Post: #1

I was looking into making bone broths, which call for simmering a pot on the stove for as long as 48 hours. I hesitate to leave a pot on the stove unattended for long periods.

Then I read that pressure cookers can cook foods just as well as traditional methods, in a fraction of the time (eg, this ). Pressure cookers come in stovetop models as well as standalone plug-in models - I'm looking at the plugin models. I like being able to walk away from the kitchen, and the programmable nature of a plugin model makes your results extremely easy to reproduce.

This one is supposed to be among the best of them:



Instant Pot IP-DUO60 7-in-1 Programmable Pressure Cooker with Stainless Steel Cooking Pot and Exterior, 6-Quart/1000-watt, Latest 3rd Generation Technology

I have a slow cooker and two rice cooker/slow cooker combos (one at work). The rice cooker is super convenient, but its biggest drawback is that it doesn't cook at very high temperatures. You can't get a nice browning on beef in it. Plus it sounds like for making broth, the temperature won't be hot enough.

For those with experience:

Are pressure cookers a good way to cook food safely and quickly?
Is it safe to leave a plug-in (not a stovetop) pressure cooker like the one pictured unattended?

I leave my rice cooker/slow cooker unattended all the time, it's about as dangerous as a water kettle, plus it shuts off or reverts to low heat automatically.

For a while I was cooking food in my rice cooker at work, but I mostly limited it to eggs and rice, occasionally a chicken curry or steamed fish. But my first love is beef, which it didn't cook well. Or recipes would call for several hours of cooking. It sounds like the pressure cooker would be an upgrade by drastically cutting cooking times and allowing higher temperature cooking.

Post: #2

I can't speak for plug-in pressure cookers but I decided to give our stove top pressure cooker a shot after following the recipe on the bone broth thread. We weren't terribly confident about leaving it simmering overnight either.

It really does take time out of all the hours of simmering and time on the stove top. It's a bit tricky to use at first but the thing is to turn the heat down once it starts hissing before stuff starts sputtering out. If used correctly you'll know when it's all right to remove the lid.

A trick I learnt is to immediately remove it from the stove top at that point, and wrap it it up in blankets or towels, if really must continue the process overnight. For additional insulation and to make sure the blankets stay in place, you can pop the whole thing in a box. The idea is that they retain the heat that would otherwise be lost or that simmering provides.