The pressure cooker is an indispensable tool of the kitchen, making cooking easy and fast for many households. It is often called the one pot meal maker because you can stir up a quick, nutritious meal with help from your pressure cooker. There are many dishes and various cooking techniques where a pressure cooker comes handy.

1. Cooking the best flavorsome stock using pressure cooker

Making stock for soup is tedious and time consuming on an ordinary wok. A pressure cooker speeds up the cooking and also extracts the maximum flavour and nutrients from the ingredients of a stock. First, the higher temperature extracts flavor from meat and vegetables quickly. Second, since collagen in the presence of water begins breaking down into gelatin and accelerates as temperature increases. The high temperature in a pressure cooker converts the collagen in connective tissues to gelatin in a flash. Gelatin is the key to a rich stock with a thicker body and velvety texture.

2. Tenderizing meat using pressure cooker

The effect the high heat and gradient of temperature has on food is the reason a pressure cooker is preferred to tenderize the meat easily while an hour of simmering hardly achieves it.

3. Cooking rice, grains and beans using pressure cooker

We all know it is easier and safer to cook rice, lentils and pulses in pressure cooker.  the absence of any agitation in the pressure cooker provides a gentle, still cooking medium for the rice, which helps to keep individual grains intact and separate. The high pressure and temperature make it quick and evenly soft for eating.

4. Pressure caramelization using pressure cooker

In high pressure and temperature, a pressure cooker kicks off a caramelization that creates new colour, aromas and flavours for the food. You can “pressure-caramelize” almost any fruit or vegetable, although don’t expect them all to be winners. If you are making banana bread, pressure caramelize the banana first to make it richer in flavor and colour.

5. Canning and Preservation using pressure cooker

High pressure and high temperature are ideal for forcing out unwanted oxygen and killing pesky microbial baddies when canning foods. Pressure canning is well suited for foods that are low-acid or require high heat to kill anaerobic microbes.

A pressure cooker is versatile in its uses and can help you achieve so much in the kitchen. It is how you use it that decides the final result.