A pressure cooker is a game changer for cooking food quickly while preserving flavor and nutrients. By sealing in steam and raising the pressure inside the pot, it raises the boiling point of water, meaning you can tenderize tough cuts of meat, cook beans without soaking, or develop deep flavors in stews and stocks in a fraction of the time. Modern electric pressure cookers often come with multiple safety features and cooking presets, making them even more user-friendly. If you’re looking to cut down on cooking time without sacrificing taste, this is one tool worth keeping on your countertop.
Explore our collection of blogs and recipes that can help you make the most of your pressure cooker.
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Techniques
All About Pressure Cookers
In this blog, you’ll learn the science behind how increased pressure raises boiling points and speeds up cooking, as well as why sealed environments preserve rich aromas. The post also highlights creative uses for pressure cookers and covers essential safety tips, step-by-step instructions, and best practices for beginners. By the end, you’ll understand how to confidently use a pressure cooker to create high-quality, deeply flavorful dishes with ease and precision.
How Pressure Cookers Work
Curious about the mechanics of the pressure cooker? This post breaks down the anatomy of our beloved tool, explaining exactly what’s happening while you cook.
Pressure-Caramelized Soups
Discover how a pressure cooker can turn simple vegetables into deeply caramelized, flavor-packed soups in just minutes. This blog reveals the science behind pressure caramelization and how it intensifies natural sweetness without heavy cream. From carrot soup with rich, nutty depth to creative variations like popcorn-like corn or dessert-like banana purée, the possibilities are endless.
Pressure-Caramelized Grains
Take your bread and grain dishes to the next level with rich, flavor-packed pressure-caramelized grains—made surprisingly easy with this pressure-cooking technique, which transforms simple ingredients into deeply caramelized inclusions.
Recipes
Caramelized Pumpkin Pie
What if pumpkin pie actually tasted more like pumpkin? Here, we’ve remixed a classic by stripping away the usual spices and unlocking the true flavor of pumpkin itself. Using a clever pressure-caramelization technique inspired by Modernist Cuisine, you’ll discover how baking soda and high heat intensify natural sweetness and depth. The result is a pie with a richer, more authentic pumpkin profile than you’ve ever tasted.
Pressure-Cooked Chicharrón
Learn how to transform simple pork skin into light, crunchy bites that are perfect for dipping, topping, or building next-level tacos. This guide will walk you through mastering this signature puff.
Pressure-Caramelized Sweet Potato Soup
Pressure caramelization transforms sweet potatoes into a deeply rich, intensely flavorful soup with notes of caramel, pepper, and subtle aromatics. Creative garnishes like roasted chestnuts and toasted marshmallows add a festive twist. The result is a restaurant-worthy dish that’s surprisingly simple to make.
Pressure-Cooked Carnitas
Pressure cookers can transform pork into melt-in-your-mouth perfection. From tacos to tamales, you’ll discover how this technique delivers outstanding quality results with minimal effort.
Red Wine Glaze
A red wine glaze is a standard sauce and a favorite of many chefs, but the classical technique for preparing it is both lengthy and labor-intensive. We retooled it, using a pressure cooker, to get great results much faster.
Barley Salad
Perfect grains don’t have to be fussy. This blog shows how a pressure cooker makes barley (and other grains) fast, foolproof, and perfectly textured without having to soak or constantly stir. Best of all, this technique will help you avoid mush, since this simple method locks in just the right amount of moisture for light, separate grains every time. Then, take your grains further with some creative twists. If you’ve struggled with grains in the past (or just want a better, easier way to cook them) this is a technique you’ll come back to again and again.
Mushroom Comté Pizza
One of the most important components of this pizza is the pressure-caramelized shiitake puree that we use as a sauce. Not only does it concentrate the flavor of the mushroom, but the caramelization is also deeply enhanced by the method we use to make it. When we combine the effectiveness of a pressure cooker with our recipe for pressure-caramelized vegetables (in this case, shiitake mushrooms) we obtain particularly rich results. The resulting sauce intensifies the caramelization of sugars and concentrates the flavor through the alkalinity of the baking soda and the heat buildup in the pressure cooker, resulting in a delightfully unique pizza sauce.
Shrimp and Grits
Learn how a pressure cooker transforms coarse-ground grits into a silky, lump-free base for decadent Shrimp and Grits, enhanced with flavorful crustacean stock and Redeye Gravy.
Caramelized Carrot Soup
Discover the secret behind Modernist Cuisine’s most popular soup. This blog reveals how pressure cooking and a touch of baking soda unlock intense, silky-smooth carrot flavor with rich caramel notes. Best of all, no heavy cream is required. We also provide instructions for some versatile toppings, like coconut foam, chaat masala, and young coconut.
Garlic Confit
Learn how to make garlic confit with your pressure cooker. We include a variety of tips and tricks, including the option of using duck fat instead of olive oil to enhance flavor and texture.
Pressure-Cooked Vegetable Risotto
Think risotto is finicky and time consuming? Think again. Pressure cooking transforms vegetable risotto into a faster, foolproof dish without sacrificing creaminess or flavor. Learn how parcooking grains (even unconventional ones like oats or root vegetables) makes finishing on the stovetop simple, while techniques like montecato ensure rich, velvety results.
Discover More with Modernist Cuisine at Home
If you’re looking to get even more out of your pressure cooker, Modernist Cuisine at Home is the ultimate resource. This award-winning, beautifully illustrated 456-page cookbook features an entire section devoted to pressure cooking, with expert tips, in-depth explanations, and more than 63 pressure cooker recipes. Learn how pressure cookers work with a fascinating cutaway illustration, master techniques like making deeply flavorful stocks and marinara sauce, and discover why pressure cooking is ideal for soups and so much more.
Browse through additional pressure-cooker recipes found in our cookbook below.
Pressure-Caramelized Ketchup
Modernist Cuisine at Home, p. 110
With this sauce, we exploit a little basic chemistry to make a ketchup with a deep color and subtle flavor profile that one can get only by caramelizing the sugars in the tomato sauce. That isn’t easy to do in an open pan because the sauce never gets much hotter than the boiling point of water. But the addition of a little baking soda neutralizes the natural acidity of the tomatoes and even makes the sauce slightly alkaline, which allows caramelization to occur at temperatures that a pressure cooker can generate. As with our caramelized vegetable soups and purees, the resulting ketchup delivers a wonderful combination of fresh and cooked flavors. We like to use this pressure-caramelized ketchup in our Modernist Cheeseburger, found on page 212.
Pressure-Caramelized Peanut Sauce
Modernist Cuisine at Home, p. 111
Peanut sauce is a delicious accompaniment to countless dishes, and this version is no exception. We especially love serving it with our Chicken Breast Satay (page 263) or Rice Noodles (page 271), but its rich, savory flavor pairs well with a wide variety of meals. By pressure caramelizing the ingredients, this recipe develops deeper, more complex flavors that take classic peanut sauce to the next level. It’s a simple way to create an impressive sauce that’s perfect for your next family dinner or gathering with friends.
Pressure-Cooked Crustacean Butter
Modernist Cuisine at Home, p. 122
The shells of lobster, crab, and shrimp turn pink or red when cooked thanks to carotenes, the same family of molecules that give carrots and tomatoes their color. You can extract these fat-soluble pigments from crustacean shells (along with lots of flavor) by cooking the shells in butter, oil, or another fat—the same way you make carotene butter from carrots. Use this highly flavorful butter in place of ordinary butter to make an amazing hollandaise or beurre blanc sauce, or stir it into soups, sauces, and sautés.
Pressure-Cooked Vegetable Soups and Purees
Modernist Cuisine at Home, p. 180
Pressure cooking works well for making soups and purees from a wide range of vegetables. One of our most popular soups is the Caramelized Carrot Soup, but there are so many more possibilities. Below are some optional variations found in Modernist Cuisine at Home:
- Squash Soup with Lemongrass and Coconut Milk
- Cauliflower Soup garnished in Marcona Almonds, Peeled Grapes, and Chaat Masala
- Leeks and Onion Soup
- Artichoke Soup
- Bell Pepper Soup
- Mushroom Soup
- Corn Soup
- Broccoli-Gruyère Soup
Refried Bean Foam
Modernist Cuisine at Home, p. 223
This updated version of the classic Mexican dish combines two Modernist techniques. Pressure cooking the beans directly from the dry state and in low-calcium water causes them to burst and become very tender. We then use a whipping siphon to aerate the perfectly smooth, pudding-like puree into a foam of unearthly lightness. To prevent splattering, dispense the foam into a container with high sides, and spoon the beans onto the serving plates. The foam remains stable for only about 10 minutes, so don’t dispense the beans from the siphon until you are ready to serve them. We love to pair this foam with Pressure-Cooked Carnitas.
Modernist Cuisine at Home
Beyond just pressure cooking, our award-winning cookbook will help you explore the science behind everyday favorites, modern cooking techniques like sous vide, and hundreds of innovative recipes, from silky-smooth mac and cheese to sous-vide-braised short ribs. Whether you’re new to pressure cooking or looking to expand your skills, Modernist Cuisine at Home opens the door to a whole new world of culinary possibilities.