A couple of years ago, I got a Power Cooker XL pressure cooker. Fancy lil’ thing, compared to the pressure cookers I have used before. Don’t get me wrong–I love pressure cooking. Let me further qualify that statement–I love pressure cooking certain things. Large cuts of beef ain’t one of ’em. When I was younger and living in Houston, I ate a lot of beef and lamb (with a lot of my friends being from North Africa and devout Muslims.) So to cut down the time to cook it to the desired tenderness, I used a manual pressure cooker. Yeah, the kind with the big gasket in the lid and the weight and the valve and everything. The kind of cuts I would always cook would be of the stew meat variety–small chunks. Never leg of lamb–God forbid! Lamb shanks were always cooked low and slow, and the same thing went for my beef roasts. Well, I guess with the acquisition of this high falootin’ gadget, I thought I was gonna sit back and let this thing bend the time continuum and exponentially accelerate the cooking time for brisket. Wrong. I was SO wrong. Not like eating Velveeta and Steen’s Cane Syrup kinda wrong….it was the worst kind of culinary wrong there is.
Two weeks ago, I got a good piece of brisket and decided to try it out in the pressure cooker. There’s a neat little sauté function that lets you brown the meat or chicken or whatever in the same pot without having to dirty another damn pot to clean. Yay! I browned the brisket thoroughly on both sides. Took no time at all. So far so good. All of the recipes I found said to cook this particular size brisket at 70 kPa (which is the default pressure for the “cook” button) for 40 minutes. Which I did. Upon releasing the pressure and checking the tenderness of the brisket, I found no degree of tenderness whatsoever. At all. Disappointing, to say the least. I put it back in for another 20 minutes. Checked tenderness. Not. Even. Close. At this point, I was ready to chunk it in the trash because I was so disgusted by my arrogance, but I put it in the fridge anyway with the intent of using the slow cooker the next day to finish it.
Folks, I’m not even about to try a beef rump roast or even a seasoned pork roast in it for fear that I might chuck the pressure cooker outside out of disgust. Hard lesson learned: If it’s a large cut of beef, lamb or pork such as a roast or a shank…..low and slow. Low and slow, ladies and germs. My great-grandmother said that there ain’t no short cuts to good cooking, especially with meat. Jesus help me, she wasn’t kidding either. Do yourselves a favor and break out that Crock Pot. You might not have as much restraint as I did to NOT bring that damned pressure cooker to the range and put a 9mm bullet through it.