Hi, I'm Kris Saunders. I'm with Utah State University Extension, and today I'm going
to show you how to do rice in a pressure cooker. Usually pressure cooker probably
isn't something that you would choose to cook rice in, because you may have a rice
cooker, or you do it on the stove top, but
I don't know about you, but when I come home from work after a long day, I'm tired
I may have dinner planned, but I have not built in the time to cook brown rice.
You cook white rice and it takes about 15 minutes but brown rice, another whole
grains, take about 45 minutes. So today i'm going to show you how to do it in your
pressure cooker, and it's only going to take 10 minutes after it gets up to
pressure.
First thing we are going to do, is you need a metal bowl that is heat proof, and
one that will fit inside of your pressure cooker. And what I'm going to do is I'm
going to take some aluminum foil, and I'm going to make a handy dandy handle, so
that I can raise and lower my bowl into
my pressure cooker easily. I'm taking - I measured it so that it's a little longer
than the bowl. I'm going to fold it in half and then fold it in half once again, and
because I want it to be a little stronger, and maybe a little narrower I'm going
to fold it in half again. So this is going to be my handle, and my lifter. I'm going
to set it aside for the time being. Your pressure cooker - a lot of people are
scared of using your pressure cooker, which, in today's world, a pressure
cooker has a lot of safety features built
in: an over pressure plug that will melt or blow out if the pressure gets too high,
it has a handle lock so that once it gets up to pressure the lid is locked onto the
pressure cooker and it has a vent that when the weight starts rocking it
automatically releases enough pressure, so that you're not going to build up too much
steam. So in doing our rice, I'm going to inspect the cooker. This is my one I use
at home, it's well used. I check and make sure that the rubber ring is still there,
it's still pliable. I'm going to look and
make sure that I can see through the vent holes so that it isn't plugged up. I have
my weight which is a 15 pound weight, when you're cooking food the 15 pound weight is
typically what you use, and I have a rack that fits in the bottom so that my pan or
my food or whatever is not going to sit
directly on the floor of my pressure pan. I'm going to put my rack in the bottom
there. I'm going to, right away, add two cups of water to my pressure pan, and then
I'm going to take my heat proof bowl and I'm going to add one cup of brown rice.
Typically when you cook rice, rice will expand double, and so a general proportion
for cooking rice is 1:2. So if I have one cup of rice I will do two cups of water.
If I have half a cup of rice I will use one cup of water.
When you're doing it in your pressure cooker it's more like a steaming process
so for my one cup of rice I'm only going to use one and one half cups of water.
And hence, I have put the two cups of water in the pressure cooker so that there
is going to be adequate moisture to really hydrate the rice.
I'm going to tear some more aluminum foil and tightly cover the bowl.
And then I take my little handle or lifter that I have made, I'm going to use it to
lower my rice into my pressure cooker, and
then just fold down the handle.
I will start my heat source, put my pressure cooker on my heat, and actually
put the lid on.
And then I will put the weight on top. You can keep it on high until it's up to
pressure. With this particular pressure cooker you will know it's up to pressure
because the weight will rock gently, and you want to adjust the heat so that the
weight rocks gently instead of madly rocking around and creating a lot of noise
and a lot of disturbance. You still need to watch your pressure cooker just like
with any kind of cooking, you don't want to leave food unattended on the stove, you
don't want to start a grease fire, you don't want to boil something dry, but you
need to watch it and maintain so that the steam is just at the right pressure and it
will rock gently at the 15 pounds.
While we're waiting for the pressure cooker to come up to pressure I just
wanted to talk to you a minute about pressure cooker and pressure cooking
methods. Pressure cooking was really used quite a bit before World War II. World
War II all of the metal factories were transferred so that they were making
war supplies and so pressure cookers in the
United States were not used that much, and after the war they kind of lost popularity.
However, recently, we're seeing an increase in interest in pressure cooking
and there are a lot of different kinds of brands that are available and methods that
are available.
You can look around and see what there
is to offer, you may even have one hidden away somewhere in your cupboard that
just needs to be revised. I have this particular brand of pressure cooker that
works basically the same way, but with this one when it's up to pressure and
locked, instead of the weight rocking, it
makes a high pitched noise. So you need to learn if you have that kind of pressure
cooker you need to learn how to use it.
Also I have this other fancy pressure cooker that the lid locks on, and there's
a little dot, that when it's up to pressure, it'll turn red. And this is the
way you adjust the amount of pressure is over here.
If you have an electric pressure cooker you make sure and read the owner's manual
which is just generally a good idea for whatever pressure cooker that you use.
It will come with an owner's manual and recipes. I encourage you to read your
owner's manual so that you know about the parts, how they work, and how you find
replacement parts. Also try out some of the recipes, really really interesting.
There's a recipe for making a caramel flan
which is absolutely breathtaking. Cheesecakes, any meat that you cook in
your pressure cooker will be for tender, and the thing about pressure cookers is
that anytime that the food is cooked with liquid the flavors will combine. Anytime
that the foods are separated the flavors foods will cook but the flavors will not combine
so, if you put your pork chops on the bottom and put your rack there and your
baked potatoes on top of that, the flavors will not combine. One of the things I like
to do with my pressure canner - or pressure cooker rather it's not a canner,
is that if I need to make 10 baked potatoes these are more like steam but you can put
10 potatoes in your pressure pan and cook it for bring it up to pressure, pressure it
for three minutes and your potatoes will be all done. With this brown rice, we'll
pressure it for 10 minutes and it will be- and let it sit for 5 minutes and it'll be
absolutely perfect and cooked. If you're doing white rice it will take just
five minutes. The brown rice that we've had cooking in the pressure pan has
been pressuring for 10 minutes. What we will do now is let the pressure fall
naturally before we open up the lid, this will be part of the cooking process, so
that the rice will steam for a total of about 15 minutes, and so we'll wait for
that to start cooling down. What we will do in the mean time is, I don't know if
you've noticed but there are all kinds of rices and grains on the market that are
whole grains and because they are whole grains they take about 45 minutes to cook
on the top of the stove or in your rice cooker. What I've discovered I like to do
is combine a bunch of different kinds of grains and use it in a variety of ways. I
can use it as a side dish for a dinner meal that I'm having maybe grilled chicken
breast and vegetables and my steam or my cooked grain combination, I can keep it
in the refrigerator and have it for breakfast in the morning. I like to put
yogurt and fruit with it. It makes a nice hearty breakfast. And the thing about it
is if we cook it in the pressure cooker it takes 10 minutes to steam and then 5
minutes to cool and it's done. And if you make enough you'll have leftovers in the
fridge that are really, really tasty.
One thing I noticed is that you can buy a combination of rice already combined.
The majority of it is probably brown rice, but it also has some red rice and some
black rice which I don't know about you, but they are a little bit pricey but they
are interesting to use. Wild rice, if you are probably more familiar with which is
not actually rice, it's a seed of grass, but it also takes 45 minutes on stovetop
or 10 minutes in your pressure cooker. So I'm going to just take a combination of
these grains and rices and mix them together and then they can be
steamed also for a combination product. The first thing I'm going to use is some
wheat berries. There's a variety of ways you can cook wheat berries but in the
pressure cooker it works really well so I'm going to just add some wheat berries.
Then I have some oat groats, which I will also add to my mix.
I will add some steel-cut oatmeal, just a little bit. And then probably the basis of
my grain mixture will probably be rice or wheat berries or brown rice, which I will
add some there. Then, add some black rice. Look how interesting. Look how interesting
that is. It truly is a black rice. I won't add a whole lot of it because, just enough
for some color and some interest because we also eat with our eyes as well as our
mouth. And then some red rice, which is truly red also. You can see how the red
rice looks too. I will - sometimes if I
have some teff I will add some teff or some quinoa. I will stir up and mix the grains
together. You can see how they're mixing,
and then i'm going to use the same proportions I did with the brown rice.
And in that I'm going to do a cup of my grain mixture, with one and a half cups
of water and two cups in the pressure canner. Okay our rice is all cooled down,
the pressure has dropped. I'm going to remove the weights, see it didn't blow up
or let out a loud noise. The handle is now unlocked so I can take the lid off the
pressure cooker. And you can see what it looks like, it's expanded, you can see the
rice has made a bubble on the lid. I will save this handle for another day.
And we carefully remove the aluminum foil lid and here's our brown rice, finally
cooked and ready to serve. This is the combination grain mixture. This one we
have actually pressured for 15 minutes and cooled quickly. It probably would be a
little bit more fluffy if we had left the aluminum foil over the top so it could
steam and cool down a little bit more but as you can see, this is cooked adequately,
and it makes a really interesting side dish and it has a really nutty, full bodied
flavor and is a really nutritious product.
Thank you for visiting with me today. I hope you've learned something about
cooking rice in your pressure cooker. Happy eating, and have a good day.