Week Four: Perfect Hard Cooked Eggs

It seems like such a simple thing: make hard cooked eggs. I have heard many different recipes for success, and have tried most of them too. I have tried using eggs at room temperature, started them in cold water, started them in hot water, made sure to use "old" eggs rather than fresh, cooked them at a simmer without a lid, cooked them in boiling water for a few minutes and then covered and removed from the heat source for an additional period of time. I have immediately dunked them in icy cold water, peeled them under running water and probably tried everything I've ever heard or read.

 But nothing compares to the Pressure Cooker. 

This is the easiest way to hard cook eggs, and makes for the easiest-to-peel eggs also. 

Set up your pressure cooker with a rack and arrange your eggs on the rack. 

I put my eggs on metal bottle caps that I have saved because I can fit more eggs in at one time.  Once you have the eggs in place, pour in one cup of water. 

Put the lid on and lock it in place. Set your cooker for low pressure and cook for 6 minutes. 

When the time is up allow the pressure to drop on its own ( natural release). This takes about 5 minutes. 

Once the pressure has dropped you can open your cooker and remove the eggs to cool under cold water. 

Each egg can be peeled, often times with the shell practically falling off. 

Not every egg is that easy but none are hard to peel using this method. I have never had to struggle with removing tiny fragments of egg shells since I have switched to cooking eggs this way. 

The yolks cook up beautifully:  solid and bright yellow, never green.  

Next time you want to make some deviled eggs, wouldn't you want them to have the beautiful yolks and be easy to peel?

I want to give a shout out to "hippressurecooking.com" for originally posting this fabulous recipe. This is another life changing pressure cooking recipe and I thank you for sharing. 

Week Three: Pulled Pork in the Pressure Cooker

Pressure Cookers are also excellent at making any tough cut of meat super tender, and it can do this in a much shorter amount of time than a crockpot, or in the oven.  In my opinion, it is the best tasting method as well.

Step One:  Put 3 pounds of cut up pork shoulder and 2 peeled and quartered onions into your cooker.  Keep in mind that your P.C. can only be filled 2/3 full.  Add 1-1/2 cups water or broth.  Season your meat and onion with salt and pepper.

Cook at high pressure for 50 minutes.  Let the pressure come down naturally.

The meat will be so tender, it will fall off the bone.  Once it cools, you can shred it using two forks. 

Pulled Pork--tender and juicy.

Stir in some barbecue sauce and some of the broth for a delicious pulled pork sandwich filling.  Save the remaining broth for another use; you can store it in the freezer and use it for soup, risotto, or the next time you make pulled pork!

Week Two: Risotto in the Pressure Cooker

Risotto with Butternut Squash and Peas.

This is one of the most fabulous ways to use a Pressure Cooker.  If you don't have one, this meal will sell you!


I have made Risotto the conventional way.  You may have too, and know that it is a long process of stirring over a hot stove.  You need to have everything ready to go:  measure your ingredients, grate your cheese, etc.  You have to have a pot of hot broth alongside the pot you cook the risotto in (so two pots to clean), and you have to keep a close eye on it because when it's done, it's done!

The P.C. makes this so easy you will never want to go back to the slow method!

Risotto after 6 minutes in the P.C.

Risotto can be made in your pressure cooker in about 15 minutes, and it will be perfect without all that stirring.  You simply saute up your onions and rice, add the wine (if using) and broth, and cook on high pressure for 6 minutes.  In the photo above, I also added some cubes of butternut squash.

When the time is up, you simmer briefly, add peas and parmesan
stirring to heat through and distribute cheese.  Dish it up with
additional cheese, and a sprinkling of freshly grated
pepper and parsley, if desired. 

Week One: Homemade broth in the Pressure Cooker

My Pressure Cooker has been living in my closet for a couple of years, but I have decided to liberate it.  I have recently re-discovered the amazing properties of pressure cooking, and am loving the meals that come out of it! 

Todays blog will be about homemade broth, but check back for more great ways to cook in the P.C.

Pressure Cookers:  Stove top model, and electric model.

A "P.C." is able to cook food much faster than conventional ways (oven, stovetop) without a loss of flavor, and without sacrificing texture or moistness. 

I love to have homemade broth on hand.  I make it in big batches, cooking it for hours on the stove top, and then freezing it in smaller amounts.  Homemade broth, as in most anything homemade, is so much richer in flavor that I prefer it enough to make broth whenever I need it.  I work hard at staying ahead of the game, but sometimes I just do not have hours available to devote to broth making. 

Homemade vegetable stock only takes 5 minutes.

It is fairly easy to make broth, but the P.C. makes it faster which can also mean easier to fit into your lifestyle. 

You can make your own broth at home, with or without a P.C. 
To make a meat broth in the P.C., you can follow this recipe:
2 pounds beef shanks or stewing meat, or
   6 chicken wings and/or a carcass (think rotiserrie chicken)
2 onions, quartered, with the skin
2 smashed cloves of garlic
3 carrots, cut into chunks
2-3 celery stalks, with leaves
2 bay leaves, fresh or dried
Parsley, cilantro or basil sprigs including the stems
Salt and pepper
Optional additional ingredients:

• Potatoes
• Sweet potatoes
• Squash
• Mushrooms, stems or whole
• Corn or corn cobs
• Scallions
• Shallots

Using food "scraps" for homemade broth.

Cover with water by an inch but remember not to fill your P.C. more than 2/3 full.  Lock the lid in place and bring your cooker to high pressure; cook for an hour if using beef, 30 minutes with chicken.  Allow the pressure to drop naturally, which means remove from heat (stovetop) or do nothing (electric) until you see (or hear) the pressure bob drop.  If using an electric model, the unit automatically keeps the broth warm for a set amount of time.  (Check your manual.) 

The next step is to strain your broth, and you can do by pouring your stock into a colander placed over another container to collect the delicious stock. 

Pour into a colander,

Be sure to place a container underneath to collect the delicious broth.

You can now chill this overnight to remove excess fat--which will float on the top and be easy to remove with a slotted spoon.  Pour into containers and store in your freezer.  If you generally use very small amounts, freeze in an ice cube tray; once frozen you can put these cubes into a plastic bag for easy access. 

If you want a clear broth, you will need to strain it further.

Pour through a kitchen towel for a clear broth. 

Clear broth.

Notice that the broth in the photo above has a lot more color than a canned broth.  It also has a lot more flavor!

Be sure to store your broth in clean containers with a label that states the type of broth and the date you made it.  I sometimes use ziploc bags which I can stack one on top of another.  It might be easier to put them on a flat sheet pan to freeze, and then stack them up in the freezer. 


Once you discover how easy and delicious this is, you may not ever buy store bought again!

What to do with Crystallized Honey

Crystallized honey is perfectly good honey, just difficult to get out of the bottle.  One way that people deal with this mess is to put the honey bottle in the microwave and heat it up.  I would like to tell you all not to do this.  You will change the properties of the honey by boiling it.  Also, if your honey is in a plastic bottle, you might notice that the shape of the bottle changes a bit when you microwave your honey, and that probably means your honey is no longer pure honey. 

It is not harmful to you to eat honey that has crystallized and you can eat it in that form.  However I am not sure about honey in a plastic jar that gets heated in the microwave.  I have thrown out jars of honey that crystallize in plastic jars, unless I can find a way to remove the honey and safely return it to it's pourable state.

Crystallized honey in glass jars.

During hot months, or if you live in a warm climate,  you can simply set your honey jars out in the sun and let Mother Nature do the work.  It may take awhile but it's easy!

If you are dealing with crystallized honey and don't have that option, here are some other suggestions. 

The water does not need to be higher than the honey to de-crystallize it.

Store your honey in glass jars because it is much easier to deal with it in glass jars.  Put water into a deep saucepan and heat until boiling.  Remove pan from heat and submerge your honey jar directly in the hot water.  Leave it until the honey is clear; repeat if necessary. 

Crystallized honey can be a "solid mess"!

 If you have more than a jar or two of crystallized honey as we sometimes do, you can use a double boiler set-up to dissolve the crystals from your honey.  Put crystallized honey into the top of a double boiler or a stainless steel bowl.

Create a double boiler with a stainless steel bowl and ordinary saucepan.

Set that atop a pan with simmering water; be sure the water doesn't touch the bottom of your double boiler. 

Leave your honey to heat up, stirring occasionally, until the honey is clear.  Pour back into clean bottles and enjoy!

Bucket of crystallized honey.

 We deal with honey every year.  Some years we get the most beautiful, delicious honey; another year we deal with a lot of crystallizing.  Honey just varies from one year to another.  When you have buckets of honey, you learn a lot about the many ways to re-create clear, pourable honey.  In the photo above, I actually used an ice cream spade to scoop out honey!

More ways to use fresh herbs

Many recipes call for fresh herbs which do add wonderful flavors to the foods we cook, but do you ever find that you bought a "bunch" or a package of some fresh herb when you only needed a small amount?  Do you hold on to it with the idea in mind that you will use it somewhere else, but then you don't know what to do with it? 

Here are a couple of very quick and easy ways to enjoy the fresh herbs weeks or even months later!

Compound Butter!

Compound butters can be made at home and you probably have all the ingredients on hand!  You simply whip together real unsalted butter with herbs, spices or aromatic liquids using a stand mixer or hand held mixer.  Then form it into a cylinder shape, wrap in plastic wrap or parchment paper, and chill until it is firm enough to be sliced. These butters can be melted on top of meats and vegetables, used as a spread or used to finish various sauces. You can also store this well wrapped in the freezer for a few months.

Try fresh garlic, parsley, butter and salt for your own garlic spread.   You can make it more spreadable (and delicious) by incorporating some olive oil or cream cheese!

Pesto!

Always a classic but even more delicious when you make it at home!  I blogged a How-to on making pesto in late September.  Again, incredibly more delicious than store bought,  and it can be stored for months in the freezer.

Seasoned Salt!

Salt is a natural preservative!  It's been the way to preserve fish and meats before the invention of the refrigerator!  It's also great to make your own seasoned salt using fresh herbs, garlic, citrus zest, etc.  All you need beyond the ingredients is a good knife and some time to work these ingredients together! 

Use on meats, vegetables, your breakfast cereal.  Okay, maybe not that last one....

The seasoned salts you buy in the store can be made right at home, and as with anything else that is homemade, it will be even more delicious!  Try it and see for yourself!

Using and Preserving Fresh Herbs

I just got home from the store with some fresh parsley.  The store that I buy mine at usually has a sprayer that keeps the parsley pretty wet.  I select a bunch and put it in a plastic bag so that it doesn't make other things that I am buying also get wet.


This is what my parsley looks like when I get home from the store.  Notice how wet it is?

Unwrap your herbs if they are wet. 

Notice how some of the leaves (near the stems) are already bruised and crushed? 

Also the way it is wrapped with the leaves and stems tied together is a problem.  You know that those leaves are going to decay quickly, especially if you leave your bundle of parsley wrapped up and in the plastic bag. 

Very mixed and wet parsley.

I think I have thrown out parsley more times that I would like to count because of leaving it wrapped the way I brought it home from the store.  It really is a turn off when it smells rotten and is slimy to handle.

You really need to separate the individual stems of parsley when you first bring it home from the store. 

 Spread your parsley out on towels so that you can pull out the leaves that will rot and ruin the rest of the bunch.  Sort the stems by length if you want to put them into glasses or vases with water and you can keep them right on your countertop.

Short stems in smaller vase, Longer stems in tall glass. 

When I clean up the parsley like this, I will actually have fresh parsley on hand for at least a week.  Remember to change the water though, just like with fresh flowers.

You can use parsley in many ways:  freshly minced as a garnish, stems and all in a pasta sauce, or before they wilt you can throw them into the freezer and add to your soup/stock.  

Dry the parsley well and store in an airtight container. 

The very wet stems and leaves put into the freezer for later.

If you hate to throw out all those stems and leaves that were separated, just put them into the freezer and use later.  Using this method I will not waste any of the fresh herbs that I am paying top dollar for this winter.

Here's another way to preserve fresh herbs for even longer:

Make Herb-Garlic Salt.

 You can easily make your fresh herbs into a seasoned salt for meat, vegetables, or a delicious compound butter.

First, remove the stems from the leaf.  Finely chop with fresh garlic cloves and Kosher salt. 

Chop it all together: herb, salt and garlic.

Keep chopping.  You want this finely minced.

Add more salt and keep chopping.

Mix this into butter and it will keep for months in the freezer.  Put on vegetables, rice, pasta, whole grains, potatoes, or use as a spread on bread. 

When it is finely chopped, it is ready to use! 

This is one of the tricks you can use at home to make your fresh herbs go farther--especially at this time of year when many of us can't grown them. 

And feel free to pass it on....

Find more information at my website:  www.now-youre-cooking.com