Weinstein Bruce - The Great Big Pressure Cooker Book: 500 Easy Recipes for Every Machine, Both Stovetop and Electric

Copyright 2015 by Mark Scarbrough and Bruce Weinstein
Photographs copyright 2015 by Tina Rupp

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Clarkson Potter/Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
www.clarksonpotter.com

CLARKSON POTTER is a trademark and POTTER with colophon is a registered trademark of Random House LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Weinstein, Bruce, author.
The great big pressure cooker book: 500 easy
recipes for every machine, both stovetop and electric / Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarborough; photographs by Tina Rupp.First edition.
Includes index.
1. Pressure cooking. I. Scarbrough, Mark, author. II. Title.
TX840.P7W45 2015
641.5'87dc23 2014022862

eBook ISBN: 978-0-8041-8533-2
Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8041-8532-5

Cover design by Gabriel Levine
Cover illustrations:Shutterstock/Studio_G

v3.1

There came a day when ten cookers were going at once in our kitchen. No, there came many days. We couldnt have done it without great pressure cookers from Instant Pot (through Robert Wang), Fagor America (through Sarah de la Hera), Calphalon (through Rachel McLennan at Carmichael Lynch Spong), Cuisinart (through Mary Rodgers), Sitram (through Katie Hlavinka King at Avalon Communications), and Kuhn Rikon (through Kristyn Fuller at Field Marketing & Media). Almost every one of the twenty-five books weve written has also been generously supported with tools and gadgets from OXO (through Emily Forrest and Gretchen Holt).

They say that the least-used words in modern publishing are thank you. Not by us. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Heres where else the gratitude goes:

At Clarkson Potter: to Jessica Freeman-Slade, our editor (again!); Doris Cooper, our editorial director (and our champion); Aaron Wehner, our publisher; Kevin Garcia, the books production manager; Mark McCauslin, its production editorial director; Jane Treuhaft, the art director; Marysarah Quinn, the head of design; Jan Derevjanik, the books designer; Gabriel Levine, the cover designer; Kate Tyler, the books publicity director; and Meredith McGinnis, its marketing director.

At Writers House: to Susan Ginsburg, our agent (again and again and again), and Stacy Testa.

And elsewhere: to Pam Krauss for acquiring this book; Tina Rupp for shooting the photos; Paige Hicks for the prop styling; and the entire towns of Colebrook and Norfolk, Connecticut, for testing and tasting these dishes, as well as feeding us and keeping us so happy in a very quiet part of New England.

Your grandmother knew this day would come. She knew youd come back to her favorite kitchen tool, the pressure cooker, to make four-star-but-fast braises, stews, soups, and casseroles. She just didnt know how youd get here.

About twenty years ago, there was a pressure cooker renaissance in America, sparked mostly by author Lorna Sass. Her recipes offered comfort food in far less time. Perhaps like us, you bought a stovetop pressure cooker and became an unabashed advocate of savory braises or whole grains from the pot.

Meanwhile, a second pressure cooker renaissance was going on right alongside us. The cooker also morphed into a countertop appliance: electric models started showing up on the best foodie sites and in the finest cooking stores. Americans snapped them up in increasing numbers, a testament to both our love of gadgets and our desire for quicker, better meals.

Voil: two culinary renaissances, happening simultaneously. It sounds like a dream. But theres a problem. Stuck in the past, pressure cooker recipes assume that the stovetop cooker is the only form this appliance takes. Unfortunately, recipes have to be differentiated between the two types. They cook at different pressures and require different timingsand sometimes even different liquid levels. No cookbook has ever been written for both halves of the renaissance.

Until now. All our recipes can be made in a stovetop or an electric pot. Theyre also geared for todays changing tastes, with bolder flavors, fewer processed ingredients, and more innovative combinations. No, we havent forgotten the classics: weve got some terrific chicken-and-rice casseroles, fine vegetarian main courses, great chilis, and full-flavored ways to use economical cuts like ground chuck. As we developed these recipes, we made a pact that we wouldnt use anything we couldnt find in our rural New England supermarket, yet we still took advantage of the astounding array there. Weve felt free to bring in a wide range of international flavors, to use the full span of real ingredients our modern supermarkets afford.

Youve probably heard that the pressure cooker is the European answer to the American slow cooker. Swiss households own three on average! But even that divide is false. Time was, almost every U.S. household had one, and more and more do so today. Stats also show that the electric models often outsell the stovetop ones. These gadgets fly off the shelves. We may even catch up to the Swiss. See, your grandmother has been waiting a long time for you to get here.

We Americans think about cooking in one of two ways: fast or gourmet. We either want dinner on the table in record time or we want to spend a leisurely afternoon preparing a four-star meal for friends and family. TV shows, cookbooks, magazine articlestheyre perched on either side of this divide.

Its high time somebody built a bridge. With a stovetop or an electric pressure cooker, we can create a weekend-worthy pot roast on a weeknight and in minutes. Then, come Saturday, we can whip up a fine cacciatore or fricassee for a dinner party without sacrificing our day off. Both will taste as if theyve braised all day. In fact, the intense pressure in the pot helps retain complex flavors, as well as a wide range of natural sugars that dont break down as they do during long braising. Our meals may well taste better.

So welcome to the sophisticated braises, the homey stews, and the hearty soups, as well as breakfast porridges and the best cheesecakes around. No, we cant deep-fry or make cookies, but we can indeed get a caramelized crust on a roast. And we can turn out some of the finest comfort imaginable: layered flavors with minimal effort.

Welcome, too, to one-pot meals. We can brown, deglaze, build the sauce, and create a gorgeous dinner without a second saucepan or skillet. (Okay, there are a couple of recipes among these that do indeed call for a second cooking vessel. But really, only a few.) Because we have to set a stovetop pot over the heat or warm up an electric one, were able to caramelize our proteins or sweeten our aromatics before they undergo the pressured cooking.

Most of us are trying to cook fresher, even if the modern busyness epidemic rages unchecked. If there ever was a ripe moment for the pressure cooker to become a cookware warhorse again, its now. We all want delectable, innovative, fake-free mealsin minutes. Yep, fake-free. As we did in The Great American Slow Cooker Book , weve 86d the faux vinaigrettes and bottled sauces, the cream of this and fat-free that. Instead, weve used real ingredients that bring the most flavor to the meal. Sure, we use canned broth and tomatoes because good-quality versions are close to what wed make on our own. But we skip a bottle of fat-free ranch dressing or a can of gloppy enchilada sauce and come out with better meals that take very little time. Buy the best you can comfortably affordwith few other ingredients listed on the label and no artificial (or even added natural) flavorings. Dare to go fake-free.