40 pressure cooker recipes (2024)

FAQs

What cannot be cooked in a pressure cooker? ›

Foods containing dairy, like milk, cream, or yogurt, should not be pressure-cooked. The high heat and pressure can cause dairy products to curdle or separate, ruining the texture, taste and flavour of the dish. Cooking fried foods is a strict no no, when it comes to pressure cookers.

Hard-, medium, and soft-cooked eggs come out perfectly when cooked on a low-pressure setting. Along with eggs, you might see an occasional recipe for vegetables and fish use low pressure. Most of those recipes, however, give an alternative for cooking at high pressure with a shorter cook time.

You can still pressure cook leaner pieces – like eye of round and top sirloin – but these work best if they've been stuffed, shredded or rolled (with other ingredients). Best cuts of beef to use: Chuck steak, Round Roast, Shoulder, Pot roast, Ribs, Brisket, Oxtail.

If you want to turn it on and leave it to cook while you're at work, then a slow cooker is for you. But if you want to cook delicious meals quickly that would normally take hours, then a pressure cooker is for you.

Slow cookers utilize long cooking times to develop these richer flavors, while pressure cookers use high heat and pressure to impart as much flavor as possible in a shorter time.

The bad news is, when starchy foods are pressure cooked, they form acrylamide, a harmful chemical that, when consumed on a regular basis may lead to health issues like cancer, infertility, and neurological disorders.

Is pressure cooking safe? So far, science says yes. Even though some studies suggest that pressure cooking isn't the best way to preserve nutrients in food, no research exists to suggest that pressure cookers of any model or brand pose health risks.

The pressure cookers used can inactivate up to 10¹⁰ CFU/mL bacteria and 10⁷ CFU/mL fungi.

In fact, it's water that helps generate the high-pressure environment that makes your food cook faster. Most pressure cooker instructions state a minimum amount of water required for pressure cooking even a tiny amount of food.

Press the "Slow Cook" button to select the slow cooking function. Set the cooking time and temperature. The Instant Pot has three temperature settings for slow cooking: low, medium, and high. Use the "Adjust" button to choose the temperature and then use the "+" and "-" buttons to adjust the cooking time.

Can you cook everything in a pressure cooker? ›

A pressure cooker is not right for everything, but what it does, it does well. Great for cooking things quickly, like a pot of beans in an hour.

Brown it

Pressure cooked food doesn't brown so it's worth doing this at the start of cooking before adding liquid and putting the lid on. Meat looks and tastes more appetising with a little browning. Onions, garlic and spices also benefit in the flavour stakes from pre-cooking.

Steam penetrates food easily under pressure. So connective tissues in cubes of beef for soups or stews soften in 15 minutes or less, and a pot roast will be medium-rare in 30 minutes. Be sure to follow instructions carefully; at this speed, it's easy to overcook things in mere minutes.

Diced Meat

Season your meat as you normally would. Heat a little oil using the Sauté function and sear the meat. Add 1 1/2 cups of liquid (water, stock, etc.). Cook for 20 minutes (per pound of meat) at high pressure for large chunks and 15 minutes (per pound of meat) for small chunks.

In a pressure cooker, you put the food in and something that takes hours and hours, like short ribs, can cook in just 45 minutes or an hour. Instead of simmering chicken stock on the stove for hours, you can make it in about an hour. As a Personal Chef, speed is of the essence and I use my pressure cookers a lot.

In addition to making foods like grains and legumes more digestible, pressure cooking does not create any of the unhealthy chemicals associated with baking and grilling methods.