Pressure Cooker Checklist – Using it for the first time

Earlier this year we moved from living in a house on land to living in a boat on the sea. One of the top tips that live aboard boaties mention over and over is to buy ourselves a very good pressure cooker. Apparently, they use less energy, cook food much quicker and preserve more nutrients. That being said, my husband and I had no clue on how to use the pressure cooker. We made our purchase in Sicily so the instructions were in Italian. After a bit of research I found an online English manual and sorted out a pressure cooker checklist.

Pressure Cooker Checklist

• Before using your pressure cooker make sure that it’s clean and do a safety check. The rubber or silicone seal should look in good shape.
• Find out how the pressure cooker releases pressure – it will either ‘signal’ it has reached pressure by a visual or auditory indicator. It might jiggle around or it could just hiss loudly. The manual will tell you what to look for.
• Understand when you need to start timing your meal. For ours, after the pressure cooker starts to release steam we start our time.
• Understand how to release the pressure once the cooking time has passed. It will either be to remove it from the heat or you’ll have to release the pressure manual – just make sure you know where the steam will shoot when you release the pressure!
• After the food is cooked remove and clean the valve in addition to the whole pressure cooker.

For your first pressure cooking experience, test it by boiling water.

• Put two cups of water or the minimum required liquids in the pressure cooker.
• Close and lock the lid. Put it on the heat and wait until it reaches pressure.
• Turn the heat to low to maintain pressure for 5 minutes or so.
• Take the pressure cooker off the heat and release the pressure manually being careful not to put your hand/fingers in way of the steam.