Several months ago an acupuncturist and expert in Eastern medicine recommended that I buy a pressure cooker. Since I eat so many beans she thought I could save money and eat better even if I only used it as a bean/rice cooker. She said I could cook beans in mere minutes with no added sodium and they would taste better too since they wouldn’t be swimming in canning liquid for who knows how long. They also store well in the freezer. Potentially I could have the equivalent of a pantry full of beans for a fraction of the price of canned. I filed away this information until a week and a half ago when I finally bought that pressure cooker.
While doing some research, I learned that Macy’s carries Fagor pressure cookers, a great brand (no affiliation), and I decided that if I wanted a cooker that would last me for years with no trouble then I needed to invest in a good one. I couldn’t be happier with my purchase though I was rather intimidated by it at first. I took it home, opened the box, flipped through the instruction booklet and cookbook and then put it away. It looked even more complicated than I had originally thought. Also I had not a dry bean in the house. OK, I was really just trying to work up my courage to try it out.
The next time I was at Whole Foods I bought one pound of black beans to experiment with and set them to soak over Friday night. Bright and early Saturday morning I was in the kitchen ready to attempt to trust what Fagor was telling me: that I could get fully cooked black beans in only 8-10 minutes. I had read all the instructions (yes, I’m that type of person) and even watched the demo DVD. It seemed pretty straight forward.
Pressure cookers work best with gas ranges, where adjustments to heat respond more quickly than with electric ranges. Alas, since I have an electric range I had to choose between one of two methods for cooking. With the two-burner method you turn one burner to high (for building up pressure in the cooker) and another burner to low (to maintain pressure for the actual cooking). You can also use a one-burner method with which you set the burner to medium (for building up pressure) and then turn it down to low for the cooking. I decided to try the two-burner method.
Into the pot went the beans, water, and vegetable oil (to prevent the beans from building up foam in the pressure cooker). I locked the lid in place turned the burner up to high and waited. Sure enough after several minutes the water started to boil, building up steam pressure within the cooker. The pressure indicator popped up and a blast of steam shot out of the operating valve. I set the timer, moved the cooker to the second burner and watched and waited.
Here’s where I started to lose confidence. The instruction booklet said there should be a steady, gentle flow of steam from the valve. Hmmmm. My idea of “steady and gentle” might be a “trickle” to Fagor or vice versa. I still wasn’t trusting that beans could cook completely in only 8 minutes so I opted to keep the heat up a little higher than what my range considers low and waited for the timer to go off. As soon as it did I moved the cooker to an unused burner and waited for the pressure to drop naturally (per Fagor’s recommendation). Once the little pressure indicator retracted I unlocked the lid and found half a pound of quite overcooked beans. Wow. I was disappointed that I had overcooked them but was delighted to discover for myself how well this pressure cooker works.
The beans were usable anyway. Some went into a pot of soup that night, and another bunch went into a pureed black bean dip for a party. I can’t wait to try it out again. My shopping list already includes kidney, garbanzo, great northern, and of course more black beans. Now I just need to find more room in my freezer.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment