Pressure cookers are a brilliant invention in the world of cooking. They are incredibly fast! Pressure cookers are great for instant cooking food. At the same time, all the vitamins and minerals that are lost during cooking by other methods are preserved. To start using a pressure cooker, especially if you are using it for the first time, it is important to learn how to operate it and learn the basics. Knowing the basic working principle of a pressure cooker will help you determine whether it is working normally or in an unstable condition.
Part 1
Pressure Cooker BasicsWhat does a pressure cooker do? When the pressure cooker is turned on, steam is generated by heating, which cooks food faster due to the increased boiling point. There are two types of pressure cookers. The first type is an older model of pressure cooker with a pressure valve on the exhaust tube of the lid. The second type represents new models with a spring valve and a closed system.
Before use, make sure that the body of your pressure cooker is not chipped or cracked. Also, it is necessary to clean the pressure cooker from food residues. If there are cracks in the body of the pressure cooker, they may allow steam to escape, which can cause burns.
How to properly fill a pressure cooker. Before using the pressure cooker, make sure there is liquid in it. Most recipes use water. The liquid level in the pressure cooker should not exceed ⅔ of the total volume, as some space is needed for steam to form.
Basket and stand. Pressure cookers are sold complete with a basket for vegetables, seafood and fruits, which are suitable for cooking in a pressure cooker. A stand is included under the basket. The stand is located at the bottom of the pressure cooker. A basket is installed on it.
Part 2
Preparing food for cooking in a pressure cookerPrepare foods for cooking in a pressure cooker. The pressure cooker may come with instructions in the box for preparing various foods.
Determine the required amount of water. Check the instructions that came with your pressure cooker to determine the amount of water needed for specific foods. Also, instructions can be found on the Internet. A certain amount of food requires a certain amount of water.
Part 3
We use a pressure cookerPut food product into a pressure cooker. Add enough water to proper preparation of a certain product in a pressure cooker.
Remove safety valve or pressure valve and close the cap properly. Make sure that the lid is closed with a special mechanism. Place the pressure cooker on the large burner of your stove. Set the heat to maximum. The pressure cooker will begin to turn the water into steam.
Wait until the pressure cooker reaches the desired pressure. The pressure in the pressure cooker will increase. Once the pressure in the pressure cooker reaches a safe limit, steaming will begin.
Reduce the heat so that the water in the pressure cooker continues to boil, but the pressure cooker does not make a whistling sound when releasing steam. After this, you can start counting down the time for cooking the product you have chosen. The idea is to maintain pressure throughout the cooking time. If the heat is not reduced, the pressure will continue to rise and the safety valve will open (a whistling sound will be heard). This will release the steam and the pressure will stop increasing. The safety valve is designed to prevent possible rupture of the pressure cooker. The activation of the safety valve does not mean the end of the cooking time.
Winter holidays are reflected in increased load on kitchen utensils. For this reason, I carried out a scheduled inspection of the condition of the 5 liter Soviet Svarma pressure cooker. In 2011, her working valve fell apart, and I immediately replaced it with a Chinese one.
If anyone is interested in what happened to the Chinese valve after 6 years of operation, I will try to show and explain.
Pressure cooker “Svarma” (“ WELDING MATERIALS") had both valves (working and emergency) with the same principle of operation - the pressure of the vapor-gas mixture was balanced by a spring. This principle allows you to use this pressure cooker when shaking - for example, when cooking food in the gimbal of a yacht - which is very convenient. But nothing lasts forever. Contrary to expectations, in the 4.5 liter “Svarma” produced in 1992, in 2011, not the most important part, the rubber gasket, failed, but the WORKING valve spool broke off from the rod.
The photo shows an emergency valve, similar in principle, but different in design - it does not have a lever to check its operation. 
And then I immediately felt that without “Swarma” life became boring. Therefore, I acted on the problem in two directions at once - I bought both a new 3 liter Chinese pressure cooker and a Chinese EMERGENCY valve, which I hoped to use as a replacement for the failed WORKING Swarma valve.
Since I had to conduct a bold experiment, I bought 2 valves. I bought it at tomtop, but now they no longer sell such valves. Therefore, I found several similar ones on Ali (search for “pressure cooker valve”), and now I have inserted a link to the most worthy one - it already has a pipe on top, not a ball - so the modern valve should be better than my 2011 model. 
Their operating principle is the same as that of the original Svarma valve, but the design is different. “Svarma” had a huge resource provided by aluminum-aluminum sealing pairs, and the Chinese valve had silicone gaskets in both pairs: both movable and fixed. 
In addition, the reliability of fastening of the Soviet valve was superior to the Chinese one: the Soviet designer used more threads on a longer shank. 
And he made the nut thicker: 
The wrench dimensions for both nuts are the same: 
The most important thing, as citizen E.P. Fox, I convey in words: EMERGENCY pressure of the Chinese valve = 1 atmosphere = WORKING pressure of the Soviet valve.
Thanks to this feature, the “USSR-PRC” relay race became possible to carry out without big problems for “Swarma” - “Swarma” itself did not receive irreversible design changes. If we now find a working Soviet valve, it can be inserted into the Svarma again.
Which, generally speaking, is a happy exception to the rule. Just as “science has many breakthroughs,” the Chinese industry has no less!
In the photos below you can see that the original emergency valve sticking out of a 3 liter Chinese pressure cooker (it is covered with some kind of unstable black “enamel type”) differs in design from the Internet compatriot posing next to it.
The original valve does not have knurls for assembly and disassembly; it is captured through steam lines. 
The original valve had a seal made of ordinary rubber, which quickly welded and had to be replaced with paronite. The Internet valve has, as I already wrote, a surprisingly resistant silicone gasket.
In the photo there is a non-working Internet twin of the review hero: 
In addition, the original valve has both an increased diameter and 2 flats to prevent unscrewing. In the photo there is the same non-working Internet twin of the review hero and it is clearly visible that the size of the original turnkey valve is not 14 mm, but larger - already 17 mm. 
In its original state, the Chinese emergency valve has a red slippery ball at the end of the stem. Apparently, according to the local designer, the Chinese have some kind of heat-resistant fingers that cannot be scalded by a stream of steam when checking the valve. 
The Soviet designer did not provide for hot testing of the emergency valve at all (see the very first photo) - the emergency valve stem cannot be grabbed even with pliers.
I have already written a lot, but not every modern user imagines “Svarma”. Here she is! 
In order not to burn my hands, I removed the ball from the rod, cut an M3 thread at the end of the rod, and extended the rod with some kind of resistant steel pin with an original radio engineering destiny. The radio engineering origin of the hairpin has led to the fact that electroplating The studs have not suffered at all during more than 6 years of use. 
I also replaced the ball - this time with an electrical product - the bakelite (=heat-resistant) cover of a relict Soviet plug. The photo shows another example of such a fork to make the origin of the lid clearer. 
The photo shows that the most seemingly capricious element of the Chinese valve - silicone gaskets - has not changed at all over 6 years of operation. 
This is how life works - according to the proverb “wherever you sow, there will be ugly” - silicone rubber turned out to be stronger than metal. By the way, keeping in mind the fate of the original Svarma valve, I try to carry out all valve assembly operations using wrenches that relieve the parts as much as possible from the load. 
In defense of Soviet industry, I will write that the main gasket of “Svarma” has been working for 25 years - pah-pah-pah!!! But the welded small gasket under the valve of the Chinese pressure cooker had to be replaced with paronite, and not on the first try - it does not tolerate stretching at all and breaks. 
At all, there are no secondary parts when working with pressure cookers.
If someone wants to repeat my success, or surpass me, remember that you will take all actions at your own peril and risk.
And there will be a little more fear from the Chinese valve. Silicone, to a small extent, but still sticks to the surface of the seat (this is not aluminum), so the Chinese valve does not constantly poison, as most of us are used to, but works with hysteresis - it emits aperiodic whistles.
In the manuals for Indian pressure cookers, for example, one can to some extent appreciate the Ukrainian idiomatic expression “to the gypsy land”: it suggests replacing the control of cooking time by counting the number of these valve whistles.
I’m not as gullible as the Indians, so to combat fear I installed pressure gauges on all my pressure cookers - what if?!
The fact is that “Svarma”, like all classic pressure cookers, has an elliptical lid pressed by steam pressure, so its seal is excellent, and failure of the working valve can only be prevented by an emergency one. Modern pressure cookers, under the influence of insurance companies, not only have a reduced pressure of 0.5 atm, but it is also impossible to force it - the lid of modern pressure cookers is lifted, and the forced pressure is released through the resulting fistulas.
So decide for yourself - “to have or not to have” - as it is sung in the Soviet New Year’s song. “Swarma” and China are like Yin and Yang: you cannot decide what is better and what is worse - black or white.
Over the 6 years of operation of the Svarma after repair, I have not found an equivalent alternative to the Soviet valve, so another “thank you” from me to the great Chinese people!
Result: The Chinese valve discovered an amazing resource and reliably took over the baton from the Soviet one.
Bon appetit!
A pressure cooker appeared in the kitchens of housewives all over the world a long time ago, but despite the obvious convenience, many do not have one, and some simply do not know how to use a pressure cooker. It will significantly reduce the time it takes to prepare a variety of foods, can turn even the toughest meat into a tender, juicy dish, cook jellied meat in just an hour, and cook frozen vegetables straight from the freezer. You can cook soups, main dishes and even desserts in a pressure cooker. It makes excellent meat, fish, poultry and vegetables. And to understand how to use a pressure cooker, read this article.
Modern pressure cookers come in two types - a special saucepan that cooks a dish on a regular stove, and an electric free-standing appliance. They both work on the principle of increasing pressure under the lid of the pan, which allows you to cook food faster. Therefore, the most important part of a pressure cooker is the sealed lid with a special valve that first creates pressure and then releases steam from the pan.
At the beginning of the 17th century, French scientist D. Papin noticed that cooking time depended on atmospheric pressure. The higher it is, the higher the boiling point, which means the faster the food cooks. So he came up with a hermetically sealed pan that builds pressure inside. Both our mothers and grandmothers successfully used similar simple pressure cookers. There were these in almost every Soviet kitchen, so all housewives knew how to use a pressure cooker.
An important advantage of this cooking method, in addition to speeding up, is that the pressure cooker retains all the important nutritional elements in products. The secret here is still in the same tightness - without contact with oxygen, food does not oxidize and does not lose its benefits. It also preserves the taste of the food.
To prepare a meal in a pressure cooker, first place the ingredients needed for the recipe in it, then close the lid. Here it is important to place the lid correctly so that it fits tightly to the pan and the valve is in its place. Turn the locking handle 2-2.5 turns, adjustable valve set to the desired one temperature regime and put the pressure cooker on fire. Keep an eye on it, as it is important for you to wait until the liquid boils. When its temperature reaches 100 °C, you will hear a hissing sound and see steam exiting through a special hole. Modern models Pressure cookers are also equipped with sensors that will show you with light or sound that the water has boiled.
From this moment you will begin to count down the time for preparing the dish. But first, reduce the temperature, it should be low.
Once the cooking time is over, you will need to cool the pressure cooker and release the steam. To do this, place the pan under the tap with cold water so that its bottom is also in the water. Be careful not to allow water to enter the valve. Move it to the decompression position. Usually there are 2 such positions - slow and fast release of steam. Start slow. Until you release the steam, the food will remain under pressure and continue to cook. In addition, until the steam is released, pressure remains inside the pan, meaning you will not be able to open the lid.
When it falls, and you will understand this by the cooled walls of the pressure cooker and by the lower position of the pressure indicator, you can open the pressure cooker. Now you know how to use a pressure cooker, the instructions for it will tell you additional modern and convenient functions of notification, timer, and decompression.
To prepare a dish correctly, you need to know not only how to use a pressure cooker, but also how different foods are cooked in it. If you need to pre-fry something, do it directly in the pressure cooker with the lid open. Then place all the other ingredients of the dish. If your recipe requires you to add ingredients gradually at regular intervals, you will have to run the pressure cooker under water and release steam each time to open the lid.
Approximate cooking times for some foods in a pressure cooker:
Frozen vegetables | |
Beans, cabbage, carrot pieces, frozen fish, potato wedges | 3-4 minutes |
Red beans, cauliflower, small new potatoes, liver, fresh fish | |
Eggplants, turnips, onions, capsicums, large new potatoes, pre-fried beef | |
Whole young beets, jacket potatoes, frozen poultry, pre-fried lamb and pork, rice | 10-15 minutes |
Corn on the cob, pre-fried chicken | 15-20 minutes |
Medium sized chicken, duck | 20-30 minutes |
Due to the pressure and lack of exposure to oxygen, the flavor of foods cooked in a pressure cooker is much more intense than in a saucepan. Therefore, you need to put half as much aromatic additives and spices into the pressure cooker as when the usual way preparations.
Remember that there is liquid - without it the pressure cooker will not work. Also, you can’t put it on the stove empty. The minimum amount of liquid is 2 glasses. However, do not fill it more than 2/3 of the pan's volume. It is not recommended to cook in a pressure cooker those products that produce a lot of foam - oatmeal and other grains, milk. If you are boiling meat and need to skim off the foam, boil it first with the lid open. Otherwise, foam will clog the valve.
You cannot use the pressure cooker for other purposes - storing and heating food in it, putting it in the oven or microwave.
To clean the pressure cooker, take it apart and wash the pan with dishwashing liquid or put it in the dishwasher. It is better to wash the seal, valves and other parts separately by hand. Special attention Pay attention to the lid - rinse it carefully under the tap, but do not immerse it completely in water, this may damage the operation of the valves.
Also, before washing the lid in dishwasher, check the instructions to see if this can be done. If yes, then remove all parts from the lid; they need to be washed by hand.
Multicookers are no surprise today; perhaps, this device is in every kitchen. But few people are familiar with a multicooker with a pressure cooker function. This is a great opportunity to combine two such convenient features into one.
The device follows the design of a conventional pressure cooker - the multicooker has the same valve, which creates pressure inside for faster cooking. So you don't have to learn if you already know how to use a pressure cooker. "Redmond", "Scarlet", "Moulinex" - these are the brands that produce the best, reliable and inexpensive pressure cookers. If you decide to get such an assistant, feel free to buy devices under these brands.
In the Home Perfect pressure cooker you can boil, stew and steam food. In dishes made in a pressure cooker, vitamins are better preserved, as well as the taste, aroma and color of food. The pressure cooker is also designed for installing a moonshine still.
Before using the device, please read this manual carefully and keep it in case you have any questions in the future!
Using a pressure cooker, you will see that it is modern, lightweight and economical way cooking. The pressure cooker is designed for lovers of tasty and healthy food, for housewives who care about the health of their family and save their time. It will help you quickly and efficiently make a wide variety of dishes.
Enjoy the advantages of a pressure cooker over a regular saucepan! A good housewife cooks, stews and steams in this miracle cookware. A pressure cooker allows you to create food without adding fats and oils, using the natural moisture of foods!
During cooking, steam from a pressure cooker is released significantly less than from a regular pan. The higher temperature makes the pressure cooker a sterilizer, and the shorter cooking time saves gas.
Cooking time depends on many reasons: the intensity of heating, the type of food, etc., so your advisor will be your advisor. personal experience, which you will purchase when using a pressure cooker.
You can prepare food (for example, soup) in different ways. Most often they do it this way: put all the ingredients and spices into the pressure cooker at once, pour required quantity water, close the container with a lid with a sealing ring and put on fire.
At the beginning of cooking, the fire under the pressure cooker should be high, but from the moment it boils, it should be reduced. The beginning of boiling is conventionally considered to be the moment when steam begins to escape from under the load of the working valve and the pressure cooker begins to hiss.
It is not recommended to leave the pressure cooker unattended until it boils. It should be noted that the time before the contents begin to boil in a pressure cooker is slightly longer than when cooking in a regular pan. Before boiling and during cooking, if the hissing has stopped, the working valve weight must be slightly raised to prevent the working valve weight from sticking to the rod.
At the end of cooking, remove the pressure cooker from the heat and cool it in air or in a container with cold water. After this, the remaining steam is released by lifting the load of the working valve, and the lid is opened.
Sometimes, after putting food in a pressure cooker and pouring water, it is put on the fire like a regular pan until the contents boil. When the contents boil, remove the foam, close the lid and continue cooking as described earlier.
Sometimes not all products are cooked at once. First, put the meat, close the pressure cooker with a lid and cook as in the first case, then cool the pressure cooker, open the lid, add the rest of the products and continue cooking, closing the pressure cooker with the lid.
A pressure cooker is exceptionally good for cooking compotes, because the fruits become soft in a few minutes, their taste remains almost unchanged, and their color is preserved.
The harmonious combination of technology, quality and reliability will make the pressure cooker an indispensable assistant in your kitchen!
Every time before cooking, make sure that there is enough liquid in the pressure cooker - you cannot cook food in a pressure cooker “dry”. Never fill the pressure cooker more than 2/3 full.
Cooking times vary depending on the quality and size of the food ingredients. That is why the time intervals indicated above are very approximate.
After some time, you yourself will know exactly how much time it takes to prepare certain products.
There is no need to defrost deep-frozen food in advance. It is enough to slightly increase the cooking time.
ATTENTION!
When replacing any parts, use only ORIGINAL spare parts intended for this pressure cooker.
In Soviet times, almost every house had a pressure cooker. This is a simple device that allows you to cook the necessary products much (!) faster than just in a saucepan. Then people believed that it was very convenient, practical and saved time and effort. A pot-bellied device with a spinning thing puffed in the kitchens, releasing streams of steam, day after day.
I see an extremely strange and incomprehensible picture now.
This item has almost completely disappeared from everyday life. Those who created the farm 25 years ago never had this item. Moreover! And those who had been cooking in pressure cookers all their lives suddenly stopped using it. And people under 30 often don’t even know what it is! According to my feelings, the pressure cooker began to go out of use about 25 years ago. No, of course, now there are a lot of different models on sale, multicookers, for every taste, color and budget. But people don’t see them at home. For some reason you can’t hear the usual hiss of steam...
Nowadays, few people remember the appearance of the most popular Soviet pressure cooker of the 70s and early 80s.
I had one like this at home too. Looking at this photo, I seem to feel its corrugated surface, and my hand still remembers this graceful movement with which it was necessary to open and close the lid - with a turn, since the hole and the lid are shaped like an ellipse.
In the mid-80s we got a more modern one. At that time it seemed to me the height of technical thought. As soon as it went on sale, everyone started buying them up, which speaks volumes about the popularity of the pressure cooker at that time.
Years have passed. The pace of life has increased, food prices have become much more expensive, gas and electricity have become even more expensive and continue to rise in price. It would seem that this is the time when a pressure cooker will help more than in Soviet times! After all, instead of 2 hours on fire, half an hour is enough to cook the necessary products! We save time, money, effort. But no. The opposite happened.
By the way, while talking with people about this phenomenon, I suddenly found out that people have a very vague idea of the principle of operation of a pressure cooker. Even people with technical education! A common answer is “food cooks faster under pressure.” In this regard, I think it will be interesting to understand how this happens. I hope this will be interesting.
So, in ancient times, I don’t know when, people realized that if food, then first of all the meat of slaughtered animals, is heated, then it is better eaten and digested. And after processing it is stored longer.
The first method of heat treatment was frying over a fire. However, it had a drawback - many less dense foods, primarily vegetables, burned or completely burned. It was also not possible to heat the product evenly; this required a lot of tricks.
I don’t know how and when (this is also interesting, I need to read it somewhere separately), people came up with the idea of heating food in water and processing it for much longer. In this case, heating occurs evenly over the entire surface, the product warms up faster and more evenly. This is what we call cooking.
In fact, I will now say a somewhat paradoxical thing - water is not very suitable for heat treatment of food! Its advantage is accessibility. I went into the river and picked it up. Well, one more thing - you can drink the water in which something is cooked, consuming part of the substances that got into it during cooking. Simply put. bouillon. And then the disadvantages begin. The heat capacity of water is extremely high, and it takes a lot of energy to heat it. At 100 degrees, water begins to boil, and the excess energy that comes to this water after it has already heated up to 100 degrees is used for steam formation. Thus, it turns out that we need to spend a lot of time to heat the water, but at the same time, no matter how hard we try, no matter how much fire we make, we cannot heat our food that we cook to more than 100 degrees. This requires a very long cooking time.
Against this background, it looks very good, say, vegetable oil− its boiling point is twice as high, about 200 degrees, and its heat capacity is low, and it is much easier to heat it. We can quickly reach a temperature of 200 degrees for our products, and, just like with water, heat the product evenly.At one time, I was extremely surprised when I saw that cooking a piece of chicken deep-fried, that is, completely immersed in heated oil, takes less than a minute!
But oil cannot be drawn from bodies of water with the same ease as water. And you can’t cook soup with it. And vegetables rich in their own juices (read: water) will generally not behave very well in oil.
And so, in the 16th century, a pharmacist received simple idea− heat water in a closed volume! The pressure inside increases when heated, and makes steam formation difficult. Thus, water does not boil at either 100 degrees or 200! In other words, we can heat ordinary water to an arbitrarily high temperature! All you need is a durable and sealed case.
This was a prototype of a pressure cooker. People quickly realized that such an opportunity means a simple fact − you can heat food until hot high temperatures and at the same time also evenly, in ordinary water, which means cooking them much faster. The pressure cooker went into mass use only in late XIX century, and in the twentieth century it became a common attribute of the kitchen.
American pressure cooker from the 1940s.
Of course, we don’t need to heat our products to 500 degrees or higher, then they will simply burn, and the pressure in this case will be so high that the body must be cast, perhaps, from cast iron.
Therefore, pressure cookers are equipped with a valve to relieve pressure - some of the steam still comes out. This gives that slight hiss during cooking. But this release occurs in doses, and the valve is configured in such a way that the pressure inside the pressure cooker is still much higher than atmospheric pressure, and the water heats up above 100 degrees, which means the food is cooked noticeably faster.
Another beneficial side effect is that vitamins are better preserved, since the amount of air inside is limited and their oxidation does not occur as intensely.
In later models, a safety valve also appeared, which emergency releases the pressure when a certain limit is reached. IN last years pressure cookers now have a pressure gauge, a thermometer, a device for steaming, and much more. A lot of models have appeared with autonomous heating, which do not even need to be placed on the stove.
And now, when energy resources are becoming more expensive, and time is becoming more expensive even faster, in our age of speed and fast processes, for some reason pressure cookers have become a thing of the past; only people who are particularly concerned about cooking certain foods began to buy them.
Why? I can't understand this...
