Why everyone should have a super-fast pressure cooker (Rendang ready in 20 minutes!)

A month ago, it suddenly arrived: my super-fast pressure cooker. It’s one of those kitchen appliances that can do everything while I do nothing. I’ll give you six reasons why I think everyone deserves a super-fast pressure cooker.

1. It’s super fast

The super-fast pressure cooker has all kinds of buttons, gauges and settings, including a button for chicken and poultry, a program for cooking rice, steaming vegetables, simmering soup and making yoghurt. But its main attraction is the ability to cook under pressure. Compare it with that pressure cooker from the old days, which stood on the stove with a creepy valve on top.

The wonder cooker has one of those too, but nothing needs to happen on the stove: plug it in and go. My first experiment was babi ketjap, a recipe with a cooking time of at least an hour, and it was on the table in fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes! That pressure-cooking function is simply lightning-fast. That’s pretty great during the week, but at the weekend I also have better things to do than watch a simmering pot for a few hours.

2. Extra much flavour, or so it seems

Under pressure, it seems as though sauce, herbs and spices are pressed into the vegetables and meat. I don’t know whether that’s really what happens, but that’s how it seems. So I simply skip marinating beforehand, tip all the ingredients for a recipe into the pot, stir-fry them briefly (there’s another button for that too), then put the thick lid on and off it goes. I haven’t missed the marinating; the stew turns out perfectly every time.

3. Electric (environmentally friendly!)

My husband was initially a little sceptical about the pot – it probably had something to do with the ten or so other household appliances in the cupboard that never come out again after their enthusiastic honeymoon period – but when he realised that this one was completely electric, I saw his expression change. We have ten solar panels on our roof, and it still feels great that on some days we use almost no electricity, or even generate more than we consume.

4. Really not difficult at all

The pressure cooker comes with a wafer-thin booklet, mostly full of American warnings. Apparently, turning the valve open after cooking soup under pressure is an extremely bad idea, because the broth will shoot metres into the air like a geyser. Good to know, but otherwise the pot isn’t complicated at all. As I said: chuck all the ingredients for a recipe into the pot, set the time and do a sudoku puzzle. It doesn’t get more complicated than that.

5. You’ll want to try new things

That’s simply part of having a new kitchen appliance: suddenly you can make all kinds of recipes you’d never considered before. And new ideas naturally follow. For example, I read in the American manual that this appliance can also be used to make your own yoghurt! Now that is something I’m definitely going to try. With fruit in it. And muesli. Completely homemade—that’s wonderful, isn’t it?

6. The ultimate reason: rendang in half an hour (actually a combination of all the other reasons)

I don’t eat it often enough, even though I love it. Rendang, that dish that slowly fills your house with the wonderful scent of lemongrass and spices, whose sauce slowly changes colour to brown-green, the one dish that really helps with heartbreak and other misery, the dish that is almost impossible to photograph properly (sorry, Instagram) and which you always want to savour very slowly, bite by bite.

You can put that delicious dish together in a maximum of twenty minutes in the super-fast pressure cooker. All the spices, coconut milk and pieces of meat go into the pot, it cooks at high pressure for fifteen minutes and then you let the pressure escape slowly, so you’ll be sitting at the table within half an hour. If this were the only argument for the super-fast pressure cooker, it would already be enough. Rendang. Within half an hour. That’s it.

What are you waiting for: buy a pressure cooker

By coincidence, Lidl currently (week 37, 2024) has an amazing offer on a pressure cooker. The Tefal Secure Click Pressure Cooker now costs € 49.99 instead of € 99.99. Perhaps this is a good time to bring such a super appliance into your home. Unfortunately, the offer does not include a husband or potatoes. And: this one isn’t electric, but it is suitable for all heat sources (including induction).

Read also:

• Recipe: rendang from the slow cooker
• These recipes are good for the environment
• Meat 2.0, a steak from the printer

You may think this post is sponsored: it isn’t! I’m simply very enthusiastic about this pot.

Image: Tefal pressure cooker via Lidl