Aah, Pressure cooker, you marvel!

When I moved in with H, I brought with me 50% of my kitchen utensils. I still consider them my essentials because some of them are from India, and I thought it was hard to lay hands on a good brand that is easy on the wallet, here. That’s not true, I learnt on further investigation.

My priced possessions included some stainless steel ladles, tea strainers, stainless steel tongs and lemon squeezer, a coffee filter, idly steamer, two pressure cookers of different sizes and a few other things because I am a partial hoarder. :p

Pressure cooking being an essential with most Indian dishes (there are other time consuming methods, but who would want to wait three hours and has the patience to cook dal in a closed pan?!), H had two of his own. He had a better stocked kitchen, including idly plates (microwaveable and stainless steel), mortar and pestle, two more coffee filters and a tea strainer. Add to this, the vadaam pressing machine(?) and the aapam kaaral sent in from H’s mom after our wedding! We ended up downsizing most of our vessels, except for the pressure cookers. We can never have enough of them. They were all of different sizes, and both of us hated doing dishes immediately, and ended up wanting the pressure cooker for next day’s cooking.

I believe this is the best decision we made. Of course, given a choice, I wouldn’t throw out anything, but trust me, getting H to agree on that, is quite an achievement!For weekday dinners after a busy day at work, one pot one shot dishes were quite a relief.Initially I was making just dal in it, but on further research and improvisation, pressure cooking was a weekday staple! In fact, we like some dishes better, only when they are made OPOS.

Last night, I made pav bhaji, and was done with the whole process in two hours. That includes half hour when I had time to fold laundry! Minus an hour to cut all veggies and the prep work. This can be avoided while buying pre-cut frozen veggies.The pressure cooker is definitely a god-send,  if you don’t find time in a day for cooking, don’t like cooking too much, nor are you a fan of eating out everyday, for the health-nuts, or if you are just plain lazy! This is coming from a girl, whose cooking skills were restricted to making maggi and chai till the age of 21! So you know I mean business!

All you have to do is invest in a good pressure cooker. There are some good options on Amazon. I found some Indian brands that I am used to, too. I prefer the stove-top ones to the electric ones, because i get to do more cooking all in that cooker, which also means less dishes to wash!

Summarizing the wonders of the pressure cooker without all the above blab, here are four very good reasons to love your pressure cooker.

1. Easy-peasy cooking.Easy to multitask with one of these doing the cooking.
2. Quicker to cook with.
3. Flavorful dishes.
4. Energy saving. In comparison to pans/ slow cookers.

Go on now, grab yours too and make that avial!