Re: pressure cookers was Re: Need recommendations on security

Ellen wrote:
> "Mike Easter"
<[email protected]> wrote in message

> sound delish -- the closest supermarket has a pretty large Hispanic
> population shopping there so I will go get some pinto beans there :-)
> So you throw in the chunks of browned pork, the beans, some amt of
> water, spices and then cook for how long?

There are no easy answers from Easter.

12-15 mins depending on the soaked condition and how you are going to
handle the cooldown, with or without a quench.  See below the wordiness.

For some reason right now I'm just finding my pork and blackeyes
recipe -- which is different because the blackeyes cook faster than the
pintos and don't require soaking-  but I'll use the blackeye recipe and
'adjust' to the best of my recollection for the pintos.

That recipe is made with 4# country pork strips, 3 onions, 7 garlic
cloves, 5 seranos, and a pound of blackeyes, plus seasonings like celery
seed, ground peppercorns & dried red peppers, a touch of liquid smoke
[watch out!].  Brown the pork strips, cut it into 3" pieces, use about 4
cups of water and it all cooks up in 12 min [slow cool, no quench].
That won't work for the pintos, I don't think.  Here's another blackeye
one with bacon, broth, and okra.  Here's my blackbean soup.

Okay, I'm not finding a pinto pork recipe;  I'm just going to think out
this pinto business.  With the black beans, since they are so tough, the
way I do them is to bring the dry blackbeans to a boil *and* let them
soak overnight [or 36h] in the fridge before I start their cooker
excursion and they are cooked longer than the blackeyes.  Naturally you
don't have to do any of that soaking with the blackeyes.  With the
pintos, I think the way I recall handling it was to bring them to a boil
first and then to just let them soak for an hour, and I've also done it
without that step.

The business of pre-preparation for the beans depends on what you and
your family thinks about how to deal with the indigestible sugars in
beans.  Personally, I like the taste of bean 'juice' and I don't like to
throw away juice from bean soakings -- so if you don't remove any
soaking water from the beans you are going to have to use Beanos
somewhere along the way or suffer the consequences.

If you are a person/cook who believes in soaking beans and discarding
the soak water the strategy should be adjusted for that.  The most
common fast routine for that would be to be to bring the pintos to a
boil and then let them soak and hour or so and throw away that water.
That will eliminate most of the need for Beanos.  Other people would
soakd them overnight and discard.  Some use the pressure cooker for the
pre-cook, but I've never done that.

So, I would perform some beansoak, quick or long and you deal with
discarding the soak water or not, depending on your family's pref.

Now about the cooking time.  If the beans are very soaked using quick or
long formulas, you can go to the short 12 min side of the equation, but
then I would not quench at all, but just let it cool naturally.

The business about quenching I use for fresh vegetables and things that
can overcook very easily.  In the quenching, when the cooking time is
done, I immediately set my full pressure cooker on a low metalrack in
the sink [my sink is big enough to accommodate the cooker and its
handle] and use a little spray hose to hose down the top until it loses
all of its pressure and then I open the cooker immediately as soon as
the safety feature of the handle will let me.  Maybe I'll twiddle the
jiggler to see what's up or not with the pressure..

The business about non-quenching for longer cooking and meats [and
sometimes beans or even wild rice] and such is to just let the pressure
go down with the heat off.  That means the prep is cooking all that time
but at a diminishing rate  that the temp and pressure are gradually
going down.  Big difference from quenching.

> love the sound of that chicken broth :-) so you cook it way down?

No.

I'll have to tell that story another time.  I use a recipe called
poached chicken plus stock which starts with a whole chicken which ends
up as boned chicken, some fresh vegetables which are utterly destroyed
by all the cooking but their flavor lives on, and a lot of water.  So
then you cook the chicken and vegetables and water for 9 minutes and let
it cool naturally.  When you can handle the chicken, you remove all the
meat and save it for another purpose and remove the skin from the broth
batch.  That leaves the bones and the overcooked vegetable pulps and the
broth that is just beginning to seriously develop.  Then you put the top
back on and cook up that whole shebang for another 30 minutes and then
let it cool naturally again.  That is those bones and the
intensification of the vegetable 'notes' all getting to know each other
amidst the chicken flavor.  Then you fish out all the bones [the little
disintegrated ones I've experimented with just blending instead of
fishing out every little one] and the vegetable parts that aren't
smithereens and let it cool in the fridge so you can scoop off the fat
that comes to the top.

The broth that is left is like aspic -- it is jelled in the refrigerator
and you have about 6 cups of it.  I divvy it into 2 cup aliquots and put
it in baggies and freeze it for using in such as rice.  6 cups of broth
per 1 chicken and a few vegetables.  Not a bad price for that broth.
That boned poached chicken can also be used in a lot of things.



-- 
Mike Easter
kibitzer, not SC admin