Pressure cooking not only reduces your energy bill but also saves hours of time. As it turns out, foods like chickpeas, brown lentils, beans, and some vegetables are better for our health when cooked under pressure – something India’s vegetarian cooks have known for thousands of years. Having picked up a few tips from former Indian flatmates, Ratna Dyer purchased a pressure cooker and hasn’t looked back. Whole Food Living interviewed her in her kitchen in Whanganui.
WFL: How often do you use your pressure cooker?
Every second day or thereabouts. In winter, I go through stages of using it every day, because I eat more dahl and soups.
WFL: What do you mainly cook?
Beans, lentils, legumes and stuff. And sometimes I cook rice – it just makes it so yum – a little bit softer. I do lots of dal – the inside of a bean is called a dal when it’s broken open and there’s no skin on it.
WFL: Seems like pressure cooking is the ultimate way to cook beans and lentils, which is great news for wholefood plant-based eaters. So do you soak everything first?
Yes. 100 per cent. I soak rice too, because there’s arsenic in rice, so in soaking it you’re helping your health. Before I put soaked things on to cook, I drain and rinse them thoroughly. You want to get rid of the stuff that protects them from being eaten by birds. It’s better for your digestion.
WFL: How long does it take you to pressure-cook, say, chickpeas?
From start to finish, maximum fifteen minutes. But I usually time things from the first hiss. Most things take only about five or six minutes under pressure. Even though it’s so fast, the food comes out much softer.
WFL: You have two pressure cookers. Why is that, and what’s the difference between them?
The difference is the capacity. You fill them to only half or two thirds of the pot, as they need space for the steam to do its work above the water line. I use the small, three litre one all the time – cooking for one or two people. The larger one I can make more quantity if I have guests. And often I use them both – one for beans or dal and the other for rice so they’re ready at the same time.
WFL: Can you cook anything in them? Or do some foods misbehave?
Mung dal and red lentils froth if they’re being cooked too long. They’re soft and cook quickly. Whole mung beans don’t froth as much – like other beans, the soft part is contained inside the husk.
WFL: Your cooker releases steam in a very loud hiss. Doesn’t that freak you out? We’ve heard a few stories from Grandma’s day about cookers exploding. That must put people off. Are you sure these things are safe?
I’m really confident with my cookers – they’ve got good safety valves. Usually pressure releases through the steam, but if I left food cooking until there’s no water left, the safety valve would pop, so it’s not dangerous in any way. My small cooker makes those loud, short bursts, but I’m used to the noise. I do warn visitors though, as it can be quite full on! My tall cooker makes a more consistent, quiet hissing sound. Different cookers vary with their sounds. I time the length of the cooking from the first hiss or whistle, and I’ve only got to wait about five minutes until I turn it off. So that’s tolerable.
WFL: Evidently there are now electric pressure cookers that are also multi-cookers. Seems you can even make yogurt in them and bake cakes. Can you tell us anything about those?
I stayed with a friend once and she had one of those. She was a busy mum, so I offered to cook. It took two or three times longer than my cooker and I found it too complex – so many functions and options. I just want a pot that you put the lid on and that’s it. I guess you’d get used to all the buttons, and some people love their multi-cookers.
WFL: What kind of cooker would you recommend?
I always swear by the Hawkins pressure cookers. They’re faster and much easier than most. Hawkins is an Indian brand with a range of sizes. They do aluminium cookers and stainless-steel ones – I like stainless-steel. Some other brands have a big heavy lid, or they feel too cumbersome for me. I never felt completely confident with a pressure cooker before I used a Hawkins. In future if I bought a larger one, I’d get one with two handles so I could lift it with less effort and tip the food out easily.
WFL: We see in the booklet that came with the cooker that much of the info is about meat. But it also mentions different foods, like puddings. Do you make anything else in it?
I’ve cooked artichokes and whole beetroots—they cook a lot quicker. When I’m cooking dal and stuff, I brown the spices in the pot, chop in some tomato, and often add veggies like potatoes, carrots, and peas so it comes out as a meal ready to eat. I also make an Indian rice dish called Pilau—a combo of rice, spices, and veggies. I’m not really a pudding person. Sweet rice might be nice—I could easily pull that off.
WFL: Sounds delicious! Well, thanks for sharing your knowledge and a recipe – Mexican Chilli Beans – We’re in!
The health benefits of pressure cooking
Research on food and the science of cooking is revealing more about why certain pressure-cooked foods are healthier than when they are cooked in more traditional ways.
We absorb more protein
Normal cooking starts breaking down the proteins in food, making it easier to digest. But cooking under high pressure steam takes this denaturisation process one step further, increasing the breakdown.
This makes the protein in beans of every shape and colour, dried peas of various sorts, lentils in shades of green, brown, red, and black, and even the protein in grains like rice, easier for our bodies to absorb.
Phytate & lectin levels reduce
Imagine dividing a jar of dried peas in two, then soaking each half overnight in equal amounts of water. Next day you drain and rinse them, then boil one batch on the stove top and cook the other under pressure. You pop across to the lab to measure the phytic acid content of each batch. The tests show it is reduced by 29% in the top-cooked batch. But in the pressure-cooked batch it goes down by 54%.
On top of that, you discover the lectin content in the pressure-cooked peas is reduced as much as it is when they are fermented. Pressure cooking reduces the level of natural anti-nutrients in legumes, (phytate and lectins), increasing the nutrient-availability. This also makes them easier to digest.
No carcinogenic acrylamides
When foods like crackers and potatoes are fried, grilled or baked at very high temperatures, acrylamides are formed, not in deadly amounts, but when you’re working on your health you don’t want nasties piling up in your system. Pressure-cooking saves the day. Acrylamides do not form in a pressure cooker. This is thanks to all the trapped steam.
Lower FODMAP levels
Beans, lentils and many other foods contain ‘Fodmaps,’ (short-chain carbs/sugars such as oligosaccarides, fructans and galacto-oligosaccharides). According to scientists at Monash University, these cause gas in approximately one person in seven. But there are slightly lower levels in canned legumes. Canned beans and lentils are cooked under pressure. It is logical to conclude that these benefits also occur when they’re cooked under pressure at home.
More vitamins & minerals retained
Pressure cooking cuts the cooking time by up to 70%, retaining the colour and flavour of the food. Minerals are preserved, and the short cooking time also minimises the loss of vitamins.
FOOTNOTE: This updated article originally appeared in the Winter 2021 print edition of Whole Food Living.
