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
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