Under Pressure for the Fourth

On the CHA FB Group,there have been multiple conversations about the benefits of pressure cookers and their benefits. Dr. Li has recommended them to some patients. To be clear, she has never discussed them with me, or any particular diet at all, except for asking James to stop eating cheese and amending that to less cheese at the dismay on his face.

The benefit of pressure cookers, for those with allergies, is that the pressure makes the proteins easier to digest than other forms of cooking. This post from The Food Renegade has a nice collection of abstracts outlining the research (scroll down to "But, Doesn't Pressure Cooking Still Denature Proteins in the Food?"). Here is another example, comparing the nutritional quality of microwaved and pressure cooked legumes.

The benefit of pressure cooking for legumes with it's fast cooking is pretty obvious, but we don't eat legumes. I still use the pressure cooker multiple times a week and recently got a question as to how I used it. It turned out that our July 4th meal was a great example, although we don't usually use it so much for a single meal.

Please note that the times listed are for the cooking times, not for the time it takes to come to pressure. I haven't timed that, but I think add approximately 10 minutes to come to pressure.

Also, I have an electric pressure cooker, which will affect times. If you have a manual, please adjust accordingly.

The Night Before

Potato Salad

I have included the recipe I used below, but you can use any recipe.

Peel and cube the potatoes.

The potatoes and the eggs can both be added to the pressure cooker, the eggs nestled on top of the potatoes, on top of or in whatever steamer basket/trivet your pressure cooker came with. Add 1/2 cup of water. Cook on high for 4 minutes. Release the pressure and put the potatoes and eggs in a waiting ice bath. Allow to cool, peel your eggs and proceed.

I have found that eggs are easier to peel out of the pressure cooker. No promises.

The recipe I used was adapted from Hellman's Original Mayonnaise Potato Salad Recipe :

4 lbs potatoes

4 eggs

1 cup sliced celery

1 cup sliced green onion

1 c mayonnaise

2 T prepared mustard

Salt and pepper to taste

To make the dressing, combine the cooked egg yolks, mayonnaise, and mustard until smooth. Mix together the potatoes, cooked egg whites, celery, and green onion. Add salt and pepper to taste.

The Day Of

Ribs

I like falling off the bone ribs, whereas my husband and James likes ones with a little more pull to them. The pressure cooker makes the ribs fall off the bone tender like I like. Since we had a crowd coming over, I made some in the pressure cooker and my husband smoked some outside and everyone was happy.

For the record, the score at the party was nearly split, with the smoked ribs coming out slightly ahead of the pressure cooked ones.

I hope that he will adapt some Chinese style steamed rib recipes to the pressure cooker at some point, because the texture at the end is perfect.

That said, for BBQ style ribs, here is how we cook them:

1. Cut the ribs into 3-4 ribs sections. Our pressure cooker is 6 quarts and can hold about 2 lbs of ribs at a time.

2. Season the ribs with whatever spices you like.

3. Place the ribs in the pressure cooker and just cover with water.

4. Cook at high pressure for 18-22 min (I split the difference and use 20 min).

5. Release the pressure and allow to sit for 10 min.

6. Pull the ribs out of the water and let sit for 5-10 min.

7. Use a BBQ sauce of your preference on the rib and grill for 5 min per side.

I was doing 2 racks of ribs. The pressure cooker needs time to sit and cook in between uses, so I let both the ribs and the pressure cooker sit for 5-10 min. Then, I repeated the steps.

Corn on the Cob

For the party, I cut the corn in half, but you can leave it whole. The directions don't change. Put in the steaming basket or trivet. Add water. Amounts depend on how much corn. I used ten 1/2 ears and 1 1/2 cups of water. The timing won't change - 2 minutes at high pressure and then release the pressure.

Final thoughts

I love the pressure cooker, the way some people love their slow cooker. James would never eat any food out of a slow cooker because of the texture, but there's never any complaints about the pressure cooker.

Things I love:

1. It uses little energy.

2. It doesn't heat up the house.

3. It's fast.

4. It's easy.

On a usual basis, I use it at least a couple times a week. It has replaced our rice cooker. In the "not quite so hot months," (some places refer to them as winter), I make stock and soup. James will eat pretty much any vegetable in a soup, but the soups he loves are canned soups, with their ultra-soft vegetables. Pressure cooking soups gives you ultra soft vegetables. When I have stock, it is simple to make soup at lunch in 6 minutes for a healthier lunch than he otherwise would have.

I have this 6 qt Cuisnart Pressure Cooker   (affiliate link) 

If you are not as much of a wimp as I am, stove top pressure cookers can be very inexpensive. I understand they are very safe but I like the easy button.

How I Almost Never Go Grocery Shopping

Buy Local, Get Them to Deliver

We have always tried to eat local foods, belonging to various CSAs over the years, going to the Farmer's Market, joining with a friend to buy meat. But, James's diagnosis turned our efforts from a "try to" to more of a mission. The problem for us has always been the hassle. We live less than centrally located, CSA pick-ups were usually at least half an hour away and on weekends. Ditto the Farmer Markets. They were something that we started off doing with enthusiasm, then dragged ourselves to, and then stopped altogether.

I should be clear, there's a whole continuum of healthy eating. I would say we fall somewhere in the middle. Our meals are pretty much local, organic and meet my standard of healthy (our cheese is not organic or local. There are some other ingredients if you went through our pantry for sure). James picks his snacks (within reason) and eats like a normal 12 year old (junk). Like most kids, if he over does it, he suffers the consequences. He also loves fruit (and sometimes eats too much and suffers the consequences) so not all his snacks are junk, but I don't want to paint an inaccurate picture.

Primal Pastures

This is a local (to me) farm that raises free-range, pastured raised, grass-fed and finished animals (their stock varies chickens, lambs, pork, and beef). They often have various events at their farm ranging from kid's camps to chicken processing. I will be honest that I have never attended one because except for the chicken processing (little known fact about me: at five, I was in charge of pulling feathers out of dead turkeys with my sister. I will never be processing chickens) involve food. They offer FedEx shipping throughout Southern California and farm pickup in Temecula.

I will be honest, I find their prices shockingly high, especially if you are accustomed to shopping for conventional meat. So, we buy whole (or half) animals from them. Be warned - they give you every part of the animal if you do this. I have become a much more adventurous cook since doing this. Just this last week, I used half a pig's head and one pig's foot to make soup stock. It was actually really good stock and the dogs were happy.

Farm Fresh To You

(If you decide to try Farm Fresh to You, we will both get a credit if you use the above link. Thank you)

USE CODE: HZLL5689

It's somewhat debatable how "local" this is. I'm not getting any carbon footprint bonus points. This is an organic farms in the Central and Imperial Valley of California. It's hard to tell their entire delivery area as they have you enter your zip code to tell if they deliver. However, my guess would be a large portion of California. When I searched, I saw Bay Area, Los Angeles, San Diego, Ventura, and Orange counties. Since I am none of those, I would guess many areas in between.

There's many things I like about this service over other CSA's I've tried, top of the list of course is the delivery. Beyond that is the ability to customize, since James has OAS, I can eliminate the things he is allergic to and keep them on my "not to deliver" list. That way I know, even if I forget to customize, those items won't be delivered. But, each week I can, and usually do, customize what I get each week. So, we get a small mixed fruit and veggie box delivered each week ($25) with pastured raised eggs ($8) added on. I can then add and subtract, getting rid of what we won't eat and adding what we will. Finally, they offer things a traditional CSA would not (although you can get their traditional CSA box and not add these items if you wish) like fair trade bananas. One thing we really missed in a traditional CSA was a variety of fruit.

Amazon

We buy a ton of food from Amazon: Sunbutter in 5 lb tubs, Let's Do ... Organic Tapioca Starch, GF Harvest Organic Oats, Glutino GF Toaster Pastries, Betty Crocker GF Cake Mix, Edward and Sons Trading Company Coconut, Annie's Microwaveable GF Mac and Cheese and more, all on subscribe and save.

We have Prime, so we get "free," shipping, even on Sundays, which never fails to confuse me. I think this is a carbon footprint draw. I would have to drive to multiple stores to get all these different items. This way, they are all delivery once a month to my door, stress free.


What It Leaves

Mostly, this leaves us to buy dairy, some snacks, some dry goods, and cleaning supplies. And this is where Costco and Sam's come in. Coscto was recently named the largest organic grocer and they do have some things we simply can't get elsewhere, perhaps the most important is reasonably priced gluten, tree nut, peanut free bread. We got a Sam's membership during on of their Groupon deals and kept it after realizing that they had large bags of Namaste Flour at a decent price.

Mostly, Darren does the shopping for me at both of these stores. I have to be honest that I find them soul sucking.