Thursday, April 19, 2012

Its's all about Pressure Cooking!!

We are all familiar about how important pressure cookers are in Indian cooking. It is one of the very important things in our kitchen on which we are completely dependent. In India, the leading pressure cooker brands are Prestige and Hawkins.


This blog post is just a brief review on both the pressure cookers. Prestige pressure cookers have been one of the leading brands in South India. They are outer lid pressure cookers. Recently,they have also introduced inner lid pressure cookers. They have introduced many lines of cookers based on different materials they are manufactured from. The most used model is the prestige popular pressure cooker. A new line called prestige deluxe is equally good. Ideally stainless steel pressure cookers are the best. Hard anodized pressure cookers are in demand today due to its excellent non stick properties and minimal to no wear and tear. One more successful model of prestige pressure cookers is the handi model. It is very useful model and we can use it like the regular handi's to make main gravy dishes. All the models look very nice and are very safe to use.


For all living outside India, make sure you buy enough spare parts of the models you have at home. The important spare parts are the safety valve, weights, steam vent (whole assembly) and gaskets. Handles are also available as spare parts and are very handy to keep.


Hawkins Pressure cookers are also one of the leading brand. Many find it useful but some find that the inner lid locking is a little tricky and cumbersome. They are long lasting and have a very good safety locking mechanism. The hawkins company have quite good models like the classic model, contura and futura model. They also have hard anodized and stainless steel versions. I personally like the contura model a lot. I own one too. Futura model is classy and looks very sleek.

Pressure cooking is very energy efficient and time-saving. It is advisable to invest in a good pressure cooker of your choice. Pressure cooking with separators makes cooking faster and multiple things can be cooked simultaneously. Separator cooking is supposed to be one of the healthier ways to cook food. 


Pressure cooking is a method of cooking in a sealed vessel that does not permit air or liquids to escape below a preset pressure. Since the boiling point of water increases as the pressure rises, the pressure built up inside the vessel allows the liquid to rise to a higher temperature before boiling (wikipedia).
So this was a short write up about pressure cookers. We can have a discussion on which pressure cooker models you all use and which one did you find the best. Please do leave all your comments or you can even e-mail me at gayu.kitchen@gmail.com.


Hope to see you all again with a new blog post. Till then, bye and take care..