The pressure cooker can be quite a boon to homemakers seeking to get healthy meals on the table in a hurry on busy weekdays.  I have several pressure cookers, and I love them.  (I am completely incapable of cooking a decent pot of rice without them.  I can make croissants from scratch, but can’t cook rice.  Go figure.)

Unfortunately, I didn’t find this book to be the best-written introduction to pressure cooking.  The first section is about pressure cooker use, in general.  It talks about the anatomy of a pressure cooker, how pressure cooking works, depressuring the cooker, maintenance, etc.

Some of the information is over-generalized.  For instance, the book claims that “today’s pressure cooker pots are equipped with two heat-resistant plastic handles and two matching handles on the cover…”  Some of my mother’s larger pressure cookers are, indeed, designed like this.  However, neither of my pressure cookers (both of which are from a very high-quality brand) has two handles on the lid.  And it specifies using at least 3 cups of water if using the cooker to steam foods on a rack.  Maybe this is necessary if you have a very large (or, possibly, very cheap) pressure cooker, but my cookers do not require more than a cup of water to come to pressure – and if they’re pressurized, they’re steaming effectively.

It talks about pounds per square inch (PSI) – which is the pressure level – and clarifies the purposes for settings of 5 psi, 10 psi, and 15 psi (in my experience, the only one actually used for cooking).  But it doesn’t point out that most pressure cookers do not have three pressure settings.  (Most good ones have two.  I’ve rarely seen one with all three, unless it’s also designed to be a pressure canner.)  And the information it offers seems a little strange to me.  It says that rice is cooked at medium pressure (8-10 psi), but I have always cooked rice at 15 psi, the same as any other basic food.

The next portion, about pressure cooking techniques, is fairly helpful and pretty accurate.  I would have liked to see this section expanded, as, to my mind, it’s the most important part of the book.  It talks about going beyond steaming and boiling to more advanced cooking techniques.

All of this introductory information is followed by chapters of recipes.  These comprise the vast majority of the book (292 of 334 pages).  There are chapters for dips, appetizers, salads, egg-based dishes, vegetable soups, meaty soups, poultry soups, seaside soups and chowders, vegetarian stews and curries, meaty stews and curries, white meat stews, seafood stews, beefy entrées, one-pot poultry dishes, pork and lamb main dishes, grains, veggies, sauces and toppers, creamy desserts, and fruit desserts.  Maybe I just started in the wrong place, because a number of these recipes look quite tasty, but I was not impressed with the first few I took a closer look at.

I was curious when I saw “Old-Fashioned Macaroni and Cheese,” because dairy ingredients generally curdle in the pressure cooker.  (A fact which, by the way, was not included anywhere in the book, that I saw.)  So I flipped over to the recipe, where I found that it begins with “Preheat the oven to 350.” What? I thought this was a pressure cooker  cookbook.  As it turns out, the only thing you use the pressure cooker for in this recipe is to cook the naked noodles.  Then you strain it, combine the ingredients, and cook the mac and cheese in the oven.  I don’t see any point to this, except to fill the cookbook.  It only takes ten minutes to boil noodles; there is no good reason to cook them in the pressure cooker and give yourself more dishes to wash (because the pressure cooker has a lid and gasket you wouldn’t need to wash if you just boiled the noodles like a normal person).

Glancing across the page to the facing recipe, I see instructions for pressure cooking angel hair pasta at high pressure for 5 minutes.  I have to admit that I didn’t actually try it, but I’m pretty confident this would reduce your angel hair to mush; angel hair pasta only takes 5 minutes to boil at regular boiling temps.  Pressure cooking it at 15 psi for 5 minutes would be roughly the equivalent of boiling it for 15.

Just because you can use the pressure cooker for something, doesn’t necessarily mean you should use the pressure cooker for that purpose.  In my opinion, part of learning to use a pressure cooker is knowing when it will be helpful and when it won’t.

At the very end of the book, there are three appendices.  Appendix A is a glossary.  Appendix B is about troubleshooting common problems.  Appendix C is resources (for instance, companies that manufacture pressure cookers).  Appendix B is another of those sections which should have formed the bulk of the book, but was short-shrifted.  Certain portions of it were given unnecessary attention.  If the food was mushy, it was cooked too hot or too long; if it was hard, it wasn’t cooked hot enough or long enough.  It doesn’t take several pages to communicate this, but several pages were devoted to wording this in a variety of ways.  Meanwhile, actual pressure cooker-related issues, like a pot that won’t pressurize or is leaking steam, were given less space, and easy fixes were overlooked.  (When my pot won’t pressurize, it’s usually because the valve is loose – that is, partially unscrewed – but that didn’t even make the list.)

Bottom line?  I highly recommend a good, stainless-steel pressure cooker.  But I also recommend a different “how to” book if you’re just learning how to use it.  Stick to this book as an additional recipe source once you’re more familiar with the cooker.

Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book to facilitate my review.  As always, all opinions are entirely my own.