Fast food pot roast

I have a presser cooker, one of those stove-top units that makes me nervous every time I use it. I like the pressure cooker concept because it helps speed cooking times up. Don’t get me wrong, I really love my slow cooker, but the slow cooker is, well, slow. It doesn’t accommodate the, ‘what am I going to make for dinner in the next hour’ situation.

So, when my sister recently purchased an electric pressure cooker, I was intrigued. How different would this work from my stove top?

Our first ‘experiment’ involved pot roast. We placed a completely frozen roast into the pot – we browned the meat in the pot, and then added the liquid and spices and closed the lid. About 65 minutes in, we added potatoes, carrots, onions, and then 6 minutes later, we had dinner ready. Once we removed the cooked food, we cooked down the liquid into gravy – right in the pot! The result, very tender flavourful pot roast – or at least that’s what my meat-eaters told me!

In total, I will say our first experiment took about 1 1/2 hours, mostly because we were tinkering with the steam/vent settings. There are a few things to consider when timing your dinner, you need to include venting time, which can take up to 10-15 minutes, and the actual cooking time doesn’t start until the pressure is up, which can take approximately 5 minutes.

I am so excited about this new discovery – the electric pressure cooker is a winner. It takes a lot of the fear out of pressure cooking, and also turns off by itself, which means you don’t need to stand around and monitor the cooking process.

So, now, I’m on a mission to come up with some new pressure cooking recipes (and will be putting this item on my Christmas wish list).