Like many families, everyone is running in a million different directions all at once. Our typical week contains homework, karate, swimming lessons, physical therapy, play dates, Sunday school and any number of other projects that come up. Luke and I have been trying to simplify things by planning ahead and using the slow cooker, but on occasion, we don’t get the prep done in time. What can I say, our meal planning is a work in progress. We have, however, discovered a new weapon in the kitchen; a pressure cooker! Ours is a 6 quart, that is similar to this one.
Fagor Cookware
While Luke had some experience using a pressure cooker before, I never have. My mom just happened to give one to us over the summer when we were visiting her. (She REALLY likes to buy things from QVC – I’m sure I will write about that another time!)
Let’s get back to the pressure cooker. The other day Luke and I were planning to make a slow cooker recipe with beans. We woke up that morning and realized that neither of us had soaked the beans. I recommended that we soak them, then use the pressure cooker later on that evening. It worked great! Since then, we have steamed artichokes, made rice and last night we made Kalua Pork. The artichokes were a pretty good size, and even kept whole, steamed in 6 minutes! The Kalua Pork was WONDERFUL and super easy! I’ll post the recipe in a bit.
Finally, this brings me to the rice. Plain brown rice. Every now and then, I will admit to resorting to the frozen, pre-made rice that we have found at Trader Joe’s. I wondered, why can’t we just make our own rice and freeze it for those nights that we get behind schedule? Since we are able to make quite a bit of rice in a 6 quart pressure cooker, we did just that! We portioned it in Ziploc bags and now we are ready for nights we don’t have an hour to cook rice!
Frozen brown rice
The only thing I would do differently is to put the rice into the bags in a thinner layer, so they stack better in the freezer and you can loosen up the rice a bit prior to reheating. Luke loaded the Ziplocs, and in an attempt to get all the air out, forced all of the rice to the bottom of the bag and the top few inches of the bag are folded over. We’ll try the flatter way next time, but this still works.
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