Pressure Cooker

My lovely friends, D & J, presented us with an electric pressure cooker recently. Taiyo Pressure Cooker, PC66D. I have never used a pressure cooker before. My mother had a stove-top pressure cooker when I was a little girl. What I remember most about the pressure cooker was that the cleaning was #&*! Scum that collected on the sides was impossible to clean off!

Anyway. This pressure cooker is an *electric* pressure cooker which means that I don't have to remember to turn off the fire or figure out how much time I need to cook anything. Just press a button and (voila!) food will be cooked. 

Unfortunately, the instructions were not clear enough. 

The first time I cooked beef ribs, it turned out perfect! (Thankful for that because I was cooking it for guests.) Second time, chicken soup. It turned out like chicken soup but steam poured out of the lid continuously. Third time, semur daging, ie, some beef dish. Turned out too dry and steam was seen too. 

I sent an SOS to my friend who gave me the pressure cooker who in turn told me to go to Metro Causeway Point. There is a dedicated Taiyo counter manned by a Taiyo staff who can answer all my queries. She's there on weekends but avoid 4/5pm thereabouts because that's her break time.

3 things that I didn't do correctly were:

1. The seal position of the exhaust valve must be turned to the right. It doesn't matter if it feels loose. Just turn it to the right and leave it there. If you try to turn it further down, you can't. Unless you use extra force in which case you can turn it around and around forever. 

This is the seal position of the exhaust valve. The manual states that there is a sealing small icon but that's not true. There's no such icon. You can see the release/exhaust icon but no sealing icon.

2. Make sure the lid is in the locked position.

This is the locked position. 

3. You must cook it in one continuous process. You cannot set it at 15 minutes, then open the lid, add potatoes, set it to another 15 minutes, continue cooking. (I did that with my semur daging.) Nope. The Taiyo lady said that if I wanted to do that, I must cook it the traditional way, in a pot on the stove.

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I hope this info I'm sharing will be useful for all noob cooks who are using the pressure cooker for the first time in their cooking lives. (Especially this one because when I googled for more info on this particular pressure cooker, nothing came up.) If the thought of cleaning the cooker puts you off buying one, fret no more. The inner nonstick pot of the pressure cooker makes cleaning a breeze. If you are as forgetful as I am, you no longer have to worry about burning the house down because you forgot to turn off the stove. (A real problem for me. A $2 kitchen timer has saved me many, many times. Turn the heat on, set the timer. When the timer beeps, you know that it is for something in the kitchen. Go to the kitchen and check for things that need to be turned off.)

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Now, there is beef rendang in the pressure cooker. If it turns out nice, hooray! If not, I will share my fails here. :D

If successful, imagine how easy hari raya cooking will be when the rendang pot no longer hogs one of the burners on the stove! 

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Beef rendang is cooked! Not as dry as the semur daging. Hooray!