Get ready to enjoy your favorite foods in minutes instead of hours. Photo courtesy Kuhn Rikon.
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ERIC DANTIS is a professional chef in New York City.
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July 2010
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Pressure Cook With Kuhn Rikon
New Stainless Steel Ecomatic Pressure Cooker Takes Safety Seriously
CAPSULE REPORT: Kuhn Rikon’s newest pressure cooker, the Ecomatic Pressure Cooker, is a valuable piece of stainless steel that gives us more of the one thing many of us never have enough of: time. With a pressure cooker, stocks, soups and stews—which can take almost half a day to fully cook—can be ready in less than an hour. Dry beans, which often must be soaked overnight before you can even start cooking with them, can be on the dinner table less than 30 minutes after you open the bag. We tested the Kuhn Rikon 6-Quart Ecomatic Pressure Cooker on short ribs and pork butt, which are known for their notoriously long and slow cooking times on low heat. The time we saved using a pressure cooker gave us opportunities to do activities outside of the kitchen, plus it makes fantastic, juicy entrées. This is Page 1 of a two-page review, plus recipes. Click on the black links below to visit the other pages.
Kuhn Rikon Stainless Steel Ecomatic Pressure Cooker Overview
Have you ever wanted to make a homemade stew or soup, but don’t have half a day to babysit the pot? Do you want to use a pressure cooker, but are intimidated by infamous horror stories of exploding lids? (Read about the early pressure cookers in our History Of Pressure Cooking.) With all the safety features of the Ecomatic Pressure Cooker, you don’t have to worry about safety; just concentrate on what you want to cook.
The Ecomatic Pressure Cooker, introduced in November 2009, has some improvements over Kuhn Rikon’s Duromatic brand of pressure cookers (see our review). One visible difference is that the Ecomatic has a visible lime green locking latch on the handle of the lid, which unlocks the lid only when the pressure is low enough to prevent blowups.
- The latch is just one of the many safety features with this model that make pressure cooking foolproof.
- Another safety features is the ½ and 2/3 markers inside the pot, so you won’t overfill the cooker.
The Pot: The pot has a thick, heavy bottom. While it does contribute to the appliance’s weight of five pounds or so, it also helps the temperature to remain steady; it doesn’t fluctuate nearly as much as it would in a normal pot. |
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Safety latch. |
The Handles: On the outside of the pot, you’ll find heat-resistant handles, which are hefty, sturdy and convenient for carrying the pot from the stove to the sink or dinner table. Since one handle is longer than the other to accommodate the lock pin, there may be some storage issues. However, with all the benefits of pressure cooking, we don’t think this pressure cooker will be spending much time in the cabinet.
The Lid: As for the lid, other than the green latch, there is also an easy-to-read pressure release valve, which features two bright red rings to tell you how much pressure is being applied. (Pressure is measured inside a pressure cooker as pounds per square inch, or psi. Find out more about how a pressure cooker works.)
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Long handles. |
Finally, while the instruction booklet outlining the safety features and ways to use the pressure cooker can seem a little intimidating if you’re a newbie, we promise you’ll get through it. And if something seems confusing, you can call Kuhn Rikon customer service and speak with a human expert, which we found helpful when we had questions.
Continue To Page 2: Using & Testing The Pressure Cooker
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