Pressure cookers are amazing tools for any home cook to have. Not only have they been around for a long time, but they have increased in popularity over the past couple of years owing to their efficiency and wealth of available safety features. With a pressure cooker, home cooks can prepare foods quickly and efficiently, without worrying about destroying its nutritional value. Pressure cookers also tend to be a lot more effective compared to other cooking methods such as stovetop cooking and are the best to use when one is looking to save energy.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Pressure Cookers
Advantages
Pressure cookers prepare food quickly
As mentioned above, pressure cookers prepare food faster compared to any other cooking methods available including induction cooking, slow cooking, microwaving, boiling or braising. Pressure cookers can prepare food 70 percent faster than most other methods, which can come in handy when dealing with tough to cook foods such as brown rice, dried beans and tough cuts of meat.
Crucial for high altitude cooking
If you live in a high-altitude area, having a pressure cooker is a must as it can make food preparation a breeze. Different requirements are needed for food preparation at high altitude. At these conditions, water generally boils at lower temperatures, which makes the process of cooking much longer than it is at sea level. But a pressure cooker reduces cooking times significantly, which is why pressure cookers are preferred for high altitude cooking.
Energy efficient
Pressure cookers generally rely on fewer amounts of water for cooking compared to other methods such as braising or steaming. When there is less water to heat up, the pressure cooker attains pressure faster, which increases the speed of cooking. Ultimately, this ends up saving cooking time as well as energy.
Affordable
Because pressure cookers are more popular than they have ever been, the number of manufacturers, brands, and models available has also increased significantly, which has helped to reduce the overall cost of investing in a quality pressure cooker. there are plenty of medium-priced pressure cookers available today that are outfitted with an array of functions, and features designed to make them more effective.
Disadvantages
Need regular maintenance
In order for your pressure cooker to keep serving you efficiently, you must take care of it on a regular basis. There are certain parts of the pressure cooker such as the sealing ring and gasket whose condition must always be kept pristine. If not well taken care of, the gasket and the sealing ring can end up accumulating gunk, which would, in turn, make the pressure cooker less effective.
Overcooking is possible
Under pressure, it is typically a lot easier to overcook your food. Because it only takes a short time for food to cook, many new pressure cooker users end up complaining of soggy or overcooked results.
No control over the cooking process
Once a pressure cooker has managed to build up pressure in the cooking pot, the cooker cannot be opened until the cooking process is done. This means that a home cook cannot open the cooker midway through the cooking process to check on the status of the food. Doing so would cause the pressure to drop, therefore stopping the cooking process altogether.