Choosing a pressure cooker

If you don’t have a pressure cooker but are thinking of getting one, here’s a couple of tips:

• Go for a stove-top model
  They generally outlast electrical appliances and you can use it as a regular stock pot too.
• Choose a large capacity pot
  Although the pot might seem very big, it’s more versatile and you’ll need the extra room to allow for bubbling/frothing (in the case of cooking beans for instance), otherwise you risk blocking the pressure valve. Ours is an 8.5L but a 6L would be OK too.

Time and energy saver

I seriously can’t believe how much time (not to mention electricity/gas), a pressure cooker saves me. I wonder why I hadn’t found out about the advantages sooner. I mean, chickpeas in 10 minutes and black beans in less than that!

I’ll post about pressure cooking beans in the future, but lately my praise for the pressure cooker has been for its ability to make perfect brown rice.

The pot-in-pot method

I knew many people used their pressure cooker for brown rice but unlike cooking beans, there didn’t seem to be a great deal of time saved so I just stuck to using a microwave rice cooker. I’ll admit though, using the microwave was messy and often the brown rice would be dry or under cooked.

I started researching the best way to cook brown rice in a pressure cooker. I didn’t want to risk the rice being burned to the base of the saucepan and a few YouTube videos and blogs recommended the pot-in-pot method, where rice is cooked in a bowl within the pressure cooker. I later bought a copy of Lorna Sass’ Vegetarian Cooking Under Pressure and she covers this too as well as another method.

So I purchased a steamer stand and stainless steel bowl to fit inside my pressure cooker and, even though the pot-in-pot method sounded a bit more fiddly than using a microwave, I decided to give it a go.

I’m now a convert! My old microwave rice container has been retired as it just cannot produce the fluffy, soft rice that I get when I use the pressure cooker.  There’s less mess to clean-up too :)

So without further blather, here’s a step-by-step guide on how I cook my brown rice…

The setup

• Pressure cooker (duh!)
• Steamer stand, tripod or trivet
• Stainless steel bowl (fits inside the pressure cooker, but get one that leaves a gap of about 1.5cm all round)
• Foil (save and re-use the same piece each time)

Ingredients and method

Time: ~40 minutes all up

• 2 cups brown rice
• 4¼ cups water

Place the steamer stand and 2 cups of water in the pressure cooker.

Rinse the brown rice in a sieve and drain. Place the rice and 2¼ cups of water into the stainless steel bowl (you could add a pinch of salt here but I never bother).

Cut a piece of foil long enough to wrap around the bowl and fold it into a strip. This foil will act as handles to allow you to get the bowl in and out of your pressure cooker. Make sure you save this for reuse each time.

Using the foil, lower the bowl of rice and water onto the steamer stand inside your pressure cooker.

Lock on your pressure cooker lid and heat on high until the gauge reaches pressure.

Turn down the heat and leave to boil at pressure for 20 minutes.

After this time, turn off the stove and leave the cooker standing for another 20 minutes.

During this time the cooker should depressurise naturally… Don’t be tempted to release the pressure early! Just go make the rest of your dinner or something.

Once fully depressurised, unlock the lid and lift out the bowl by the foil handles.

Fluff up your rice with a fork and serve. There you have it, perfectly cooked brown rice!

It’s a bonus that there’s little washing up to do too. Rice can be stored in the cooking bowl (mine came with a plastic lid), and the pressure cooker just needs to be drained and wiped.

Enjoy :)

Although I didn’t have as much time at home to bake, thanks to some better planning, I managed to get just about as many things done (a lesson learned!).

This time around I made three savoury focaccias, black forest cupcakes, lime-coconut cupcakes, jim-jam slice, peanut-butter and choc swirls, lemon-poppyseed muffins, cranberry-almond and white choc biscuits and finally mini lemon-passionfruit buntds – phew!

Here’s a tip: The night before baking, I measure and weigh all dry ingredients in separate containers, seal them and label with the rest of the recipe. It makes the whole baking production line so much quicker when all you have to do is mix in wet ingredients and throw in the oven.

OK, to the pics…

I took these early on when we’d set up the table, then I kinda forgot to take any more pics as other items were dropped in… oops! Check out the Flickr pool for more photos.

The table (early morning):

Some savoury offerings – potato, onion and rosemary focaccia, pesto and olive focaccia and semi-dried tomato and mushroom focaccia:

Delicious orange custard and strawberry tarts and savoury caramelised onion and white bean tarts:

And just while you were wondering about the cookies in the background, here’s a close-up of the super-cute echidna gingerbreads:

And I know you were also wondering about those cheezecakes in the background too! Well, a big thanks to Rubyfruit Boutique Bakery in the Blue Mountains for kindly donating a few boxes of their utterly delicious offerings.

Here we have Rubyfruit’s cheezecakes: mocha, cherry-coconut, blueberry and raspberry-white chocolate:

Rubyfruit’s banana-rum cupcakes and decadent chocolate cupcakes (yum!):

On this tray we have (clockwise from top) lemon-poppyseed muffins, cranberry-almond and white choc cookies, pineapple slice, jim-jam slice and peanut-butter and choc swirls.

Black forest cupcakes and lime coconut cupcakes:

Passionfruit and lemon mini-bundts and coconut-raspberry slice:

Pineapple cupcakes and ginger cupcakes:

Cookies! Oatmeal-raisin and choc-mint cookies:

And ending with just some of the gluten-free selection: banana-split cupcakes, choc-mint cupcakes and choc-agave cupcakes:

What a great day. Thanks to all who helped out! It was a bonus that I didn’t feel exhausted afterwards too. I’m crediting all the green smoothies and raw foods I’ve been eating lately :)

We’re planning another Sydney Vegan Bake Sale in April. Details will be posted soon on the SVBS blog or follow @sydveganbksale on Twitter for updates.

It’s on Saturday 5 March 2011, Newtown Markets from 8am-1pm – unless sold out first.

Drop by and pick up some yummy vegan sweet and savoury goodies!  If you can, save on packaging and bring your own containers to fill.

I’m still planning what to make, but I hear there might be a few Queensland-themed cakes on offer (mmm ginger & pineapple). If you’ve never visited the stall, check out pics from previous SVBSs on Flickr.

Hope to see you there!