Nov 15, 2024
Nov 15, 2024
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Sir, but isn't it that pressure cooker works on PV=nRT. Then obviously pressure is directly proportional to the temperature.So any reduction in temperature should surely result in decrease in pressure. |
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Manjula, I am surprised that my article which is almost 8 years old is getting attention. I am also surprised that Prestige user manual is making mention of whistle counting. There is no scope for any confusion. What I have written in the blog article is one hundred per cent correct. It is fool proof and I would advice you stick to it. Of late I am using induction cooktop. Once the pressure is reached I set the power at 600 watts. And also set the timer. Five or six minutes for rice, seven minutes for dal, fourteen minutes for chole and rajma, fifteen minutes for bengal gram are my thumb rules. I will try to contact Prestige company in this regard. Thanks. Happy cooking. |
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After going through the user manual I used my new prestige pressure cooker 36 years ago and as per the manual just after the first whistle I simmered down the flame, for 7 or 10 to 15 minutes accordingly like dal, vegetables, potatoes, pulses, rice whether they are cooked together in different vessels at the same time or cooked as a single item or directly cooked items like pulav, bisibele bath, ven pongal, vangi bath etc. I purchased a new prestige pressure Cooker today(6:2:2021) in exchange of the old one. In the user manual it is mentioned that we need to take 3 to 4 whistles. I am confused now. Which is the real cooking time? Number of whistles or lowered flame time just after one whistle? |
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Vapor cooking is different from pressure cooking. In a pressure cooker one cannot remove the lid till the pressure inside becomes atmospheric. In pressure cookers one often keeps more than one item, for example rice and dal. As dal takes more time to cook it is possible that rice can get overcooked. Ofte this may not happen because of the right amount of water used with rice. But if vegetables are cooked along with dal, the former definitely gets overcooked and is not recommended from nutrition point of view. My practice is to cook vegetables in a microwave oven and dal in the pressure cooker. For making sambhar, these two ingredients are mixed later. |
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Tutti Quanti Vapor Pressure Cooking© The title makes one think this report will solve all the problems relating to the matter, but what it does is try and explain how to choose the right cooking time interval for A SINGLE type of food when you pressure boil. So what if one vapor cooks SEVERAL things simultaneously? That's what I ALWAYS do. It can be seven, eight or more things: rice, barley, potato, carrot, tomato, cucumber, ripe plantain, radish, asparagus, pumpkin, artichoke, corn (maize)…. (I don't eat legumes because I lack the enzyme that breaks them down, but it can be bought at health-food stores.) Moreover, I NEVER boil them. It's always VAPOR cooking, which probably avoids the destruction of the vitamins. First you put some water in the pot, then you place a metallic artifact that's like a platform where you can place the food, but I add a THIRD object that will hold the juices, which is a round vessel made of thick, heat-resistant glass (cp. Pyrex). If you include a cereal you'll have to put some water in the second vessel, too. This water will evaporate partly or entirely, according to the cooking time. The cereal will dry up if the time is excessive. It's best for it to remain slightly humid. If a piece of radish is included and there's rice or barley, too, you have to place the radish in a small (maybe stainless steel) vessel within the glass vessel so that its juice won't ruin the rice with its sweet flavor (and color). The sweet juice of the ripe plantain will also ruin the cereals, so that, too, has to be isolated thus. (One can mix the rice with some grated coconut, even though the water will send some of the coconut floating around. Since the water evaporates, the coconut will eventually settle down.) Finally there's the problem of the different cooking times. A perfectionist will open the pot, take out the easily cooked things after a few minutes and then seal the pot once again and continue cooking the tougher things. I don't bother to do this anymore. The water in the pot will acquire a nice, mild, vegetably taste (cp. potlikker) and can be left to cool down and then it can be drinked for refreshment in "the pause that refreshes"©. When taking out the glass vessel some of the juice in it might drop into the water in the pot, so if you haven't isolated the radish and the plantain it will, of course, turn into sweet water. I never ever read about all of this anywhere. It's based on many years of my own experience, and I wonder whether or not anybody else does those things, or if there's a book that describes the procedures. If not then I hereby patent them and call them Tutti Quanti Vapor Pressure Cooking©. I've always wondered what would happen if I were to put a raw egg still in the shell in the pressure cooker. Would it explode? Caution and respect for food has hindered me from trying this out. A physicist would probably know the answer without having to ruin an egg. After the explosion the egg fragments might fly out and spread all over the place, like the Cosmic Egg of the crazy Big Bang Myth. |