Meredith Laurence - Comfortable Under Pressure: Pressure Cooker Meals: Recipes, Tips, and Explanations (The Blue Jean Chef)

You can certainly use other types and sizes of pressure cookers for these recipes, but I recommend nothing smaller than a 5-quart cooker, unless you convert the recipes for smaller quantities. (See Converting Recipes on ) Ive tried to give you as much quick information as possible about each recipe, making it easier to decide what to cook. You will find this information across the top of each recipe page. Serves Prep Easiest Cooking Time HIGH 10 Minutes Release Method Quick The first piece of information is the serving size for the recipe. Most of the recipes are written for at least 6 people. After all, if youre cooking in a pressure cooker, you are probably interested in saving time, and if youre only cooking for 2 or 4, having 2 or 4 extra portions in the freezer for another occasion is a huge time saver.

The next morsel of information is the relative ease of preparing the recipe. Many books tell you how long the prep will take. In my opinion, this is a very subjective measure the time it takes me to prep a recipe may not be the same time it takes you to prep a recipe. So, instead of giving a number of minutes, I have created a measure of Easy, Easier, or Easiest to let you know how the recipe measures up against the other recipes in the book. In creating this scale, I took into consideration how much chopping was required, whether the food needed to be browned at the start of the recipe and roughly how long I felt those tasks would take. If youre looking for a recipe that will get into the pressure cooker the fastest, giving you time to do other things, pick an Easiest prep recipe.

Next to the prep information is the cooking time. Just because a recipe might have the easiest prep, doesnt necessarily mean that the cooking time is just as fast. So, Ive listed the cooking time at the top of the recipe so that you can quickly see what is involved. The cooking time does not include the time it takes the cooker to come up to pressure, which will depend on how much liquid is in the pot and how full the cooker is. It can range from 5 to 15 minutes for a pressure cooker to come up to pressure. .) During the months it took to test all these recipes, some of my testers commented that they would have to re-read the recipe to see how to release the pressure from the cooker - a natural release or a quick-release.

I thought it would be helpful to have this information clearly visible so that you dont make a mistake and quick-release the pressure when you should have done otherwise. Finally, I wanted you to be able to quickly figure out which recipes will get dinner on the table soonest. To do this, I had to take into consideration the prep time, the cooking time and the release method. So, Ive given each recipe a ranking of Quick, Quicker or Quickest. These ratings are again subjective, and depend on your personal skill level, but they are rated against the other recipes in this book so youll know which recipes are the quickest for