Catherine Phipps, author of Modern Pressure Cooking, uses the cooking device for speeding up Christmas dishes and saving on energy.
“You can par-boil veg – like potatoes, parsnips and carrots – in a steamer for just a minute and then they’ll be ready to roast [or air fry]. Put a little water in the base, just a centimetre is plenty, then salt it, bring it up to pressure, cook for one minute, fast-release and they’ll be done.
“Red cabbage is the same, if you want it to be fairly al dente, cook for a minute but if you want it soft and melting, with apple in there as well, it needs three minutes.”
The festive dish most associated with pressure cookers is Christmas pudding: “Steam it conventionally for the first 15 minutes – to allow it to rise. Then, you seal the pressure cooker and cook it. A large pudding will take two hours, a medium an hour and a half and it’ll be 40 minutes for a mini pudding. On the day re-heat it for 30 minutes.”
“If your pudding is large, but your pressure cooker isn’t,” says Phipps, “you don’t have to put it on a trivet. Fold up a fabric napkin or a torn piece of tea towel place it at the bottom, add your pudding to it and a couple of centimetres of water in the base and that will stop it jiggling around.”
The pressure cooker will also make it easy to cook large joints of meat to fall-apart tenderness in half the time of conventional cooking. Perfect for a buffet pulled pork or honey roast ham.
Originally published November 2022
