Electric Pressure Cooker Versus Traditional Cooking Methods

Other Articles | January 15, 2011

An electrical pressure cooker is among the technology items specifically built to make our everyday life much easier and much more comfortable in making food. This product consists of aluminum or stainless steel and it is more scientifically superior.

An electric pressure cooker is one of the products of technology specially designed to make our lives a lot easier and more convenient in preparing food. This device is made up of aluminum or stainless steel and it's more technologically advanced compared to traditional cooking devices such as pots, frying pans, and kettles mainly because of two reasons. First is that it utilizes electricity to function, second is that it incorporates the principle or concept of pressure to serve its primary use of cooking and heating food.

Since it utilizes electricity to work, it does not require any other source of heat like cooking stoves or electric ranges unlike most traditional cooking methods. It can be used anytime and anywhere at your own convenience as long as electricity is available. Foods are conveniently placed inside it and after a short amount of time, meal is served.

The electric pressure cooker is specifically engineered to use built-up pressure in cooking food. This is how it works. When heat begins to be evenly distributed, the internal temperature rises. The increased temperature in turn causes a rise in the internal pressure, but since the structure of the device does not allow either air or liquid to escape, the pressure builds up all the more and this is where pressure cooking comes into play. Pressure is directly proportional to water's boiling point; that is, as pressure increases inside the device, it takes the water inside less time to reach a very high temperature even before it actually boils.

With this, cooking time can be achieved about two to three times faster compared to conventional cooking methods. For example beans can be cooked in 10 minutes compared to 45 minutes of doing it in an ordinary pan. Not only that, it requires less water, the minimum amount as stated in the recipe is all that's needed. It also saves energy of up to 70% less, thus conserving these valuable resources.

More importantly, it kills more microorganisms found in the food being prepared because the cooking temperature goes beyond the normal boiling point of water. In connection with this, it can also be used as an effective sterilizer for baby bottles and eating utensils for example. And since less amount of water is needed to cook, there's less incidence that the nutrients are dissolved or leached from the food, thereby promoting consumption of highly nutritious food.

At present, modern- day electric pressure cookers are already available with added useful features, such as those multifunctional automatic pressure cookers. For example, some products have one-key operation buttons for the most common cooking tasks, including preparing soup, rice, meat, beans and the likes. They also have automatic programming which serves to ensure that using it will be a lot more convenient, because there won't be a need to watch over it; more pleasant, because there will be no steam or unwanted sounds from it; and safer to cook, because it has protective accessories like leak and excess pressure protection.