is to use kitchen shears to cut out the backbone, break the wishbone, and lay it out flat under a broiler or on a grill, skin oiled and season and turned toward the heat source.

Pressure cooked chicken is so highly flavored by anything it's cooked with that it seems a bit like gilding the lily to me, but that's the sensible way to get the skin a little browner.

Even a pressure canner on a gas stove doesn't tend to heat the kitchen that much, it's much more economical to have the stove on for half an hour, tops, than it is to have a braising pot on the stove for two or three hours.

I got a combination pressure canner/cooker several years ago and have found so many uses for it. One of my favorites is making stock. Before I had the pressure cooker it would take 1/2- to 3/4- of a day to render the stock down. With the pressure cooker, I cook it under pressure for an hour, conventional for an hour and that's it.

Mine is a 22-quart and when I do canning, I'm able to process 14 pints at once, 7 on the bottom and 7 on the top.

Also, cheap cuts of meats fall off the bone after pressure cooking them.

Lots of other things I could list but, like you, I've found it's added a whole other dimension to cooking.

makes me think that I should be using my pressure cooker. One was given to me a few months ago, but I haven't made anything in it yet. That may soon change!

but I'm skeeered.




Cher

I'm not kidding. The rocker blew off, the soup squirted out of the spout, and after it hit the ceiling it dripped all over her. This was NOT a pleasant experience.

is rarely seen as funny at the time, no matter how many Stooge movies you may have laughed at. I have seen people get hysterical over spraying stuff on the ceiling, even when far less spectacular than a pressure regulator blowing.

Anyway, there has always been a problem with cooking goopy stuff like pea soup in these things. If you overfill, even by just a little, the jingly dingus could get clogged with the soup and thar she blows.

Modern ones have some protection from this happening, but care is still in order.

Those worries you may have grown up with because of the stories of soup sprayed all over the kitchen are really a thing of the past. The new electric ones actually have multiple safety features and most brands operate on much lower pressure than those things our grand mother used.

I use mine regularly for soup, stews, quick pulled pork and of course apple sauce and freezer jam.

My only complaint with the new electric ones is that most of them come with a "non stick" internal pot. Now that problem has been solved as I finally found one with a stainless steel cooking pot. I think this is going to be my next appliance fix. I've been looking at it for a few months now and trying to justify the purchase in my mind since I already have one that works fine.

http://www.amazon.com/Instant-IP-LUX60-Programmable-Generation-Pot/dp/B0073GIN08/ref=cm_cr_pr_sims_t