My parents bought me a pressure cooker for Christmas! I was very excited to get one, and I was also very anxious to start using it. My mom has used one for years to make some of my favorite meals including pole beans cooked with potatoes, onions and squash. And, she makes her collard greens or turnip greens in them for New Year's Day. I kind of like her collard greens now, but I could not stand them until I acquired a taste for them since we've been married.
Of course, I needed my mom to show me how to use it (like I cannot read directions or something, but she's always insisted to show me how to use a pressure cooker before I tried to use it on my own because I think she's afraid I'll burn myself or something), so she showed me on New Year's Day (as she made butter beans for dinner). It works great, and I have already made sweet potatoes, roast and carrots in it, and I thought everything turned out great.
I cooked a Beef Round Bottom Round Roast as follows in the pressure cooker:
Rinsed roast and then floured on all sides.
Browned all sides of roast in pressure cooker pot in 2 tablespoons of olive oil.
Poured 2 cups of water into pressure cooker with roast and remaining olive oil.
Cooked roast in pressure cooker on the high setting (setting 2) for 40 minutes after the pressure cooker started steaming and after the stove temperature was reduced from high to medium.
After the 40 minutes is up, pull the pressure cooker off of the stove and let the steam reduce itself naturally. With meat, you typically do not run cold water over the top of the pressure cooker to reduce the pressure.
This cooked the roast to be well done, so if you like it a little pink, you will want to reduce the cooking time a little bit.
As for the gravy to go with the roast, I made this after the roast was finished (per directions from my mom). The flavor of the gravy was very good (probably a little salty), but the consistency wasn't the best (especially after it sat for just a few minutes). Directions are as follows for the roast gravy (brown gravy).
Pour juice remaining in pressure cooker after roast is removed into separate saucepan. I used my non-stick pan, and it seemed to work pretty well as the gravy did not burn.
Boil juice until water is completely boiled out and only the goody (grease) remains.
Add 2 tablespoons of flour to grease and continue to boil.
I continued to boil and tried to get rid of the lumps of flour (that would not go away) until I finally had my husband call my mom to find out which part of the directions I had not followed correctly. Apparently, I forgot to add 2 cups of water to the mixture after adding the 2 tbs of flour. So, add 2 cups of water next. I still don't understand why you add 2 cups of water to the mixture after you've waited for all of the water to boil out originally.
And, I forgot to add 1 tsp of salt. My mom said to add between 1-2 tsp of salt, but I think that the 1 tsp was already too much, so next time I think I'd cut that back to 1/2 tsp of salt. As a side note, I just learned from a comment from my mom to my blog that it was supposed to be 1/2 tsp to 1 tsp of salt. So, I was on the high end of the salt measurement, so this is why it tasted a little salty! Sounds like it was lost in translation from my mom to my husband over the phone and then to me as I cooked it.
And, finally, boil, boil and boil until the mixture is thick like gravy and a darker brown.
The floured lumps in my gravy never disappeared, so I think maybe next time I will sift the flour before mixing with the "goody." Well, is it true that good gravy is supposed to have lumps just like good homemade mashed potatoes? Which, by the way, we also had for dinner with the roast, gravy and carrots. I should note that the gravy probably took me about 30 minutes to make. Is that normal?!?! I started cooking dinner around 5:00 p.m., and we didn't eat until closer to 7:30 p.m. Hopefully next time I cook this I'll be able to speed up the process a little bit, and I won't have to worry with feeding a 15 month old dinner in between slicing the potatoes.
My husband and I both actually liked the roast better cooked in the pressure cooker versus our normal cooking option of the slow cooker. Also, my husband tasted the gravy with his fork, and he said, "That doesn't taste bad," and he does not normally like brown gravy for some reason. He loves the white gravy that you serve over biscuits, but he has never liked brown gravy. He claims to be born and raised in the South too! Blasphemy!
2 years ago
6 comments:
A few quick comments: It was actually supposed to be: Start with 1/2 tsp. salt and add up to 1 tsp. after tasting. Something got lost in the translation. That was the way your Grandmother on your Daddy's side of the family taught me to fix roasts beginning in our early marriage. (When I was a young bride who was unafraid of pressure cookers, probably an unwise thing!) That was my "company" meat most of the time. The secret to her delicious gravy was to boil the broth down to grease, (very time consuming, but worth it,)brown those goodies left and then add the flour and more water. And as my Mama's Daddy told her as a young girl, "Just boil it!", to get those lumps out. Or you could do a Martha Stewart and strain it before serving. You could have added even more water if it was too thick for you, but not a lot more.
Your Grandmother was a wonderful cook. I'm sorry you didn't know her when she was in her "cooking" stage of life. Things changed after your Granddaddy died just before you were born and it was never the same for her entertaining again.
Your hubby likes what was known to our family as "Sawmill Gravy". Mama fixed it in the mornings for breakfast and as chicken gravy. She could cook good, too. Just a different kind of cook from your other Grandmother.
Glad it was good and glad to pass along an heirloom recipe, if there is such a thing.
After re-reading your entry: Remember, I told you it would take a long time to boil that water out, but you have to use at least 2cups of water to cook that roast in the pressure cooker. (It took almost as long as it took to cook the roast, didn't it?) But that is what makes it exceptional gravy. If you could only make the gravy while the roast was cooking, huh?
One more thing: You failed to mention that after you cooked the roast you let it sit in the pressure cooker until the pressure went down naturally, which was probably around ten minutes before you opened the lid. That's pretty important information!
I figured the salt amount was lost in translation! I have yet to blog about this years tradition of making cat-doo-doo cookies (before we started decorating the Christmas tree) as my husband likes to call them. Let's just say that he accidentally added 1 TABLESPOON of vanilla to the recipe instead of just 1 TEASPOON! I laughed at him, and then he got upset with me, so we ended up postponing putting up our tree until after Annabelle's second nap of the day (and after we both weren't so irritated with the other). I really find it quite humourous though, but he didn't think so at the time. And he's always telling me that I shouldn't have to measure things, but instead I should just "eye" it! I know most good cooks just "eye" it, but I'm not that good of a cook, so I'll continue to measure my ingredients. Needless to say, the cookies actually didn't taste all that bad...the vanilla overpowered the chocolate flavor, but they were still mighty tasty!
Regarding the vanilla: Sometimes vanilla can make sweet things taste sweeter. Don't know why, but it does. At least he didn't ruin the recipe.
Thanks for this--I had completely forgotten that hubs bought me a pressure cooker last Christmas! Have done a pork roast in it but we love roast beef! Will try it!
Post a Comment