Slow Versus Pressure

Chicago Tribune

Slow cookers face off against pressure cookers to see which is better for the harried home cook

As these times find us reaching for more dried beans, whole grains and secondary cuts of meat, they don't always give us enough kitchen time to cook them.

Maybe that's why more home cooks have been turning to their mothers' secret weapons: the slow cooker and the pressure cooker. Despite their retro image, both appliances have seen a resurgence in use in the last decade, according to market research company The NPD Group.

With that resurgence have come updated cookbooks. Diane Phillips, author of the new "Slow Cooker: The Best Cookbook Ever," cites four reasons for the cookers' comeback: dual working couples, higher quality appliance models, better recipes and an era of frugality.

Despite their fast-slow differences, the appliances work best on similar foods, those that usually require long simmering, boiling or braising. Appliance prices range from $35 to $150.

So which should the home cook choose when she wants long-cooked flavors with minimum fuss?

"It would depend on your schedule," said Andrew Schloss, author of "Art of the Slow Cooker."

If you want your meals to cook while you're at work or in bed, the slow cooker is for you. If you often make your meals at the last-minute and need to turn a pan of dried beans into chili super fast, you're better off reaching for the pressure cooker.

But there are some foods that just work better in each appliance.

"Baked beans are amazing in slow cookers," Schloss said.

Although most whole grains don't work well in the slow cooker, they're ideal for the pressure cooker, especially risotto. Traditional risotto recipes require careful monitoring, regular doses of hot broth and stirring, stirring, stirring. "But in a pressure cooker, it takes 12 minutes from start to finish with no stirring," Phillips said.

Despite their popularity, the two appliances can still evoke unpleasant memories for some. Older, hotter slow cookers could scorch food, but Phillips says newer models offer better temperature control. Older pressure cookers had a nasty reputation for explosions, which manufacturers have solved with safety valves that automatically release pressure when it grows too high.

Also, some pressure-cooker/slow-cooker devotees (and their family members) have complained that all the dishes prepared in the appliance start to taste the same. That, Schloss and Phillips said, is often attributable to bad recipes and improper usage, or as Phillips calls it, the "dump and run" effect. They stress that proper flavor building before the lid goes on is essential to successful pressure/slow cooking.

"Whenever I cook meat in the slow cooker, I brown it first in a separate pan, and then I'll saute the vegetables separately and then make a sauce," Schloss said. "There is a huge difference if you take that 20 minutes to create the browning and build and blend the flavors."

An advantage of the pressure cooker: You can do all of that in the cooker.

Still, with most innovations come drawbacks. While we liked elements of the stews we cooked in these appliances, most agreed they preferred them cooked in a Dutch oven.

Smoked paprika chicken

Prep: 20 minutes Cook: 6 hours, 20 minutes Makes: 8 servings

Serve over cooked noodles or rice. Adapted from "Slow Cooker: The Best Cookbook Ever" by Diane Phillips.

6 strips thick-cut bacon, cut in 1-inch pieces

10 chicken thighs, skin removed

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper

2 onions, halved, sliced

2 each, seeded, sliced: red bell peppers, yellow bell peppers

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 1/2 teaspoons smoked or regular paprika

1 can (15 ounces) chicken broth

1 can (15 ounces) diced tomatoes, drained

1/2 cup chopped fresh Italian parsley

Cook the bacon in large skillet over medium heat until crisp; remove with slotted spoon to paper towels. Season chicken with salt and pepper; add to skillet. Cook until browned, 10 minutes. Remove to platter. Pour off most of the bacon fat. Add onions, peppers, garlic and paprika to skillet; cook, stirring, 5 minutes. Add the broth and tomatoes to skillet; heat to a boil, scraping up any browned bits.

Transfer the contents of the skillet and chicken to the slow cooker. Cover; cook on low until the chicken is cooked through, 6-8 hours. Skim off fat. Season to taste. Stir in bacon and parsley.

Cooking in a pressure cooker: Cook bacon in the pressure cooker with lid off until crisp; drain on paper towels. Pour off all but 2 tablespoons of the drippings in the cooker. Add chicken; cook until browned on all sides, 7-8 minutes. Add paprika, broth and juice from tomatoes. Seal the cooker, heat to build pressure; cook 8 minutes. Cool pan. Release lid. Add vegetables, garlic and tomatoes; simmer until reduced to desired taste and consistency, about 30 minutes. Sprinkle with bacon and parsley.

Nutrition information: Per serving: 211 calories, 42% of calories from fat, 10 g fat, 3 g saturated fat, 67 mg cholesterol, 10 g carbohydrates, 21 g protein, 812 mg sodium, 3 g fiber

4 slow cooker tips 

From authors Diane Phillips and Andrew Schloss:

•Don't dump and run; brown meat and blend flavors before transferring food to the slow cooker.
•Avoid most whole grains, except barley, as most do not cook evenly.
•Do cook bean dishes, especially baked beans and cassoulet, which, Schloss said, works better in the slow cooker than in an oven.
•Do use as a warming dish for buffet foods.

5 pressure cooker tips
From Phillips and Schloss:

•Use it to quickly cook whole grains and soaked dried beans.
•Use more liquid than you would when adapting recipes for a slow cooker.
•Don't dump and run; brown meat and blend flavors before sealing.
•Adjust flavors after cooking, as they don't concentrate (through reduction) as much as they do with other methods.
•Do use the base of your stainless steel (not aluminum, which can pit and react to acids) stovetop pressure cooker as a regular pot.

Dreams, Books, and Blowtorches

from the Wall Street Journal

Thomas Keller is widely regarded not only as the top chef in the country but as the food world's reigning perfectionist. His restaurants, The French Laundry and Per Se, are among the country's most expensive and exclusive temples of haute cuisine.

Now the chef has written a cookbook for regular folks, with recipes for "everyday staples" such as hamburgers, chicken-and-dumpling soup, and creamed corn, using ordinary kitchen appliances like coffee makers, blenders and slow-cookers. The book, "Ad Hoc at Home," is Mr. Keller's "most accessible," says publisher Ann Bramson of Artisan Books, with the words "family-style recipes" emblazoned on the cover.

The concept is tantalizing: four-star flavor in the comfort of home and with less expense (the prix fixe dinner at Manhattan's Per Se is $275 per person without wine). There's just one problem: After one spends the time and money to buy the ingredients and equipment and then cook through the multiple steps in some of the recipes, dinner at Per Se starts looking like the cheap and easy route.

It's a frustration food fans are likely to encounter as more cookbooks are published that celebrate the unfettered complexity that the world's top chefs bring to their cuisine. These chefs include New York's David Chang, whose book "Momofuku" was released earlier this week, and British star Heston Blumenthal, who this month is publishing a $50, 528-page version of a $250 cookbook released last year. While Julia Child made her career by breaking down classic French cuisine into steps the average cook could execute, these top chefs don't make concessions for home cooks. Instead, they write recipes that require the equipment, ingredients and techniques they use in their restaurants.

"It's my point of view that cooking is a process and something you should enjoy doing. You have to embrace and enjoy that process if you want to become a good cook," Mr. Keller says.

Recognizing that chefs often write recipes over the heads of average people, the Food Network says it no longer seeks out well-known restaurant chefs and has instead changed its business model to promoting home cooks with good personalities, says Michael Smith, Food Network's senior vice president of marketing. Cookbooks from Food Network stars are hugely popular: Of 38 cookbook best sellers last year, five were from Paula Deen, Giada de Laurentiis and Rachael Ray, all Food Network stars, says Simba Information, a media researcher in Stamford, Conn.

But there remains an audience that craves teaching from the industry's top masters. Mr. Keller's books are Artisan's biggest sellers, Ms. Bramson says. Nearly 400,000 copies of "The French Laundry Cookbook" have been printed; the company has ordered 100,000 copies of "Ad Hoc at Home" for its initial run. Overall, cookbook sales have been strong relative to the book market overall, and publishers released nearly 14% more cookbooks in 2008 than the year before.

The recipes in "Ad Hoc" are mostly homey staples, such as chicken pot pie, that are cooked with four-star-restaurant techniques. Mr. Keller's take on a hamburger involves buying sirloin, brisket and chuck and grinding it. "Blowtorch rib roast" is exactly as it sounds: a roast that is browned with a small propane blowtorch, which he suggests buying at a hardware store, before being cooked in the roaster oven. Several recipes require expensive machines such as a Vita-Mix Blender (starting at about $450) or a standing mixer (about $300) and don't offer alternative methods. Mr. Keller definitely prefers other techniques to deep fryers.

One particularly challenging recipe comes with a deceptively comforting title: Chicken Soup with Dumplings. The picture of a thick broth poured over bright green celery and carrots and perfectly shaped dumplings is motivating.

But the recipe takes about two hours of active labor and dirties about 10 pans and bowls and food choppers. It involves such diverse skills as making a parchment lid for a pot, thickening broth with a roux, and making cream puff dough (for the dumplings). That celery is bright green because it is separately cooked in boiling water, then quickly chilled in ice water and later incorporated into the soup. Also, using two spoons to form the torpedo-shaped dumplings known as quenelles might be a challenge for novices.

The Easiest Recipe

Mr. Keller says that people using his cookbook should choose recipes within their skill level. The easiest recipe in the book is probably the grilled-cheese sandwich, Mr. Keller says. The chicken soup is fairly complex, he says. "I always recommend that any cook start with something that you feel you can be successful with," Mr. Keller says. As readers attain more skill and make a deeper commitment to cooking, they can graduate to trickier recipes.

Mr. Keller is part of an industrywide trend in which chefs known for fine dining are migrating into more casual cuisine. The recipes in the book are from food served at Ad Hoc, a three-year-old restaurant in Yountville, Calif. Mr. Keller is opening a third branch of his Bouchon bistro in Beverly Hills around mid-November, and his future plans include opening a hamburger restaurant, if he can ever find the right location, he says.

Elsewhere, Daniel Boulud, of Manhattan's tony Daniel, recently opened a sausage restaurant in the Bowery, once New York's skid row. Marcus Samuelsson, known for cooking at Aquavit, an exclusive Scandinavian restaurant in Manhattan, wrote "New American Table," a tour of American food traditions out this month that includes recipes for breakfast burritos and turkey meatloaf.

The push into more casual fare is a significant shift for Mr. Keller, a chef known for uncompromising standards. He is widely credited with luring American diners to restaurants in which they have no choice of what they eat—they must order the tasting menu.

'Be Warned'

His previous cookbooks, "The French Laundry Cookbook" and "Under Pressure: Cooking Sous Vide," are notorious for including some of the most laborious recipes in print, spawning daredevil blogs on which people attempt to make the recipes and Amazon reviews such as "Be warned." Most recipes, such as "Butter-Poached Maine Lobster, Tomato Pain Perdu, Celery and 'Russian Dressing'" are in fact a series of recipes, often involving complicated techniques. Simply putting the ingredients together on a plate properly can be an architectural challenge.

Mr. Keller says he has time to make dinner at home only about six times a year. His favorite meal: grilled steak, corn on the cob and a salad from his garden, preferably with ripe tomatoes.

Judging "Ad Hoc" purely on the basis of difficulty misses the point, says Ms. Bramson. The book is a compendium of cooking knowledge, from how to properly truss, or tie, a chicken for roasting to an essay on kosher salt (different brands have different weights), Ms. Bramson says.

"We're grown-ups. If the recipe looks too hard, you don't make it," she says.