5 Reasons Why You Need A Pressure Cooker (2024)

Call me a romantic (or low maintenance), but the best gift I’ve ever received from my husband was a stainless-steel pressure cooker. It’s my favourite piece of kitchen equipment because it gets dinner on the table in minutes and helps me be more creative with my family’s meals. Better yet, it also reduces energy consumption, cuts fuel bills, and curbs food wastage, making it a brilliant tool for minimising our environmental impact.

A mainstay in many Asian and African homes, pressure cookers make it faster to cook traditional dishes, like Jamaican Cow Foot and Pakistani Nihari, which usually take hours when prepared in a regular pan. Cooking at speed is also essential in countries where load shedding is the norm and you’re not always sure if you’ll have gas and electricity all day.

No longer the scary-looking, whistling contraptions of old, modern pressure cookers are easy to use, simple to clean, and safe. Here are five benefits to adding them to your kitchen arsenal:

Pressure cookers cook food quicker

A pressure cooker builds up and traps steam within its central chamber, creating an extremely high temperature inside that vastly reduces cooking times, tenderises even the toughest of meats, and reduces nutrient loss.

It might not be the most suited for cooking delicate fish and seafood but I love using mine to make heartier dishes, like beans, rice, stews, curries, and Bolognese to daals, soups, chillis, and hotpots in much less than half the time.

Electric multifunction pressure cookers are superb but I prefer my stovetop version because it gives me greater control over the temperature when it comes to adding initial flavour through frying, browning, and sautéing.

Pressure cookers save you money

A faster cooking time means reduced energy use and in turn lower fuel bills. With today’s climbing energy prices and rising inflation coupled with stagnant wages and higher taxes, it makes sense to focus on curbing our consumption to save our pennies and the planet. Plus, you can save even more money by using cheaper cuts of meat, like shoulder, shanks, ribs, and chicken thighs, that become meltingly tender under high pressure.

Pressure cookers add variety to weeknight meals

Craving a comforting stew on a cold Wednesday evening? Pressure cooking means traditionally slow-cooked meals, like velvety casseroles, homely stews, and warming goulashes, don’t have to be reserved for the weekend. You can easily prepare a high-flavour meal under 30 minutes that tastes like it’s been gently bubbling away on an Aga stovetop for the entire day. The trick is to brown and tenderise your meat first and then add in veggies and beans at the last minute so they retain their shape and texture.

Pressure cookers help to maximise flavour

High-pressure steam lends greater flavour and texture to rice and grains like bulgur, quinoa, freekeh and farro. My favourite thing is to make pulao in a pressure cooker – it eliminates evaporation and maximises flavour because the sealed lid prevents seasonings and fragrances from escaping.

You can make super-quick stocks and bone broths too that are perfect for refrigerating and using later in soups, phos, sauces, and gravies.

Pressure cookers help you capitalise on eco-friendly residual heat

Once the hob is turned off, the steam inside a pressure cooker is released very slowly via a safety valve. The food inside continues to cook, making it great for short, sharp bursts of cooking. For example, I tend to cook lentils and beans for three minutes under pressure, turn the hob off and allow things to finish cooking in the residual steam while I nip out on the school run. I get to return home to a dinner that tastes delicious, has saved me money and my time.

Pressure cookers for the win!