This post title could fit how I feel at work this month. In truth, it’s about a pressure-cooker I got on sale after Christmas. Partially bought in my quest to help the economy, it’s a piece of cookware that does more than cut time out of cooking.  For years, it’s been the staple of many a house wife’s kitchen and today you see professional chefs as users, too.

I had wanted to get a pressure cooker for awhile, thinking of the way it concentrates flavors, its convenience, and for novelty. More specifically, I wanted it for cooking Ogokbap, a grain rice mix of Korean origins. Buying a bag at a local grocery, the instructions told me that cooking the rice required this important utensil.

My first time using the newly made purchase was with some unrecognizable meat and bones my wife decided to buy for a late winter soup. Surprising both of us, I was able to create a nice soup with the motley assortment of beef cuts, all due to the mysteries of my new pressure cooker! Tonight was my second attempt to cook something from  this volatile and often frightening can of steaming heat and pressured hissing cauldron. With visions of explosions and missing limbs flying, my wife is totally scared of this thing, but after dinner she asked me to teach her how to use this marvelous utensil.

What would we put on our “under pressure menu?” Well I used locally bought stew meat, lean and not riddled with much fat. I based this meager meat specimen, and called it a  Daube. Then I whacked out  a mire poix a bit larger then the meat, browned the morsels of beef, sweated the vegetable with some herbes de provençe, added a bit of tomato product,a dash of red wine, along with some red wine vinegar and 1.5 cups of water.

Covering it, I turned on the fire, set the dial to pressure status and,voila, the machine hissed for only about 15 minutes, doing its magic pressure cooker soliloquy. I still haven’t explored the exact science behind this magnificent pot,or even checked out what cooking geek Alton Brown say’s.No mater I have the instruction book and took some cues from various sources. All I know was this knock-out-of-a-stew worked with a side of brown rice, a salad and some fabulous Mediterranean wine, (La Croix Peyrassol). The pressure is on! Or off. Enjoy.