I’m confused…
It doesn’t take much these days.
But I was wondering whether any of you could help me on this one???
I have a pressure cooker. Got it for Christmas in 2006 and have since used it for a myriad of soups and for cooking slow-to-cook veggies like beetroot. I love it. Despite the fact I can’t stir the contents, nothing ever burns in it and it halves the traditional time taken to cook most of the recipes I use it for. I have to be a bit careful if I’m using lentils, but otherwise it’s just bung in the ingredients (with an optional saute stage), add some stock and go for it.
I also have a slow cooker – since Christmas 2007 – and I’m discovering lots of great recipes for that, too. Just saute stuff, bung it in and pretty much leave it for anywhere from 4 to 10 hours. Really useful in our house because the boys are usually in their “sweetest mood” around breakfast time, which gives me time to prepare the meals ready for dinner. Ask anyone with little ones whether it’s worth trying to chop vegetables during the pre-bedtime “witching hour” and they’ll tell you to cook toast instead…
So far so good. So why am I confused?
Because the proponents of both pressure cookers and slow cookers claim their method is the best way of cooking food. Both claim that their method preserves the highest number of nutrients and gives maximum flavour.
Can they both be right? I can see that cooking food in its own juices means you’re getting all the water soluble vitamins, which we normally throw away if we boil stuff. But is there a difference in taste / nutrition between cooking quickly, in a small amount of liquid, at high pressure, versus cooking slowly at low heat?
Though I’m an engineer by training, my logical brain is stumped on this one! Is there anybody out there who can help me?
Thank you!
Love,
Clare x
I can’t see that it would make much difference, long term. If you’re eating everything that comes out of the pot, then you aren’t losing any vitamins/minerals.
Though, cooking at a low heat might help prevent heat sensitive vitmains/minerals (assuming that there are any…) from being destroyed. But then again, the time spent in there might be affecting the vit’s too.
I’m no scientist, so take what I say on the matter with a pinch of salt.
I see the source of your confusion – one cooks really fast, the other cooks really slow. They seem like opposites, so how can they both be the best? One thing they both have in common is that they are sealed, so whatever you put in the pot, stays in the pot. But I know that some vitamins are destroyed by heat, as Solomon said, so maybe the cooler cooking process (the slow cooker) is better at preserving those. I don’t know for certain, though.
I have both, and here’s how I use them: my pressure cooker is mainly used for cooking dried beans and lentils, and also for making soup from poultry carcases, and steamed puddings such as Christmas pud. Ordinarily these are slow processes, but the pressure cooker speeds them up enormously, saving lots of energy as well as time.
Slow cookers are useless for dried beans, which have to be cooked at high temperatures (although I sometimes “cheat” and blast my pre-soaked beans for 10 minutes in the pressure cooker, then heave them in the slow cooker to finish off). On the other hand they’re wonderful at tenderising cheap cuts of meat and big chunky vegetables. I mostly use my slow cooker for casseroles and pot roasts, although I sometimes use it to make dinner early in the morning and save on the cooking time later at night. Chilli con vege, or veggie curries are favourite choices.
Good question, though. In fact, I might expand my answer, add some photos, and use it for a blog post. Thanks for the inspiration!
As long as you don’t throw away water from the cooking process, you retain the nutrients. Hence slow cookers keep what you put in them at the start, whether it’s in the sauce or the actual food…
I would like to know if the slow cooker is cheaper to use than a conventional oven considering the cooking time is so long ? With gas and electric prices going up and up this is now a big thing to take into consideration !
i put my case for nutrition in that the longer a veg is prepared prior to cooking it loses nutrients, so i presume in slow cooking more nutrients are lost as they spend a longer period of time in a non cooked state. the pressure cooker is meant to be better for vegetable nutrition since it is only the pressure of the steam that cooks the veg they are not physically sitting in the water which should be at a minimum, and the veg is cooked so quick there is no time for goodness to escape. i still think steaming as a personal preference is best.. to me pressure cooking or slow cooking impairs the flavour of the veg, that if you cook several together thier flavours pass to each other making thier taste indistinguishable from each other. steaming i find prevents that
i also would like to add further to my comments on pressure cooker/slow cooker, surely it is not healthy for something to be kept in a slow cooker all day at a low temperature, as i always believed in certain instances that bacteria grows rapidly unless high temperatures are used. as for cost of running, gas and short cooking times must be cheapest.
Amazing responses, folks. I wonder which “expert” we can rope in to adjudicate? Any suggestions?
What have you cooked recently using one or both?
Mel – did you do the blog in the end? Want to include a link here so we can enjoy?
The answer isn’t so simple – read this for ecample: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/20/health/nutrition/20well.html?_r=1
I’ve also come across this interesting site whilst researching the nutritional impact of pressure cooking
http://www.beyondveg.com/tu-j-l/raw-cooked/raw-cooked-1a.shtml
Hexalm –
thanks SO much for those links!
I got a lot from the New York Times article in particular.
Do you use a pressure cooker when you’re not writing beautiful poetry?
Warm wishes,
The VegBox Recipes Team
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