My First Dinner In My New Electric Pressure Cooker...

My very first Dinner with the new electric pressure cooker turned out great. 

I must admit I wasn't to adventurous. I just made a very simple

Beef Vegetable Soup. 

Being new to this whole electric pressure cooker thing, along with knowing how scary the old stove top cookers of my grandmothers era were kept me cautious. 

I loved being able to brown the hamburger in the cooker. It has a browning feature, and also doubles as a slow cooker.. kind of cool.  I added the onion and garlic to the browning burger then drained the fat. 

I chopped up carrots, and potatoes, added a can of green beans and a can of corn. I also added a quart of tomato juice with green peppers and onions, a cup of beef broth, and a stalk of celery cut up. 

I then set the pressure on high for 15 minutes.. it takes 10-15 minutes to reach the high pressure setting.. then it counts off the minutes and automatically switches to warm when the cooking time is done. 

The recipe I found online suggested cooking for 20 minutes but all the ingredients were raw. 

since some of mine were canned and technically cooked I didn't want to cook them for that long. I also let the pressure release the natural way for about 10 minutes and clicked the release valve and let the rest of the pressure out. Most of the recipes I've found suggest quick release of pressure when cooking veggies. Apparently they will turn to mush if you don't release it quick. They suggest under cooking veggies to prevent such things from happening. 

Husband and I both agreed that the soup was excellent. Tasted like it had been cooked all day.
no mushy veggies, and it warmed up good.. 

My next try will be with a roast. I see you cook the meat first.. then add the veggies in for the last few minutes.. I think I'm really gonna like this cooker especially in the summer when the fresh veggies are hip deep in our garden. 

I think using it in the winter will be fun too. I've found several recipes for quick dinners made with chicken breasts, pork chops, and tough cuts of steak like sirloin.
I even saw a recipe for ham and scalloped potatoes.
I saw one recipe where a woman cooked her spiral ham in it.
She talked about how with the ham you can get a glaze on it using the pressure cooker.
I can't wait to see what I can do with it.

If you have an electric pressure cooker.
send me some recipes or ideas of good things to make in it.
 I think I'll try the rice pudding too...