowl Sunday, I consulted Smith's book.
Good brand? Check. Fagor, of Spain, is one of the top manufacturers.
Stainless steel? Check. I wouldn't have it any other way.
Three-ply bottom? Check. It heats faster and burns less.
Enhanced safety features and a quick pressure-release method? Check.
I was ready to go.
Because it was Super Bowl, I wondered if I could do buffalo wings in my new pressure cooker.
I found the recipe on the Miss Vickie's site and gave it a shot. Once I brought my cooker to pressure, they cooked in six minutes flat and were falling-off-the-bone divine.
The next experiment was beef stroganoff, which I made with a package of Food Lion stew meat (so sue me, locavores). It took 20 minutes and the meat melted in our mouths.
The stainless steel lid on my Fagor has a dual-locking system. When it has come to pressure, a bright orange button on the handle pops up. That's when I start timing my dish.
If too much steam builds up in the cooker, it self-releases to maintain the proper pressure. When the dish is finished cooking, all I have to do is remove my pot from the burner, turn the valve to the quick release position and watch with fascination as a jet of steam shoots out across the stove.
When the pressure has fully released, the orange button falls, letting me know it's safe to open the lid.
As an alternative to the quick-release method, I can also carry my cooker to the sink and run cold water over the top. The handles stay so cool that I don't need oven mitts to carry it.
Pressure cookers have many advantages. You can get away with buying cheaper cuts of meat, and cook many types of dishes, even desserts, in just the one pot, saving lots of dishwashing. It also saves energy because you'll spend less time cooking on the stove.
In addition, stainless steel models will work over almost any heat source, including woodstoves, propane camp stoves and campfires.
Smith says she fed her family with only a pressure cooker and a woodstove after one big California earthquake. And her brother, a hunter, used to cook with his over the campfire.
"Men seem to enjoy pressure cooking just as much as the women do," Smith said.
In fact, she says she gets questions from men on her Web site all the time. Her brother, for one, is always trying to get her to donate one of her cookers so he can drill holes in the lid and insert gauges.
"I get so many requests from men that want the technical aspects of it," she said, laughing. "They are looking at it like it's a tool."
Well, I don't give a hoot about the physics of the thing, but I agree that there's one more valuable tool in my kitchen -- much to the crockpot's chagrin.
Do you own a pressure cooker? Share your experiences with it on the blog.
