We've had & used a pressure cooker (Prestige hi-dome) for nearly 4 1/2 decades. It's still in use.
Main uses now are: -
Rendering bones for stock. I had a tradition of using the Christmas turkey bones as the basis for french onion soup.That's more opportunist now.
Recalcitrant vegetables like beetroot (& yes I like raw beetroot as a salad vegetable, but cooking big roots needs serious technology). Big beet can need 40+mins at 15psi gauge (to revert to obselescent units). OTOH small young beet only need 10 mins.
Dried pulses. Most are best cooked after soaking overnight plus daytime, though not lentils. My favourite source is a cookbook called "the Complete Book of PRESSURE COOKING" published in 1977. It has a nice recipe for chilli beans (haricots), which needed a fair amount of experimentation to cope with the complexities of fresh chillies. I'm not sure about copyright issues, otherwise I'd provide more details.
Cooking dried pulses is slow. Personal technique makes a huge difference to the rate at which water boils off. Sadly the age of the seals (including the rubber of the Prestige safety valve) is part of that complexity. There is IMHO no substitute for trial & error, though while excess cooking water is useful vegetable stock, I don't have a recipe for burnt beans.
I'll add a recipe stolen from my daughter-in-law, who doesn't have a pressure cooker, but has a lot more bright ideas than I.
Ingredients.
120g chick peas
1 medium butternut squash.
Half a dozen tomatoes, maybe 600g
1 small onion
1 garlic clove
¾tsp (about 4 ml in 20th century units) turmeric
¼ tsp ground cumin.
Soak chickpeas overnight & until evening meal. Rinse.
Cook chick peas in fesh water at 15psig for 30 min. I now use 800g water, but YMMV.
Meanwhile, peel & chop butternut squash into 1-2cm chunks. Put on one side until chickpeas have cooked. Chop onion roughly & peel garlic.
When the chick peas have cooked, let (or persuade) pressure cooker (to) cool. Drain peas into a sieve, with a suitable container underneath to hang on to the cooking juices
Put some "pea" water back back into pressure cooker - suggest 200g. Bring to boil & add chopped butternut squash & cook at 15psig for 5 min. This is a cooking procedure that needs stirring halfway through, but I haven't yet found a perfect solution with a pressure cooker. In our house, the less well cooked chunks of squash are left for a bit more cooking on the morrow.
In parallel soft fry onions for 5-10 mins; add garlic late in that frying.
Meanwhile cut up tomatoes, I like octants, but rough chunks taste the same.
When the squash has cooked, cool, add onions & garlic, tomatoes, spices & salt & pepper, maybe some "pea" water. Bring back to boil & cook for 15 min unpressurised, but with the lid on.
That's enough for 3 meals for 2 of us. Brown (basmati) rice accompanies nicely, as do kale & purple sprouting broccoli They're not pressure cooked.
