On Thursday night I tried something I’ve never done before – I used my pressure canner as a pressure cooker to make our chicken soup/stock. I’ve known how much faster pressure cooking is, but for whatever reason never did it – probably because doing something new takes conscious effort. For some reason on Thursday I felt motivated to try it and see how it went – and it was great!
Usually when I make stock, I let it simmer for hours to leach the nutrients from the bones. Generally I start it before I go to sleep, and let it simmer overnight, then turn it off in the morning when I wake up. It’s a pretty easy way to do it, and it doesn’t take much of an effort. But it’s nice to learn to do things more efficiently, and this was a good opportunity to implement something I’ve known about for a long time. (Often I feel I’m at least a year behind on my ‘to do’ list – so many new things to learn about and try!)
My pressure canner holds 23 quarts, and I filled it 2/3 of the way full. It took a long time to bring that amount of water to boil and then for the necessary 15 lb of pressure to build up, but once it was at that point, it only took ten minutes to cook the stock. Ten minutes, instead of 8 hours! That means it’s costing me 1/8 in energy costs of what it cost with my overnight method, and since gas/electric rates are rising steadily, it’s good to find ways to achieve the same results with significantly less energy.
Not only does it save in cooking time, but it also doesn’t get the kitchen as hot as having the pot simmering for hours. Usually there’s a plume of steam rising from the simmering pot of stock, but when pressure cooking there isn’t a significant amount of heat that escapes, so the kitchen stayed cooler while cooking it than it usually does.
The next thing I’d like to try pressure cooking is beans – that’s the other thing that I cook that takes a long time – maybe this week I’ll have the chance. When I bought my pressure canner a year ago, I had no idea how economical a purchase it would end up being – I keep finding more and more ways to save time and money with it!
Avivah
Try making rice in a pressure cooker. Takes 2.5 minutes once you bring it to pressure. Its been a lifesaver for me.
And beans, definitely. You don’t have to soak them first- you do a “quick soak” by bringing it to pressure for 2 minutes, dunking it in cold water/ running cold water on it, open it, pour out the water, put in new water, and bringing to pressure. It saves me so much time, and makes cooking beans so much less of a chore for me that i’m willing to do it much more frequently. And also, making gizzards (also very cheap fleishig) in a pressure cooker takes 30 minutes instead of the 3-4 hours it would take me otherwise.
Thanks for the tips for beans and rice! And thanks for reminding me about gizzards – I haven’t made them for years, so I’ll have to check and see what the prices are like here. It’s a great idea to cook them in the pressure cooker so that they’re nice and tender.
No problem. Always happy to give tips to someone who i’ve received good tips from.
I´m a real fan of your blog! I was just wondering, does this make your canner fleishig? and hence anything you can as well?
Thanks for commenting, Chana! The answer to your question is kind of upside down from the question. Because liquids often leak out of the jars in the process of canning, my canner became fleishig as soon as I canned meats and stock in it. I’d have to kasher the canner before using it to can anything dairy, and to keep things simple, when I canned butter it was done in a dairy pot (needed to be water bathed, not pressure canned, so didn’t need canner.) Is that clear?
yes, thanks!