Vegan pressure cooking on the road

I have always been good about mixing business with pleasure and this week my trip to Wisconsin – to spend three-days brainstorming with a client about 2014 projects – was no exception.

My colleague graciously put me up in her home and that’s where we worked for a few lovely, snowy days. Not vegan, she made a point to stock her home with a variety of plant-based food. She also revealed to me that she received a pressure cooker as a gift years ago and had never taken it out of the box.

Challenge accepted.

Her pressure cooker is a Kuhn Rikon, a pressure cooker I have dreamed of using. On my first night in her home I made a pot of mixed beans from a soup mix. The beans had been soaked overnight but since they were mixed beans I wasn’t sure how long to cook them at pressure and opted for ten minutes and a quick release, figuring we could always simmer them in the pressure cooker uncovered if the beans weren’t quite done. They came out perfect – creamy and buttery – and I added them to the other ingredients simmering in a pot. I probably could have just as easily made everything in the pressure cooker together but since I was using this particular kind of PC for the first time, and with no PC-specific instructions, I opted for better-safe-than sorry. Sad to say we got right to devouring the soup and I didn’t take a picture. We both loved the soup.

The second night I showed her how to make quinoa – only one-minute at pressure! – which we added to this delicious recipe

from The Plant-Powered Diet by Sharon Palmer, RD. Believe it or not this book was related to some of the work we were doing for the week. See! Work can be delicious! (The salad included quinoa, black beans, mango, peppers, onion, quinoa and a delicious dressing; we added edamame.)

The next day I made steel-cut oats with soymilk, water and dried apricots,

which came together in five minutes in the pressure cooker. Served with pecans and maple syrup, this velvety hot breakfast bowl  hit the spot.

For lunch, before heading to the airport, we modified another recipe from The Plant-Powered Diet –  a non-shredded potato “hash” with tofu – in four minutes.

We made four successful meals (or meal helpers) in the pressure cooker – from beans to grains to vegetables to tofu – and my colleague

• Saw what high and low pressure look like on the Kuhn Rikon (there are two red lines).
• Heard what pressure sounds like.
• Watched both natural and quick release in action.

A solid pressure cooking lesson, I’d say!

Her response? ”I’m going to use this all the time.” Yes! Pressure cooker activism!

If you live in Colorado Springs, or the surrounding area, I’d love to help you use your pressure cooker. I’m teaching a Vegan Pressure Cooking Basics class Saturday, February 8. You can register here.

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