by Andy Gricevich, Newsletter Writer
Winter stretches on. Out of the deep cold and abundant, beautiful, inconvenient snows come the last weeks of frozen ground and damp chill. As we await the first new green shoots of spring and the return of birds and warm breezes, it can be comforting and nourishing to spend time in the kitchen. Maybe things are getting busier, though, as we prepare for a new season, and we want to feed ourselves and those around us without spending too much time in preparation and cleanup. If so, it’s time to turn to the fast and the slow.
Slow-cookers have been around for a long time now; many of us remember the family crockpot, full of something that had been simmering away all day, on its way to the picnic or potluck, and you can find countless crockpot cookbooks from the 1950s in just about any used bookstore. Pressure cookers, with their ingenious employment of classical physics to speed up cooking time, also had a boom in the ’50s, but stories about them exploding in kitchens reduced their popularity, which never quite recovered, even after safe models were developed. These days, however, both devices are all the rage, with digital, programmable models widely available, offering degrees of control that widen the possibilities of these tools.
Especially popular are the line of pressure cookers from Instant Pot, which can also function as slow-cookers, and feature all kinds of built-in programs for different applications. Like any pressure cooker, they work by creating a vacuum, which intensifies pressure, raising the boiling point of the water inside so that its steam gets hotter than it ordinarily could—thus cooking the food faster, and with less liquid than is usually needed. This has the additional advantage of locking in nutrients that ordinarily get partially lost through evaporation, or damaged by oxidation when exposed to air. You can make just about anything in these devices, as long as it’s not dairy-heavy, since milk will curdle at such high temperatures—though people say you can also make a perfect cheesecake in an Instant Pot.
Slow-cooking, on the other hand, merely applies low heat to food over a long period of time, without creating a vacuum. When it comes to full one-pot meals, most recipes that can be made via one method work fine with the other; in these cases, the difference is simply one of the timing that works best for a given schedule. There are, however, some things only one method can do well. Let’s look at the wide range of things you can make with these convenient, energy-efficient kitchen tools.
BEANS
When it comes to dry beans, the pressure cooker is truly the only way to go. An incredibly nutritious food in general, beans also contain high amounts of lectins, compounds that can damage our gut lining. The best method for dealing with lectins in beans is to soak them overnight in a lot of cold water (ideally with a little baking soda mixed in), then to drain and rinse them before covering with fresh water and cooking, on high pressure and with a 15-minute natural release (before manually letting any remaining steam escape), for about 8 minutes, salting after cooking.
To get the equivalent of two standard 15-ounce cans of cooked beans, start with 1 1/2 cups dry beans. The pressure-cooked beans will be better and cheaper than canned beans. If you like, add seasonings to the pressure cooker before sealing it—say, some chopped garlic and onions, tomato and jalapeño for Mexican black beans, replacing some of the water with chicken or vegetable stock. There are also plenty of recipes online for Instant Pot bean soups, many of which use the device’s “sauté” setting to fry onions or brown meat before adding everything else and switching to the pressure function.
While we’re talking about beans, it’s also worth mentioning that the Instant Pot is renowned for making perfect rice. The results are as good as what you get with a rice cooker, and it takes half as long.
CREAMY GRAINS
Here’s a particularly pragmatic area in which to use a programmable pressure cooker. Dishes like risotto and polenta aren’t particularly difficult to make, but many home cooks are put off by the necessity of constant, lengthy stirring. Pressure cooking reduces the work to almost nothing. Generally, you briefly cook any base vegetable seasonings (like onion and garlic) on the sauté setting, add almost everything else, put the lid on, cook it on high pressure for 20 minutes or so, then stir in any final ingredients (cheese, greens) once it’s done.
You can make firm or creamy polenta this way with ease (it may require a brief period of vigorous stirring at the end). For a healthier risotto, replace the traditional arborio rice with barley; it will be a bit more toothsome, but still creamy and satisfying, with a deeper flavor. Though you can make excellent crockpot oats, grains and legumes are generally where the pressure cooker really shines.
MEATS, STEWS, SOUPS, AND HEARTY STUFF
You can find plenty of recipes online for everything from pork ribs to steaks and whole chickens cooked in the Instant Pot. Many home cooks, however, miss the textures and flavors (as well as the control) we get from roasting a bird or grilling a steak. The pressure cooker is great at fast, tender ribs, and can handle a big piece of meat. For depth of flavor, though—and especially when it comes to meat braised or stewed with vegetables and seasonings—the slow-cooker is probably the better choice.
Your St. Patrick’s Day corned beef and cabbage will be particularly delectable after a long, low simmer, the flavor of the cured meat and spices perfectly suffusing the cooking liquid and the tender cabbage. Chili is a crockpot classic; whatever your favorite recipe, slow-cooking is the way to go for perfect melding of meat, beans and spices.
For one of my favorite cold-weather slow-cooker dishes, try a not-quite-authentic Korean kimchi soup. Put some onions in the pot with a little oil and turn it on high, stirring occasionally until the onions soften a little. Add a bunch of kimchi, some fresh sliced carrots, and whatever else you like. I’ll usually include diced pork shoulder or ham, or even hot dogs (believe it or not, a common ingredient in New York Koreatown restaurants). Some white or brown rice is good, as are diced sweet potatoes and shiitake mushrooms. Cover with water, set the heat to low, put the lid on, and walk away for four to six hours. When it’s done, add some fresh kimchi and eat it. You don’t even need stock; the kimchi gives this soup plenty of flavor, and the garlic, ginger and chili are wonderful, warming food medicine for this season.
Another favorite winter dish involving kimchi takes advantage of the pressure cooker. Use it to swiftly render sweet potatoes tender. In the meantime, sauté some hardy greens (like kale) with a lot of finely chopped garlic and a dash of salt. While that’s cooking, make a fairly thick sauce with a little miso paste, thinned by mixing with some sesame oil and rice vinegar (or other vinegar). When the sweet potatoes are done, split them in half. Pour the sauce over them, pile on the greens, and top with a little kimchi. It’s a perfect balance of sweet and sour, soft and chewy, the brightness of the probiotic fermented ingredients cutting the starchiness of the sweet potato, and the pungent garlic and deep green of the kale providing the architecture of the overall dish.
OTHER COOL THINGS
Make your own yogurt! Many digital pressure cookers have a setting that keeps milk at just the right temperature to help just the right microbes to proliferate and get the perfect silky texture. If you like yogurt and eat a lot of it, you’ll never go back once you start making it yourself. All it takes is some high-quality milk (you can also make it with “alternative” products like almond milk) and some yogurt containing live, active cultures. There are plenty of instructions online to help you get it just right; it takes just half an hour or so and an overnight wait. You can use your homemade yogurt to start the next batch, too—though, after a couple of generations, the cultures will wear out, and you’ll need to either buy some more yogurt or get a starter culture (available at your Co-op), which will last for many generations. Yogurt is one of the few probiotic foods whose microbes have been definitively shown to benefit our gut’s native microbial population. Making it yourself deepens your relationship with the unseen allies in the food we eat.
Speaking of highly beneficial foods, the pressure cooker is also great for making bone broth. While pulling collagen, gelatin and minerals out of bone can take 12 hours of simmering on the stove, pressure cooking can do it in two! Just barely cover your bones (organic will contain more of what you want) with water, add a little cider vinegar and salt--and, if you like, some vegetable scraps, parsley, onion, garlic and/or ginger—put the thing on high for a couple of hours, let the pressure release, and you’re there. Bone broth benefits joints, nails, hair, skin and gut health, and is delicious on its own, or as the cooking liquid for soups, stews, rice, beans, or polenta. If you cook bone-in meat, pressure-cooking bone broth is a great way to use every part of your food—and it’s much, much cheaper than buying pre-made broth at the store.
On the slow-cooker front, try making your own marmalade! You can make marmalade with any citrus—ordinary navel oranges, Meyer lemons, kumquats, even limes. We’re just moving out of high citrus season now, but there should still be good fruit in your Co-op’s Produce department to play with this month. If you’re lucky, we’ll have a longer-than-usual season for Seville sour oranges, the classic fruit for marmalade (they’re also a traditional ingredient in marinades for pork in regional Mexican cuisine—another worthy slow-cooker treasure for tacos). In any case, marmalade is as easy as can be: chop the citrus, peel and all, into thin strips, removing the seeds, and put the fruit and juice in the slow-cooker with some water (about three to four cups per five oranges) and sugar (about three cups for the same proportions). Stir it and cook on high, covered, for two hours. Switch to low for six hours, stirring every couple of hours. Finally, take the lid off and stir it, then switch back to high temperature and wait for two more hours, until the marmalade is nice and thick. Then put it in jars and give a bunch of it away.
While we’re on the subject of things people often give away as gifts, the Instant Pot, with its “keep warm” function, can also substitute for the trickier double boiler needed to properly melt beeswax and other ingredients for body lotion bars. The same goes for herbal salves. You can make either in about half an hour, and even make salves right in the jar! Using similar principles, some folks make natural, herb-infused cough syrup in their pressure cookers, as well as candles and crayons.
Many pet owners, finding out just how unhealthy even most “natural” pet food is for their animal friends, have taken to making their own pet food. The pressure cooker takes a lot of the labor out of the process of providing a dog or cat with a healthier, more natural diet. The range of possibilities seems to be expanding every day, with people using either a slow-cooker or pressure cooker as a humidifier, drastically speeding up the process of making vanilla extract at home, making slow-cooked cake, fondue, lasagna, fabric dye, roasted nuts, and more. From steaming vegetables to taking paint off small objects, enthusiasts of these devices are obsessively making them into nearly universal household standbys, fostering new hobbies at lightning speed, and savoring the pleasures and conveniences of both fast and slow.