MY FAVOURITE appliance
 

Hi ALL!!!

I just wanted to let you all know that I am in love!

yes, it's true.

I have found true love. ;)

His name is Pressure Cooker XL. :lol:

I met him at Costco...

I was in a fizzling relationship with my previous love, Crock Pot...

At first, they seemed similar, but oh no!

Crock Pot is a nice enough appliance, but, when you work full time, the idea of coming home to dinner that is COOKED is really appealing. Only, EVERY time I would try to cook food in CP while I was at work, we would come home to very dry meat.

Not with PCXL! PCXL. What an appliance! I come home. I put a FROZEN SOLID brick of meat and some salt into this thing and press ->Soup/Stew-> Time Adjustment 50 minutes -> and then... LESS THAN AN HOUR LATER: The MOST tender meat EVER!!!! beef, chicken, pork... whatever!!!

I am a HUGE fan of steak! I have always kinda hated "stewed meat" because it is typically tough, dry and over cooked to an unappealing grey colour.

Now, we buy 4-6 "chuck steaks" (they contain good amount of fat, and are as cheap as stew meat) a week. and we eat them joyously! The meat is really unbelievably tender cooked this way! I can't even believe it, and we've been using it multiple times a week for months and I remain impressed every time!

It really doesn't get any easier. I don't have to rememeber to "pre-thaw" the meat for the next night's dinner... I come home, plug it in, put in the meat, add salt, close the lid, press the button and in under an hour, we eat!

...Just wanted to share bc sometimes all the cooking for this WOL seems like so much work.. and the cost of steaks is high! SO, this reduces PRICE and EFFORT.

yay! :D

jams

I love mine too. It is an Instant Pot I bought from Amazon.

I'm so happy to hear this, we've been talking about getting one and I've been hesitant. Not anymore! Thanks!

Hi Julia! :wave: Yeah, it's SO great. The best part, in my opinion, is how badly I treat the thing!! I mean, honestly, no recipes, no measuring... Just frozen blocks of meat with some salt and... Presto! Dinner! :lol: Yes, I sometimes use fresh meat, and it cooks in half the time (so, like 30 minutes).
I hope you like yours as much as I do. :D

I don't have an electric pressure cooker, but my life changed for the better the day I got my regular stovetop pressure cooker. So fast and easy. Soups and stews that used to take all day now take an hour or less. It's like magic! (It also makes it easy to put together something fast for when carb eaters come to visit. One pot pasta in 25 minutes or less? That never fails to please grouchy mood-swinging carbheads riding the blood sugar roller coaster. And it keeps me from getting irritated with them. Hah!)

I'm currently in love with my countertop convection oven. It's an inexpensive model from Amazon, but it has made my (lazy, lazy, lazy) kitchen life even better. I haven't had to clean an oven or wipe grease spatters off of anything since I moved into this place over two months ago. Before I got this thing, I was constantly cleaning my kitchen -- the biggest downside of a mostly meat diet, in my opinion.

Love my pressure cooker too -- it's an electric Bistro from Wolfgang Puck and has been working for 10 years now. Just made some boneless ribs fall apart, and don't even get me started on bone broth!

Although I love my new aqua colored stand mixer also -- it's a toss-up.

Not quite sure I understand. You are a "huge" fan of steak, but now you are cooking up pot roasts in the pressure cooker. I don't see the connection. I am also a fan of steaks & rare oven roasts. Pot roast and stew are also nice, in their way, but the one doesn't, in any way, in my mind, correspond to the other. Am I missing something? I can see the attraction of speed, and not having to remember to take something out of the freezer, but I'm not so fond of pot roast or stew that I really see the attraction. But then, I am retired, and only cooking for two, and have time, so that may be the reason. My "speedy" protein choices when I haven't thought ahead are shrimp - which defrost reasonably quickly in a bowl of water - or ground meat or fish fillets, which takes rather longer, but goes fairly quickly when the frozen packet is placed on a metal surface (cast iron or stainless steel frying pan, or heavy metal cookie sheet, or something similar); acts like a heat exchanger, and thaws the meat in maybe half the time of just leaving it on the counter. Not to denigrate your new love (and wishing you many congratulations, and a happy life together!), but of the several kitchen gadgets which I don't yet own, this one seems rather low on the list for my particular needs.

Hi Verbeena,

I should have been clearer: :) I LOVE steak, RARE steak on the BBQ !!! (to me a proper steak is ribeye, New York, fillet...not chuck).

If cooked beyond medium rare, I consider the steak ruined. Of course, steak is expensive.

So, what I love about the pressure cooker is, I can buy a super cheap cut of tough, tough meat and in less than an hour, have tender beef for dinner (obviously, not rare... but...).

Now, don't get me wrong. Chuck steak in the pressure cooker vs. Ribeye rare on the grill, ribeye wins hands down every time... :lol: but, with ribeye costing upwards of $19/pound where I live, and chuck steak costing around $7/pound... well, for me, eating ribeye every night is cost prohibitive.

The Pressure Cooker has made cheap, tough cuts quick, easy and tender.

But yeah, they'll never be as good as rare steak on the grill.

...frozen chicken turns out beautifully too, from frozen. Did that tonight. dropped 3 frozen solid bricks of boneless chicken thighs form Costco into the cooker, 50 minutes later- gorgeous tender, moist chicken. I ate a couple bites plain, and DH mixed his with sauce and cheese and made enchiladas...

I agree with Dex too! Cleaning is a pain! Meat is messy!!! PCXL is one pot clean up and no splatters.

*Dex, I love my little convection oven too! I do bacon in it every morning. :D

Thanks for the well-wishes, Verbs! ;)

re - the electric/digital pressure cookers ...

These enthusiastic reviews have piqued my interest :cool:. I just might buy me a PCXL :).

I'd love to be able to cook up a large amount of meat all at once without heating up the kitchen, then freeze portions for quick-to-cook meals later. In cooler weather my slow-cooker is in use constantly, but with summer heat and humidity ... there's no way I want something that generates heat sitting on the counter for hours and hours :help:

However .. I've read that these can take up to 30 minutes to come up to pressure, thus adding to the total cooking time. Is this so?


Thanks for any insight,

Doreen :rose:

Today's Amazon Gold Box deal, the 6 QT Instapot for $69.99, same price as the 3 QT. This is same price it was on Prime Day, reg $99.99.

If you were thinking of buying this popular electronic pressure cooker, hop on it, Gold Box sometimes sell out quickly :)

That's a lot less than I paid for same. Grab one and start cooking. Worth it for bone broth alone if you do that sort of thing :) Thanks Janet for the heads up.

Now I'm going to have to get one and try it. Before I read this I would have said my favorite appliance is my Zojirushi Fuzzy Logic rice maker :)

It sounds a lot like this pressure cooker, sans pressure of course. I swear, I can put anything in that rice cooker from rice, (which I'm not eating now of course), to a chicken, pork loin, beef roast - you name it and somehow it "knows" when food is "perfectly done" and automatically goes into "keep warm" mode once cooking is complete.

When I have to run out for the day and I'm in a hurry, I can throw anything in that rice cooker, press the "cooking" button and leave. When I come home its ready :)

Think I like about my pressure cooker is I can also use it as a slow cooker, rice cooker (for company), and other stuff too.

I made carnitas in it on Sunday.

Yup, and I bought one! I also bought a cookbook to give me some ideas, but haven’t actually tried it out yet. But my son and his wife love their Instant Pot.

Check some of these: https://www.ibreatheimhungry.com/20...ot-recipes.html
InstaPot is the darling of the Pinterest crowd, you will find many there.
Michelle Tam of NomNomPaleo has a section of them on her website too. http://nomnompaleo.com/post/1258783...ant-pot-recipes