Under Pressure: the Crock Pot

Hello Pressure Club,
  You may have thought you were reading about crock pots...but this post is really about our pressure cookers.
 Now, I fully believe that the both of you find yourselves in similar situations as me, which is, I don't necessarily have to eat "dinner" every nite, but, rieker does and has to squawk about it.
  Anything you can make in a slow cooker, you can cook in a pressure cooker, but much much faster. And, you can saute and brown ingredients in the pressure cooker, which you CAN'T do in the crock pot. However, the trick is converting slow cooker recipes to conventional cooking times, and then reducing the cooking times to 30% to come up with the pressure cooker time. That's why I have included a cheat sheet. Here it is:

Conventional Cooking Time: 15 to 30 minutes
Crockpot Cooking Time: 1.5 hours on HIGH - 4 to 8 hours on LOW
Pressure Cooking Time: 5 to 10 minutes

Conventional Cooking Time: 30 to 40 minutes
Crockpot Cooking Time: 3 to 4 hours on HIGH - 6 to 10 hours on LOW
Pressure Cooking Time: 10 to 13 minutes

Conventional Cooking Time: 50 minutes to 3 hours
Crockpot Cooking Time: 4 to 6 hours on HIGH - 8 to 18 hours on LOW
Pressure Cooking Time: 27 minutes to 1 hour

Most stews, pot roasts and other uncooked meat/poultry and vegetable combinations will require at least 8 hours on LOW or 4 to 6 hours on HIGH.

Pressure cooker: the same stews, pot roasts and other uncooked meat/poultry and vegetable combinations will require 1 to 2 hours.

Here is a great recipe to try your hand at pressure cooking:

London Fog Split Pea Soup (Serves 4-6 )
2 cups split peas, rinsed and picked over
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
2 medium carrots, diced
1 large celery stalk and tops, chopped
1 teaspoon thyme
10 cups water
1 ham hock or ham bone leftover from Easter (or one smoked turkey leg)
Salt and pepper to taste

In large pressure cooker pot, heat the oil over medium heat. Saute onion, carrot and celery for about 3 minutes, then place cleaned split peas in pressure cooker.. Add thyme.

Fill the cooker with the water, salt and pepper to taste, and bury the ham hock, ham bone or smoked turkey leg in the peas.

Lock the pressure cooker lid and close vent. Bring to pressure on high heat until orange button pops up, then reduce heat to as low as possible while keeping button up. If you reduce too low and the button goes back down, no big deal, just slowly raise the heat until it goes back up. Cook under pressure for 12 minutes.
Turn off heat and move the vent switch to open to release pressure in pot. Once orange button goes down, you can unlock the lid and open it up. If the soup isn't as "done" as you want, you can lock the lid and close the vents, bring it back up to pressure and add a few minutes here and there until it's how you want it. If you used a slow cooker, this same recipe would take 4-8 hours, no kidding. Your pressure cooker could truly help make your holidays and dinners easy if you let it.  Love, joy