Best Gifts for the Paleo Diet: Pressure Cookers

Posted on November 11, 2011 By Brian Cormack Carr Food and Health, Paleo Diet, Paleo Diet Reviews, Paleo living

My pressure cooker is quite possibly my favourite piece of “modern” kitchen equipment, after my Vitamix blender.  I used to use it mainly for cooking rice, but since going paleo, it has come into its own in making quick stocks, soups, and stews.   There are other uses too, of course (like canning tomatoes) but those are the tried-and-trusted methods I come back to again and again.

Here’s some information on pressure cookers and the paleo diet, especially for beginners.

What’s A Pressure Cooker?

A pressure cooker is a (usually large) pot with a lid that’s locked shut during cooking, sealing in all the steam that’s generated from the simmering liquid and ingredients in the pot. The increased pressure increases the cooking temperature and triples the amount of heat transferred into the food while it cooks.

This makes cooking much quicker.  In the case of meat, it also tenderizes it dramatically. I find using a pressure cooker is also a real boon for cooking bone broths, since the high temperature extracts more flavour, gelatin and collagen from bones - all in record time. I just add some bones to the pot, along with some chopped carrots, celery, onion, garlic and herbs, and enough water to cover everything, and cook for at least 35 minutes - usually longer.

Modern pressure cookers are much quieter than the kind your parents and grandparents probably used - and they’re much safer, too.  Stories of exploding pressure cookers have probably always been exaggerated, and nowadays they have a multitude of safety features that really make this a negligible concern - provided that, like any piece of kitchen equipment, you use your pressure cooker properly!

Key Recipes

Here are some of the delicious paleo diet delicacies you can cook in your pressure cooker:

• Barbacoa Beef
• Chicken Stock
• Pulled Pork
• Mashed Cauliflower

Your Starter Kit

For most people, I recommend a 6-quart cooker.  That’s big enough for family meals, and small enough to be useable by single people.  My favourite brand, without a doubt, is Kuhn Rikon: their durability is reknowned, they’re expensive but not excessive in price, and they look good too. Below are a few of the pressure cookers Kuhn Rikon offers

• Kuhn Rikon Duromatic Top Pressure Cooker 7.4-Quart
• Kuhn Rikon 3344 7.4-Quart Stainless-Steel Pressure Cooker
• Kuhn Rikon 6-Piece Duromatic Duo Pressure Cooker Set
• Kuhn Rikon 3916 Duromatic Top Pressure Cooker, 5-Quart
• Kuhn Rikon Duromatic 8-1/2-Quart Stockpot
• Kuhn Rikon Duromatic Top Pressure Cooker 3.75-Quart
• Kuhn Rikon Duromatic Anniversary 3.7-Quart Pressure Cooker

Although there aren’t yet any specific paleo and pressure cooker books out there, these two have a range of recipes that are very easily adapted:

 

Cooking Under Pressure, by Lorna Sass

Miss Vickie’s Big Book of Pressure Cooker Recipes

Certainly a pressure cooker is a best gift for the Paleo Diet. What are you waiting for? Happy pressure cooking, paleo dieters!

 

Do you have a pressure cooker? What are some of your favourite recipes for this essential piece of equipment?  Please leave your comments below and also SHARE and LIKE this article on Facebook and send a Tweet to Twitter if you found this article useful.

Brian Cormack Carr is a life and career coach, charity CEO, writer, and advocate of a real foods diet.
His home on the web is www.cormackcarr.com where you will find more articles, his free Lifecrafting Newsletter, and information about his online career-creation programme www.vitalvocation.com.
You can follow Brian on Twitter: @cormackcarr

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