The food thread

I have wonderful memories of the pressure cooker in childhood. The Xmas pud boiling dry, the stew ending up on the ceiling when the weight was taken off to soon, and a bad experiment cooking main and pudding together.



We use the pressure cooker a lot for Dal and chick peas. But as an omnivore I never used one.

Yes people in India use pressure cookers a lot, but mostly for dried legumes and such. They don't actually take that long in a regular pot.
 
but it's a specialized tool that can ruin food like Scott remembers.

I like to tease you guys anyway. ;) There is actually a chemical reason behind the veggie thing, something to do with volatiles that escape an open pot. I always wanted to divide two identical veal stock fixings and compare except I'm into concentration by reduction so not much time is saved. Also the smell of stock cooking fills the whole house (just like grandma's kidney stew). :)
 
I like to tease you guys anyway. ;) There is actually a chemical reason behind the veggie thing, something to do with volatiles that escape an open pot. I always wanted to divide two identical veal stock fixings and compare except I'm into concentration by reduction so not much time is saved. Also the smell of stock cooking fills the whole house (just like grandma's kidney stew). :)

:)

Pressure-Cooked Stocks: We Got Schooled.

I much prefer stock in a PC.
 
Old Cow

I guess it's in the Spanish tradition of using 8 year old "vaca vieja":

Steakhouses looking for the next big thing are hoping to lure diners with a new hook: old beef. Traditionally, U.S. restaurants have served meat from cattle that are no older than two years; older animals can be tougher and more susceptible to disease. But the meat tends to have a richer flavor. Taking a cue from restaurants in Spain, especially the Basque region, where “vaca vieja” is a tradition, more U.S. restaurants are putting old beef on the menu.

The New Trend in Steak: Old Beef - WSJ
 
I guess it's in the Spanish tradition of using 8 year old "vaca vieja":

We have had that for a long time, the farm uses cows to graze and make compost when they get old they are used as meat. Had a sirloin Saturday, amazingly it was really tender and over the top barnyardy smelling. This meat as FZ would say "has no commercial potential".

Yes it was quite tender probably not 8yr. old and it was not raised for food at all. It did take the grassfed funk to a new level.
 
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What are the nutritional differences between vegetables boiled in a pot to firm, to soft or in a pressure cooker ?.
Does anybody have positive or negative facts on microwave cooking ?.


Dan.

In general, you can correlate The nutritional effect of the cooking to how much of the vegetable's color ends up in the water. For me, that's the least in the microwave, as I add no water at all and get perfectly uniform steamed veggies. I like them a bit more crunchy. Hate boiled veggies with a passion. Blanching and skillet finishing is my other favorite for things like green beans, but the blanching can easily be substituted with microwave steaming.

I also try to par cook oven roasted veggies in the microwave as well, as I'm usually overloading the oven and the real flavor development happens at the end of roasting. Different methodology than Scott. ;)

They're all tools and I use whichever method of jiggling water molecules works best for the task at hand.
 
In general, you can correlate The nutritional effect of the cooking to how much of the vegetable's color ends up in the water.

My grand-daughters prefer my method for cooking brocoli (they still call it trees) -- boil until the water just turns green, decant and apply butter.

Their mother prefers to char it in the oven. I didn't know that they taught that method at Penn State.

Speaking of microwave ovens -- our first was from Raytheon.
 
I also try to par cook oven roasted veggies in the microwave as well, as I'm usually overloading the oven and the real flavor development happens at the end of roasting. Different methodology than Scott. ;)

That reminds me beets were another one that grandma tossed into the PC. Unpeeled and rubbed with oil and roasted they lose nothing to water, just don't get any medical tests the next day (not sure if the red color causes any false positives) :).
 
We have had that for a long time, the farm uses cows to graze and make compost when they get old they are used as meat. Had a sirloin Saturday, amazingly it was really tender and over the top barnyardy smelling. This meat as FZ would say "has no commercial potential".

Yes it was quite tender probably not 8yr. old and it was not raised for food at all. It did take the grassfed funk to a new level.

There is a chef in Norway who is big on foraged foods, and most of the meat he served he obtained by hunting (elk or whatever they have in Norway) but then he started getting aged milk cows from a nearby dairy farm. I think most of his beef dishes involve long, slow cooking, but he claims to get excellent results from these animals that would otherwise gone to rendering plants.