Cookaholics Bulletin Board

Carey,
The booklet that came with my Kuhn Rikon cooker is usually pretty accurate. http://www.kuhnrikon.com/products/press ... me_charts/

Mary

Thanks everyone.

Jean, I think I will do that. Biscuit dough will hide a multitude of sins. I ate it for lunch and once I got over my negative feelings about my rookie mistake, I realized that it wasn't as bad as I thought. The carrots, parsnips and peas gave it some texture, and covered up the rest a bit.

Mary, thanks so much for that chart! I see that it's timing for potato chunks is pretty much exactly what Paul said. Perhaps the issue is that I need to stop using the cookbooks I have as their timing is clearly off. Wouldn't be the first time in any kind of cookbook, but the difference is that when I'm cooking normally I just ignore the timing suggestions and go by eye and experience (which I don't have doing this yet). I have to remind myself that with experience this will change, and not relegate my pressure cooker to stocks alone (tempting as it is to switch back to my dutch ovens and the stove).

The upside is that I made my lunch/future turkey pot pie dinner in the time it took for me to have coffee and toast. Now that's something!

Jean,

Thanks for the rescue suggestion. I made turkey pot pie with a stuffing crust that gave it enough texture that you'd never know it was overcooked. It was very tasty.

ooooh, stuffing crust. Sounds yummy! Glad it all worked out.

Yup, it was a stash-away from Canadian Thanksgiving. I pulled it out of the freezer yesterday and did individual pot pies with it with my BIA gratin dishes (love those things!). It crisped up in the oven as the pot pies heated up, and turned out really well. It was the last of my stuffing though, so for the other 2 things of stew I put in the freezer I'll probably do biscuits on top or pastry.

If in doubt, undercook a bit. You can always pc it a little more. I do tend to use mine for things that are not too fussy with over cooking. And the Lorna Sass books seem good on the times. Use her recipes for a guideline.

I like the way broccoli tastes in the pc but that has little to no tolerance.

Mary

The Jan/Feb 2013 CI magazine reviews pressure cookers (Fissler & Fagor still highly recommended) and lists 5 recipes from their forthcoming book, Pressure Cooker Magic (available in February). The recipes are available for FREE for 4 months at http://www.Cooksillustrated.com/feb13

Curious; the Kuhn Rikon is widely recommended due to its extremely low evaporation loss, yet they gave it the absolutely lowest of all the pressure cookers. I'm not entirely sure they knew how to operate it, and it casts serious doubts on the validity of the test. I do agree that the disk bottom can cause problems though; I think it is the weakest point of the KR. I've never had even the *slightest* bit of trouble maintaining pressure with it on a gas stove, unless the 8-1/2 one is radically different then the 7-qt one I have.

I have a Kuhn Rikon and a store brand that is made by KR and never had a problem with either. What do you mean by disk bottom?

Mary

The bottom has a disk attached to even out heat. You can see this by looking at side of the pot near the bottom. This works great on an electric stove (including induction), but because the disk thins out near the edge, on a gas stove on high flame, the corner of the inside of the pot will overheat, causing possible scorching. If you use less then high-ish heat and/or don't saute/fry in the pot, it isn't a serious problem, but I've run into it quite a few times. When I use it on induction, no problem.