Pressure cooking can be so wonderful. It’s a great way to have healthy meals at your fingertips on weeknights. And it can save you from slaving away in the kitchen on your weekends. I just made spare ribs tonight – 20 minutes in the pressure cooker – and then finished them on the grill for extra flavor and crispy charred goodness.
But I think one of the biggest tricks of pressure cooking is finding good cookbooks and recipes. Many recipes that you’ll find are dated or have inaccurate cooking times.
In order to help you along, and save you the time and expense of researching cookbooks, I’ve summarized my favorite cookbooks and websites.
1. Hip Pressure Cooking by Laura D. A. Pazzaglia
This book has more modern recipes. It includes lots of ethnic flavors and it’s best feature is the great timing tables. It covers a lot of pressure cooking basics and has good recipes. The author is not American and some of the basic American style things that you might want to do with a pressure cooker, like baked beans or a simple pot roast are not in this book. This book has timing for both electric and stovetop cookers.
2. The Great Big Pressure Cooker Book by Bruce Weinstein & Mark Scarbrough
This book has tons and tons of recipes. The recipes all cover both electric and stovetop cookers and this is perhaps the best book for electric cooker recipes. The book does not cover the basics of pressure cooking – it jumps right into the recipes. The recipes are well written and most everything I’ve tried so far as been good. I should note that I’m not in love with their method for cooking cheesecakes. So if you are itching to pressure cook a cheesecake, try the next book on this list.
3. Pressure Perfect by Lorna Sass
This book is fairly traditional and does not include a lot of discussion about electric pressure cookers. That being said, the recipes are good and the times are accurate. Lorna Sass is one of the main people who brought pressure cooking back into mainstream culinary discussion in the U.S.
This is a great starting point for recipes. The recipes are good and it’s FREE! You also get a free little cookbook with your Fagor pressure cooker.
5. Healthy Recipes by Phyllis Stanley & Shirley Heinmets
This book includes a section on pressure cooking in addition to a bunch of great recipes for your Bosch. If you have a Bosch and a pressure cooker, then this is a great book to have in your collection. My favorite cookie recipe is in this book – but it’s not a pressure cooker recipe!. The pressure cooker recipes are all written for a stovetop cooker and include a wide variety of whole grains. The recipes are pretty traditional and are all very good.
Summary
Pick one of the books above based on what you are looking for and get started with your pressure cooker! I’ve found all of the above books at my library and bookstore, with the exception of Healthy Recipes. Healthy Recipes is self-published and is available through me for $24.00.
