The pressure's on!

I've mentioned before that I am a kitchen gadget junkie, right? Well, I'll share one of my most favorite appliances ever: The Pressure Cooker. That's right, folks. I adore my pressure cooker. Why? Well, tonight I cooked a whole chicken - it was a big'un, straight from a girlfriend's farm - in that handy cooker in 30 minutes. 30 minutes! It would have taken me at least an hour and a half in the oven, and a good hour in my NuWave Oven. Along with my other many oddities, I tend to obsess about the doneness of my meat. I poke it, prod it, and cut it during cooking just to make sure it's getting done. If I cook a whole chicken breast, it ends up looking like tenderloins when I plate it. I know you're not supposed to cut into meat like that (you "lose all the good juices" and everything. Meh.), but I do it anyway.

Well, with the pressure cooker, I don't have to worry; mainly because I can't. I can't cut the meat "just to check." I just let it do its job and then put it on my plate. So tonight, my chicken was done, juicy, and on the table in 30 minutes. No joke. And believe me, I had to nearly stuff the sucker in the pot...it was big! There's also no question about doneness, either. The meat was nearly falling off the bones when it was done.

Speaking of bones, I have those lovelies in a crockpot as I type, along with veggies and herbs, and in the morning I will have a delicious stock that I didn't have to work for! I just threw in the stuff (whole), and turned it on. It doesn't get much simpler than that.

If you don't have a pressure cooker, go get one! I have this one . I got it as a gift a few years ago, and it's perfect for us. The hippie in my worries slightly about the aluminum, but hey - it was free. And, cooking in this one aluminum piece of cookware now and again is way less of a risk than taking an asprin or getting a vaccine. Just sayin'.