Fun with Fissler

John has bought me many nice slave gifts over the years, but I was still surprised to get a fancy German Fissler-brand pressure cooker set this Christmas.  Several of my friends have pressure cookers and rave about them. But to be honest, I didn't really get it.

For one thing, I'm lucky I don't have to cook dinner after a long day's work, so speed isn't especially important. Plus I like slow cooking: braising, simmering, roasting, boiling. On top of that,  I seldom follow exact directions unless I'm baking. And I enjoy the tasting, poking and turning (and wine drinking) that goes along with slow stove-top cooking.  Frankly, I don't seem like an ideal candidate for a pressure cooker.

Ha!  I was wrong.  For starters, this is not your mother's pressure cooker.  It doesn't make scary noises and it's impossible to "blow up."  Say the cook had a senior moment and walked away from the stove, the pressure would release automatically before it reached a dangerous level. And there's no guesswork on when to start timing, because on Fissler two cute white rings pop up on top.

But the real test. They claim that food cooked in these pressure cookers tastes better, because the flavors and nutrients are "locked in." Some of us can still remember those big, soggy piles of over cooked vegetables and stringy meat coming out of old pressure cookers.

I've made gallons of split pea soup in my life, so that seemed like a good place to start.  That simple soup (recipe from the Dummies book) turned out tastier than any batch I've simmered for hours. Making pea soup is boring-- this was FUN and done in about 30 minutes. John went out for his walk in the rain, and came home to a fresh bowl of homemade soup. I think the pressure cooker cult has a new convert!