Wrestling with Chickpeas

Food, Nutrition and Agriculture
GillyBee
Posts: 1047
Joined: Tue Apr 07, 2020 6:46 am

Re: Wrestling with Chickpeas

Post by GillyBee »

I view my pressure cooker as a prep. Unlike my mother I don't use it daily to turn green veg into mush.

I keep it for these reasons which a microwave cannot compete with.

1) If fuel is in short supply it speeds up cooking and works on any fuel source for use in power cuts or camping/relocating/bugging out.
2) Cooking beans as already described.
3) Softening cheap (chewy) cuts of meat without taking all day.
4) Steam canning small numbers of jars. Pressure canning should work too if the cooker is a bigger one but UK models are untested and hence warned against. So I just stick to high acid foods to be safe.
5) Emergency autoclave if SHTF meant loss of hospitals to the extent that kitchen table surgery makes a comeback. (Hopefully never needed!)
jansman
Posts: 13623
Joined: Thu Dec 30, 2010 7:16 pm

Re: Wrestling with Chickpeas

Post by jansman »

GillyBee wrote: Sun Nov 08, 2020 10:02 am I view my pressure cooker as a prep. Unlike my mother I don't use it daily to turn green veg into mush.

I keep it for these reasons which a microwave cannot compete with.

1) If fuel is in short supply it speeds up cooking and works on any fuel source for use in power cuts or camping/relocating/bugging out.
2) Cooking beans as already described.
3) Softening cheap (chewy) cuts of meat without taking all day.
4) Steam canning small numbers of jars. Pressure canning should work too if the cooker is a bigger one but UK models are untested and hence warned against. So I just stick to high acid foods to be safe.
5) Emergency autoclave if SHTF meant loss of hospitals to the extent that kitchen table surgery makes a comeback. (Hopefully never needed!)
That is sound thinking. I like the idea of emergency autoclave.
In three words I can sum up everything I have learned about life: It goes on.

Robert Frost.

Covid 19: After that level of weirdness ,any situation is certainly possible.

Me.
GillyBee
Posts: 1047
Joined: Tue Apr 07, 2020 6:46 am

Re: Wrestling with Chickpeas

Post by GillyBee »

I forgot another potential use for the venerable pressure cooker.
Our local lavender growing community venture had their first still on display. It was an older type pressure cooker which had been converted to distill essential oil from lavender with a simple change of the vent using microbore copper pipe bent into a cooling coil.
I don't grow enough herbs to distill essential oils for myself so this is remaining strictly theoretical. But it is worth mentioning in case someone else here wants to play with herb oils.