How To Use Pressure Cooker: An Ultimate Guide To Cook Quick Meals

When it comes to cooking food, a lot of us resort to quick and easy measures. In today’s fast-paced world when most of us have tight working schedules, it is difficult to take out a large chunk of time just for cooking. To make our daily cooking task easier, the invention of pressure cooker has come to great help. A pressure cooker helps in cooking food quickly and also helps in retaining various vitamins and minerals. This cookware can be an amazing timesaver and can cook meals in minutes. However, if you haven’t yet used a pressure cooker, it’s important to understand the mechanism of the cookware.

Let’s learn how to use pressure cooker:

1. Understand The Basic Mechanism Behind Pressure Cooker
Before you start using your pressure cooker, make sure that there are no cracks or dents in the unit. It is important to check for any damage before using it, as it may lead to mishaps. Since hot steam is released from the pressure cooker, it is important to keep in mind a few things. Apart from this, make sure it is empty and clean. Now, it is important to understand how to fill a pressure cooker. Water is known to be the best cooking liquid; hence, fill the pot with not more than 2/3rd of water as a significant amount of space is needed for the accumulation of steam.

2. Get On To The Pressure Cooking Process
There are various ways to cook different types of foods like rice, grains, vegetables, meat or seafood. For instance, before adding meat in the pressure cooker, it is always good to season or marinate it beforehand. The instructions or cooking-guide on the box of your pressure cooker can come quite handy here. Each recipe/food needs different amount of water to be added; hence, do consult a user manual so as to determine how much water is needed to pressure cook the meals.

3. Bring The Pressure Cooker Pot On Heat
Now, it’s time to get started with the cooking process. Once the first two steps are done, seal the lid of the cooker properly; be very careful with this step. Also, make sure that the whistle on top of the cooker is placed properly and there is nothing stuck inside its passage. Then, put the pressure cooker on the stove and bring it on high heat/flame. After a while, the water inside the cooker will transform into steam. The pressure inside the cooker will rise and once it reaches its peak, the steam will eventually get released from the whistle.

4. Release The Steam
Once the pressure cooking process is done, you can either allow the steam to get released naturally, which will usually take about 20-25 minutes or you can alternatively also place the cooker in the sink and run cold water on the lid. With this method, the pressure level inside the cooker will drop quickly.

5. Open The Lid Carefully
Once you are sure that there is no pressure at all inside the cooker, carefully open it and transfer the food in a serving plate. While opening the lid of the pressure cooker, check if there is any sound or any steam escaping. If there is no sound, then it means that all the pressure has been released from the cooker.