Turkey Wars !

Are you old enough to remember "gas wars?"  When I was young, each gasoline station set it's own price.  If stations were close to each other, sometimes they would keep lowering prices to try to outdo each other.  It isn't that way anymore.  I think someone else must set the prices.

Well, every November, here in the USA, we have what I call "Turkey Wars."  The grocery stores sell turkeys for ridiculously low prices and it seems to me that they try to outdo each other.  I bought a nice frozen turkey for 78 cents a pound last week!  I can ordinarily buy whole chickens for about 99 cents a pound and so the turkey was 21 cents a pound lower even than that.  A turkey has more meat per bone, by weight, so 78 cents a pound may as well be free.  I put that one in the freezer to save for later. 

We will be eating our Thanksgiving feast at our daughter's home, and she is fixing the turkey for the meal.  I saw another grocery advertisement offering frozen turkeys for 99 cents a pound this week.  We went and bought two of them Monday evening.  I left one hanging in the cold garage to thaw partially (we hung it so no critters could get to it) and today I canned the meat.

First, I cooked the turkey, whole, on a rack, in my pressure canner/cooker for 90 minutes at 10 pounds of pressure.  (I thoroughly washed the pot first!).  After the pressure came down and I opened the pot, here is what the turkey looked like.  It is about 14 pounds.  I added 1 gallon of water, half an onion, roughly chopped, some chopped celery and a few halved garlic cloves so the broth would be flavorful.

After letting it cool, I de-boned it, cut the meat into bite - sized pieces, strained the broth and then packed the meat into pint sized canning jars.  I filled them up with broth to within 1 inch of the rim, cleaned the rims, simmered the lids and proceeded as usual.  I ended up with 7 pints of meat, and 10 pints of extra broth.

If you are unfamiliar with canning, be sure to consult a reliable canning book, such as the Ball Blue Book, or this book: So Easy to Preserve 

It will be very nice to have this on the shelf.  I can make turkey and noodles or dumplings, soup, pot pie...  Yummy.

Pressure cooking in the 21st Century....

I had been reading for quite a while how much cooks love their electric pressure cookers.  I was particularly drawn to the Instant Pot, since it has a stainless steel cooking kettle in it, as opposed to the non-stick variety.  Non-stick is lovely, but inevitably, it will get damaged or worn out.  The Instant Pots were rather expensive, though, so I always told myself that I was fine, just fine, using the stove-top pressure cooker - and I was!  However, I had an opportunity to buy an Instant Pot for a very low price, so I got one, fell in love and waited for another sale and got another one.  Now I'm "wired for sound!"

These things are amazing!  I've been pressure cooking since the 1970's and so am no stranger to the method.  The main difference is that you Don't Have to WATCH the thing.  You can quickly program it and walk away with no worries.  It will even keep your food warm for you for up to 10 hours after the cooking cycle is done, if that is what you want. You can also set a time for it to start.

The one I purchased will even make yogurt very easily.  I will not get rid of the stove-top cooker, as I think some day I may need it, or if the power goes out, I could figure out something....

Today, I made up a recipe for the IP (Instant Pot) that turned out very well and is delicious!

Instant Pot Corn Pudding

1 pint of home - canned corn (you of course could use 2 cups of fresh, frozen, or store-bought canned)

2 eggs

1/2 cup heavy whipping cream

1/2 teaspoon salt

A few "cranks" of black pepper

1 green onion, finely minced

Drain the corn and then pulse it in a food processor to kind of mush it up.  Then combine all the ingredients.  Divide it into 4 buttered custard cups.  Cover each one with foil.  Place the wire trivet in the bottom of the IP, add 1 cup of water and stack the custard cups, 3 on the bottom one on the top.

Secure the lid, seal the lid, push "Manual" and set the time to 16 minutes.  Walk away.  When it is done cooking, it will beep at you.  Let the pressure release naturally.  When the pressure float valve goes down, open the pot and remove the custard cups.  Voila!

It really is very yummy.  You could do the same thing in a stove top model.  You'd just have to hang around and adjust the burner when it comes up to pressure and I would reduce the time by 2 minutes.  Natural pressure release with that too.

Instant Pot - Electric Pressure Cooker - Pressure Cooking chapter 11

If you follow my blog, you may remember that I put up several posts about pressure cooking.  I have been pressure cooking for over 40 years.  Just this month, I purchased an "Instant Pot" when they went on sale at Amazon.com.  Oh my!  This is lovely!  It does the same thing as my pressure saucepan, but makes it so much easier.  I don't have to watch it.  It keeps food warm for up to 10 hours.  You can even make yogurt in it.

I was so taken with it, that I waited for the next sale, used a coupon I had and got a second one very cheaply.  In this picture that my husband took 2 days before Christmas, I'm cooking beef bone stock in one of them, and some chili in the other.  I feel very spoiled. (That's because I am.)

If you have ever considered getting an electric pressure cooker, there are other less expensive models out there, but this one has a fine quality stainless steel pot in it, and will never wear out like non-stick surfaces can.

Dehydrating to save space...

Since we are now in a considerably smaller house, and my food storage space is much reduced, I've been doing a lot more dehydrating this year.  I've canned a few things, But now all of that space is filled.  Here is the shelf where I have the things I've dehydrated.

It is so convenient to make soup in a pressure saucepan, and I really enjoy having these items to use.  It only takes 10 minutes, at pressure, for the soup to be ready and as good as if I had simmered it all day.

I think these are the things I have done: green beans, sweet corn, diced potatoes, kale powder, tomatoes, tomato powder, small yellow tomatoes, summer squash, celery, cucumbers, green tomato slices, oyster mushrooms and okra.

Our New Year's Day Dinner

The Garden Fairy and I decided to try to make a southern style meal for our New Year's Day feast.  It worked out well and was delicious.  I made this pot of black eyed peas in my 6-quart pressure cooker!

Black Eyed Peas

1 pound dried black eyed peas, sorted, rinsed and soaked in lots of cold water at least overnight, and drained.
1/2 pound bacon - fried and crumbled
1/2 pound ham - diced
1 medium onion, chopped, and sauteed in the bacon grease and butter until it is a little brown.
1/4 cup butter
6 cups chicken stock

Prepare all of these ingredients and combine them in a 6-quart pressure cooker.  Put on the lid and petcock and bring up to pressure over medium heat.  Reduce heat so the petcock is rocking gently and allow to cook for 40 minutes.  Remove from heat and let the pressure release naturally.

Here are the soaked and drained peas:

The onion cooking in the butter and bacon grease:

Diced ham:

Everything together in the pressure cooker:

Finished soup!

Along with this we had corn bread, collard greens sauteed with bacon, and a wonderful pork butt roast that I cooked in my big Crockpot.

Oh, it was all so good.  I am very grateful for all of the good food and the blessings of family.

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL OF YOU!

Pressure cooking - Chapter 10

I got home rather late in the day and had planned to make vegetable soup.  So... I went ahead and made it - in the pressure saucepan!  It only takes a few minutes to cook and tastes as if it had been simmered for hours.

I will tell you how I made it, but please don't think you have to have just what I put in it.  This is more of a method than an exact recipe.. ok?

Today's Vegetable - Bacon Soup

1/2 pint home canned bacon ends and pieces (you could use bacon from the store.)
1 medium onion, diced
1 garlic clove, minced
2 celery stalks, sliced
1 big handful of mushrooms, chopped (I have some of those oyster mushrooms left.)
1 large carrot, diced
1 pint canned corn
1 quart green beans, drained
2 cups loosely packed chopped collards
1 quart tomato juice
1 cup chicken bone broth
Sea salt and pepper to taste

In a 6 quart pressure saucepan, start the bacon cooking.  Add the onion, garlic, celery and mushrooms and saute for a few minutes.

Add all the other ingredients except the salt and pepper.  Put on the lid and the petcock.  Bring up to pressure.  Allow to cook for 5  minutes with the petcock rocking gently.  Remove from heat.  Let the pressure come down by itself.

Open the cooker, salt and pepper to taste and serve!  I had mine with some nice homemade bread and butter.

This is so quick and easy.... my version of convenience food!  :)

Pressure cooking - Chapter 9

Have you ever heard of "Purple Podded Pole Beans?" I hadn't either. This is the first year I have ever grown them and I am so pleased with them. I read about them in Eating on the Wild Side: The missing link to Optimum Health .  They are more nutritious than green beans.  Pole beans, of course, are much easier to pick than bush beans.  One very nice thing I've observed about these is that Japanese Beetles don't seem to like them.  The beetles munch on nearly everything else in our garden, but stay clear of these.  I picked some for the first time, today.  They are very pretty!

These beans are "string beans."  That means that the larger ones have fibrous strings you need to pull off before you cook them.  You don't have to, of course, but if you don't they are not very pleasant to eat as it will feel as if you have lengths of dental floss in your mouth.  No... better to "string" them - like this:

Do you see that cute little pointy up thingie on the end of the bean?

Carefully break it, downward, and you can pull the "string" right off the bean.  Then, of course, also snap off the stem end.

Here is how I use the pressure cooker to cook my fresh beans.  The beans will take only a few minutes to cook, and will be tender, and actually retain more nutrients than being steamed or boiled.  Here they are, on the trivet in the bottom of my pressure saucepan:

Put them in, add 1 cup of water, put on the lid and pressure regulator:

Bring up to pressure, and with the petcock gently rocking, and cook for 5 minutes.  As soon as it is done, put the pan in your sink and run cold water over it until the pressure is released.  Then, open the cooker and voila!  Tender, delicious, fresh beans and look!  They are GREEN now!

I served them with salt and a little dash of genuine Extra-Virgin Olive Oil.  It was so delicious!  

Incidentally, I bought my olive oil from that company linked above, but in buying 2 gallons, not only was the cost much lower per ounce, but I got free shipping, also.  I know it costs a lot, but that is only once a year.  It is oil to Die For!  So fresh!  Delightful!  It makes excellent mayonnaise, too, as well as any other use on salads, toast, vegetables... anything.  I highly recommend it and no, I am not on their payroll.

  

Pressure Cooking - Chapter 8 - Greek Lentil Soup

Link to photo

Now, that is not my photo (as noted,)  but I did make Greek Lentil Soup in my 6 quart pressure saucepan today and I have to say, this is the BEST it's ever been.  I've been making this soup for many years, but never cooked it under pressure before.  It came out Thick and Creamy.  I am so pleased!

This recipe comes from this book: The New Laurel's Kitchen

Greek Lentil Soup -cooked in a pressure saucepan

2 cups lentils, rinsed and drained

1/2 onion, chopped

1 small potato, diced

1 small carrot, diced

2 bay leaves

8 cups water

2 teaspoons salt

2 Tablespoons olive oil

2 teaspoons red wine vinegar (I used raw apple cider vinegar because that's what I have.)

Combine all ingredients except the vinegar in a pressure saucepan that is at least 6 quarts in size.
Put on the lid and regulator and bring the pressure up until the regulator is rocking gently.
Turn down the heat enough so it will continue a Gentle rocking.
Allow to cook for 15 minutes.
Turn off the burner and allow the pressure to escape naturally.
Just before serving, add the vinegar.

Delicious, fast, inexpensive, very nutritious and easy.  Enjoy!

Pressure Cooking - Chapter 7

In chapter 1 I mentioned that I made some soup in the pressure cooker.  I did the same thing this evening and want to tell you how I did it.  Now, my soup recipes really are more about method than ingredients, so please don't  not make some if you don't have the same ingredients I do.  Just use what you have!

Here is what I used: A quart of homemade bone broth, 1 medium onion - sliced, 2 stalks celery - sliced, 3 carrots peeled and sliced, pint of home-canned shell-out beans (Musica pole beans), handful of sliced dried mushrooms,  pint of home-canned sweet corn, quart of home-canned green beans - drained, 1/2 pint home-canned bacon ends and pieces, pint home-canned salsa, 1/2 teaspoon salt, a few cranks of freshly-ground pepper.

Put the bacon in the cooker on medium heat and saute the onion and celery for a few minutes.  Then, add everything else.  Put on the lid and petcock and bring up to pressure, reduce heat and allow to cook for 12 minutes.  Remove from heat and bring pressure down under cold running water.  That's it!

Here is what it looked like when I opened the pot.  It got rave reviews!

Pressure Cooking - Chapter 6

Here is a One-Pot meal I made in the pressure cooker for supper tonight.  It was delicious! Everything turned out very nicely - but next time I will make a couple of changes, which I will explain below:

Pressure Cooker Meatloaf, Carrots and Mashed Potatoes

In a 6-quart pressure cooker - pour in two cups of water and place the trivet.

Scrub potatoes and add them in one layer on top of the trivet.

Combine for the meatloaf: 1.5# ground meat (I had lamb so that's what I used), 2 eggs, 1 medium onion, finely chopped, 1 cup soft whole-wheat bread crumbs, 1 teaspoon salt, 1/4 teaspoon freshly-ground pepper.  Stir together with a fork and then finish up the mixing with your hands so the ingredients are thoroughly mixed.

Butter another trivet.  Next time I will use the steamer rack that I show you below, to make it easier to lift the meat from the pan.

Form the meat mixture into a squat donut shape.

Place it on the buttered trivet or steamer rack.

Here is 3/4 cup tomato sauce.

Pour it over the meatloaf.

Peel some carrots and wrap them tightly in foil.  NEXT time I will slice the carrots as they were not quite done enough.

Place the packet of carrots on top of the meat. Put on the lid, bring up to pressure.  Reduce heat until the petcock is rocking gently.  Cook, at pressure, for 15 minutes.  Remove from heat and cool quickly under cold running water until the pressure is gone.

Open the cooker, remove the carrots.  Check the internal temperature of the meatloaf with a thermometer.  It needs to be at least 155 degrees F.  If it is not, after you remove the potatoes, place the steamer basket back in the cooker, put the lid on loosely and put the cooker back on the stove and steam the meat for a few more minutes.  Check the temperature again.  

While you are steaming the meatloaf, remove the skins from the potatoes and prepare mashed potatoes.  I like to add butter, cream cheese, milk and salt to ours.

Here is the meal.  We ate it all!  (There are 6 of us.)

This was easy and economical, and as I said above, next time I will slice the carrots and use the steamer basket for the meatloaf instead of the trivet.  

Pressure Cooking - Chapter 5

I am here today to humbly acknowledge a pressure cooking failure.  :'(  It's ok.  I rescued it, but I want to tell you what happened so you will avoid my mistake.

On the third Sunday of each month, our congregation at Church has a potluck dinner after our 3-hour block of meetings.  Saturday evening, about 7 p.m., I suddenly gasped and said, "Oh!  Tomorrow is the pitch-in lunch!"  Fortunately, it was early enough in the evening that I could make some food to take without having to stay up half the night.

I made a triple batch of chocolate brownies, without walnuts, because our grandson is allergic to walnuts.  I also made a batch of WHITE "Jiffy Buns" from the wonderful Whole Foods for the Whole Family cookbook.  Mine was published in 1981 by La Leche League. There are more recent editions available.  That recipe calls for whole wheat flour and makes wonderful buns, but for this occasion I decided to make white flour buns. Oh, my goodness they were soft and lovely.  It only takes an hour from start to finish.  Fabulous when you are in a hurry, and the dough can be used to make buns, rolls, cinnamon rolls or bread or whatever you like.

I had a large pork sirloin roast.  I decided to make pulled barbecue pork for sandwiches.  That is why I made the buns.  However the roast was frozen solid.  I thought... "Aha!  I could cook this in the pressure cooker real fast!"  THAT was a Big Mistake.  I cooked it, on the trivet, with 2 cups of water for an hour at pressure.  Still raw in the middle, so I gave it 30 more minutes.  Still not done enough and the outside was getting overcooked.  What to do... what to do... so I put it in the crockpot and poured the cooking liquid and quite a bit of barbecue sauce over the top of it and cooked it on low overnight.  In the morning, it was nicely done.  I did have to discard some of the very very done bits from the outside, but the rest of it was fine.  I pulled it apart, added barbecue sauce, and it was yummy.  No One Complained and it was All Gone at the end of the meal, as were the buns.

So, don't do what I did.  If your roast or large piece of meat is frozen. please thaw it first if you wish to pressure cook it.  OR, just do it in the crockpot from the start.

Here is the frozen roast.

Here is what it looked like after 90 minutes of cooking.  Still not done enough.

Pressure Cooking - Chapter 4

I used the pressure cookers for dinner again yesterday.  This time, it was pork loin chops in one cooker and potatoes, carrots and cabbage in the other.  I learned something new.  I filled the 4-quart cooker with potatoes, carrots and a large chunk of cabbage, the trivet and 2 cups of water.  It was cooked at pressure for 10 minutes, and quickly cooled under running cold water.  When I opened it, the cabbage was not done.  :(  So I gave it two more minutes.  It was done then, but the potatoes and carrots were too done.  It all still tasted good, but next time I'll cut the cabbage into smaller pieces.

I browned the pork loin chops in lard in a cast iron skillet,

placed them all in the pressure cooker with two cups of water under the trivet, cooked them at pressure for 12 minutes and let the pressure go down naturally.  They were wonderfully tender. 

I also made a batch of  Melynda Brown's wonderful sourdough biscuits and baked them in our toaster oven, thus not heating up the large oven for a small item.  I love these.  They are substantial, keep well and worth eating.  You can even split and toast them!  Thanks, Melynda!

So, that was our meal, and was enjoyed by all.  Have a wonderful weekend!

Pressure Cooking - Chapter 3

In 1976 we were living in rural Nebraska.  I loved it there.  The neighbors were very kind and that was where I had my first real vegetable garden.  Our little girl, April, who was 2-years-old would follow me out to the garden, pick a big ripe tomato and eat it out of hand, saying, over and over "Mato...mato...mato."  Of course, the front of her clothing would get a little, *cough*, messy.  :)

When we first moved to that house, we did not have a kitchen stove.  I cooked on a 2-burner hot plate for quite a while.  I had written to a dear old friend and asked her for ideas of things I could cook without an oven.  She introduced me to "no-bake oatmeal cookies" and told me how to cook a meatloaf in a pressure cooker.

One day we went to a Sears catalog store.  Do any of you know what that is?  I don't know if they still exist, but back then, it was a small store with only a few items actually for sale in it, but you could peruse the catalog and order things there.  My husband needed to order something, and they happened to have an electric kitchen range on display.  It was on sale at the time.  I was looking at it, and a store clerk asked if I needed any help.  I mentioned to her that I was cooking on a 2-burner hotplate.  She asked, "Don't you ever complain??"  I don't know what I said, but I was thinking something like, "Why would I complain?  I know we don't have money for a stove."  When my husband finished his business, he came over and saw me admiring the stove.  He then proceeded to buy it for me!  Kitchen appliances are the ONLY thing we ever went into debt for.  He opened a Sears credit account, put the thing on payments and we had it delivered to our home.  Oh, my... that was SO nice.  That was the year I learned to can food.  It had a self-cleaning oven!  I used that stove until 1986 when we moved into a house that had a bigger stove in place. Forgive me while I continue to ramble, please... this is a blog, after all.  ;)  When we were first married, we lived in a very small mobile home which was married student housing at Indiana University.  The kitchen appliances were provided.  Then, we moved after I graduated and I was expecting our first child.  We lived in the country near Martinsville, Indiana.  My husband was a high school Earth Science teacher there.  Our landlord offered us an old propane kitchen range which had been stored in a garage.  DH completely dismantled it, took out the insulation which mice had invaded, replaced it with new insulation, cleaned it all up nicely and put it back together and into our kitchen.  It was great.  It had pilot lights.  I was already baking all of our bread by that time, so an oven was important to me.  Enough about ovens..... for now.

Yesterday I decided to go further along on the path of making breads in a Pressure Cooker.  I made cornbread in it for the first time on Wednesday.  Yesterday I baked banana bread and regular whole wheat bread in it with great success!  Here is what happened...

I have this nifty little baking container that actually is for use in a crock pot, and it fits nicely, on the trivet, in my 6-quart pressure cooker.  I have to remove the lid, though, as it is too tall, but that's fine, since it is necessary to cover any bread you are steaming with aluminum foil tightly.

Mixing the batter...

Here is the banana bread batter poured into the well-buttered pan (recipe follows) ready to go into the pressure cooker.

Trivet and 2 cups of water are in the pressure cooker.

The pan is carefully and tightly covered with foil.  I buttered the inside of the foil, just in case, not knowing how high the bread might raise, but as it turned out, that wasn't necessary this time.

Banana bread in pan after cooking:

Here it is cooling on a cooling rack.

Here it is sliced into.  Oh, my!  It is moist and delicious!  We all like it very much.  I really think the quality is superior to that baked in a conventional oven, and it also saves energy in the baking process.

Later in the day, I made 5 loaves of whole wheat bread.  (Recipe follows.)  Here are the balls of dough ready to be shaped into loaves.

I put 4 of the loaves in my regular bread pans and one in the pan for the pressure cooker.

The loaves have risen and are ready to bake.

Cooling on racks after baking... see the pretty round loaf?  The pressure cooker worked splendidly!

Here is that loaf, showing the wonderful texture.  The bread is not at all soggy, it is nicely browned, but the crust and the crumb are more tender than in the oven-baked bread.  I couldn't be more pleased.

Baking breads this way does not save time, but it does save energy and also if you don't happen to have an oven, this would be so nice to know how to do, and you can also bake things easily with a camp stove as well... or a hot plate!  Here are the recipes:

Pressure-Cooker Banana Bread (You can easily tweak this recipe for the ingredients you have on hand.)

1/2 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup coconut oil
2 large eggs
3 very ripe bananas, thoroughly mashed
1 3/4 cups whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup hot water

Beat the oil and sugar together.  Add eggs, mix well.  Stir in bananas.  Add sifted dry ingredients alternately with hot water.  Mix until smooth.  Thoroughly coat the inside of your baking vessel with butter. Pour in the batter.  You can use a pyrex or metal item, that will fit with plenty of room around it to let the steam circulate.  A small taller cake pan would work well.  You could even use metal food cans or wide mouth PINT canning jars, but would have to divide the batter into maybe 3 of them and adjust the cooking time accordingly.  IF you ever take some bread out of the pressure cooker and it is not done enough, just put it back in and give it a little more time.  It works just fine.

After you put the batter in the baking pan, cover it tightly with foil and place it on the trivet with 2 cups of water in the pressure cooker.  Put on the lid, bring up to pressure and reduce heat so the petcock is rocking gently.  Bake for 35 minutes.  Remove from heat and let the pressure escape on its own.  Then, open the cooker, take out the pan, take off the foil and let it rest for 10 minutes.  Then you can put the banana bread on a wire rack to cool.  Wrap tightly and store in the refrigerator.  It is tender, sweet, and very nice.  Banana bread is sometimes best eaten the next day!

Pressure Cooker Whole Wheat Bread 

1 1/4 cup water (110 - 115 degrees F)
1 1/2 teaspoons active dry or instant baking yeast
3 cups whole wheat flour
unbleached flour for kneading
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 Tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 Tablespoons blackstrap molasses

Put the whole wheat flour in your bread bowl.  Make a well in the center, pour in the warm water and sprinkle the yeast over it.  Stir in gently with a fork.  Let that sit while you gather your other ingredients.  Then add the salt, oil and molasses.  Stir together thoroughly.  Sprinkle some unbleached flour on your kneading surface and knead vigorously for 10 minutes, sprinkling a little more flour under the dough as you knead to keep it from sticking.  Wash and dry the bowl.  Grease the bowl with more oil.  Put in the dough and turn it over, so the top is oiled.  Cover tightly with plastic wrap.  Let the dough rise, in a warm place, until when you poke it, it "sighs."  If it springs back when you poke it, let it rise some more.  Punch down the dough.  Re-cover and let it rise again.  Shape into a loaf.  Place the loaf in the well-buttered baking pan/bowl. Cover tightly with aluminum foil, that has been buttered on the inside. Place on trivet with 2 cups of water in the pressure cooker.  Put on the lid.  Bring up to pressure and cook, with the petcock gently jiggling, for 30 minutes.  Remove from heat and allow the pressure to escape naturally.  Remove pan from cooker and put your loaf on a wire rack to cool.