The Everything Pressure Cooker Cookbook (Everything Series) Review

4 Comments

1. Jane Austen says:

   August 4, 2010 at 10:22 am

   Review by Jane Austen for The Everything Pressure Cooker Cookbook (Everything Series)
   Rating:
   My neighbor and I bought ourselves new pressure cookers and along with the cookbooks that come with the cookers we purchased this cookbook. I love this book because it has some great recipes. I hate this book because the index “sucks”, you have to go the beginning of each chapter to find the page references for the recipes. Remember to add salt because often, following the recipe results in undersalted dishes. (This is certainly not the biggest offense). The editor for the book didn’t catch the fact that several recipes are repeated. And finally be careful with the directions, I have found ingredients referred to in the instructions which are not in the ingredient lists and always remember to saute your onions before sealing your cooker up – raw onions can mess up the flavor! But despite all these caveats I really do enjoy this cookbook – it an my new pressure cooker have been my latest culinary inspiration!
2. Midwest Book Review says:

   August 4, 2010 at 11:11 am

   Review by Midwest Book Review for The Everything Pressure Cooker Cookbook (Everything Series)
   Rating:
   Pamela Rice Hahn draws upon her many years of experience and expertise to write still another outstanding and thoroughly ‘kitchen cook friendly’ compendium of recipes. This time she focuses on dishes suitable for the pressure cooker as an instrument specifically designed to speed up meal preparation time for today’s busy housewife. Beginning with a chapter that aptly serves as a primer in how to safely use and utilize a pressure cooker in the kitchen, the recipes are nicely organized and presented showcasing everything from chutneys, preserves, jams, and condiments; to appetizers and party snacks; sauces; to breakfast and brunch cuisines; to soups, stews and chowders, and so much more! Of special note is the chapter devoted to vegetarian fare. From Stuffed Green Peppers; Sweet and Sour Pork; and Chicken Chili; to Fettuccine with Smoked Salmon Sauce; Summer Sausage Casserole; and Molten Fudge Pudding Cake, “The Everything Pressure Cooker Cookbook” truly lives up to its title and is enthusiastically endorsed for family and community library cookbook collections!
3. Rational says:

   August 4, 2010 at 12:03 pm

   Review by Rational for The Everything Pressure Cooker Cookbook (Everything Series)
   Rating:
   I’ve tried two recipes so far–Old South Chicken Stew (Brunswick) and Stuffed Green Peppers. Both were excellent. I’ve read other recipes and they seem as if they’ll be good, too. Don’t be misled by the publisher’s list of example recipes on(pork with figs, and so on). The book has few weirdo recipes with “twists.” They’re mostly normal comfort food. But the book is organized in a very bizarre fashion. The editor should have caught this problem. For example, there’s a section for Chicken. But two thirds of the chicken recipes are not in the chicken section! Chicken recipes are scattered throughout different sections such as Stews, International Flavors, and so on. Sometimes a recipe is put in the wrong category. “Grandmother’s Chicken Casserole” for instance, is mysteriously put in the International section. She says it’s “French-inspired” but …. And probably as a result of both the book’s inherent disorganization, combined with no indexing skills, the book’s Index is the worst I’ve seen in many years. For example, look up Chicken and you just see 30 page numbers, not a list of the names of the recipes. Big help. So, I’d say buy the book for the good eats and tolerate the poor editing. If indeed anyone edited the book. One final note: the publishers have apparently copyrighted the word “Everything.” Well, that’s one less word I can use in a title of one of my own books. Rats! I think I’ll try to copyright the word “The.”
4. Stuart R. Donald says:

   August 4, 2010 at 12:33 pm

   Review by Stuart R. Donald for The Everything Pressure Cooker Cookbook (Everything Series)
   Rating:
   1682, 12th April: I went this afternoon with several of the Royal Society to a supper which was all dressed, both fish and flesh, in Monsieur Papin’s digesters, by which the hardest bones of beef itself, and mutton, were made as soft as cheese, without water or other liquor, and with less than eight ounces of coals, producing an incredible quantity of gravy; and for close of all, a jelly made of the bones of beef, the best for clearness and good relish, and the most delicious that I had ever seen, or tasted. We eat pike and other fish bones, and all without impediment; but nothing exceeded the pigeons, which tasted just as if bak’d in a pie, all these being stewed in their own juice without any addition of water save what swam about in the Digester. . .

   Diary and Correspondence of John Evelyn, F.R.S.

   The meal to which Evelyn is referring was cooked by Denis Papin. Papin prepared it for England’s King Charles II and members of the Royal Society, the British national academy of science, to demonstrate his new cooking apparatus the Digester. And thus began the nefarious history of the Pressure Cooker.

   Fast forward two and a half centuries, America has just emerged from the First Great Depression and the Second World War. It is the era of the working mother which means there is a need for dinner to hit the table faster but the microwave oven is still more than a decade away. What’s the modern mom to do? Enter Monsieur Papin’s Pressure Cooker. The problem is that those early cookers were a bit on the dangerous side.

   Today the same cannot be said. The Pressure Cooker is superior to the microwave oven for speedy cooking because it does not adversely effect the quality of food. But just how does one use the Digester? Enter Pamela Rice Hahn.

   Hahn, the author of more than 20 books, has just released The Everything Pressure Cookbook (Adams Media) and it is your entrance to the world of pressure cookery. The author takes you on a quick trip through the history of the device as well as tips and safety measures. Oh yeah, and 300 recipes for everything from jams and preserves to entrées and even desserts.

   So just how fast is pressure cooking? Remember grandma cooking her pot roast for hours? Hahn’s takes 45 minutes. Fall-off-the-bones pork ribs – 55 minutes. Cheesecake cooks in just eight. And the quality is just as good if not better than traditional methods. Professionals have rediscovered this cooking method to handle the extreme time constraints of cooking contests like Iron Chef and Top Chef, too. If it’s good enough for an Iron Chef then it’s good enough for you.