Best kitchen tool ever: the pressure cooker

I enjoy cooking, so much that I enjoy reading cookbooks. Last night I was reading a cookbook before going to bed and realized that I should include some of my greatest culinary endeavors in this blog. It will give me another topic to talk about because our lives are not that incredibly interesting but the food I make often is (in my humble opinion, anyway).

2010 has seen some of the best dishes coming out of my kitchen yet. The top producers of the tasty things are my pressure cookers. Scared to use a pressure cooker at all because my mother told me it would blow me up, I stuck to quick cooking potatoes for mashing.

Venturing out, I tried a few pot roasts (chuck roast, potato, and carrots) and those turned out a fair notch above acceptable and have improved each time I have made them.

Will this time I did it. So much so that my sister squealed out, "Are you kidding!?!" when she tasted the 6-day-old Cuban pork roast leftovers. That roast was awesome. It is tied at #1 with the amazing cast-iron skillet rib-eyes that I borrowed from Alton Brown.

For those of you who might like the passed-down-through-the-generations authentic recipe for a Cuban pork roast, it is as follows. I have modified it for being pressure cooked, but it could be slow roasted at approx 45min/lb until thoroughly cooked.

For approx 3-5lb roast:
1/2 head garlic, fresh pressed
2 cups Goya Bitter Orange marinade
1/4 cup salt
olive oil
water

1) Slice the roast into large chunks, approx 1lb sections.

2) Mix the salt and Bitter Orange together in a measuring cup. Use a flavor injector to inject the Bitter Orange into the chunks of meat. Give each chuck a couple of injections.

3) Use a knife to stab holes into the chucks. With your finger, push pinches of garlic (I believe there is no such thing as too much garlic) down into the chunks. They should be about 3-4 inches apart with about a clove's worth of garlic per hole.

4) In the bottom of the pressure cooker, heat 2Tbs of oil, place chunks individually in the cooker to sear each side so juices are locked in. Set to the side while doing other chunks.

5) Place all chunks back into cooker and use remaining bitter orange plus however much water is needed to make 2 cups liquid. (For example, 1/4 cup remaining marinade plus 1 and 3/4 water.) Pour over roast.

6) Put on lid, make sure seal is set, and turn up to high. Once the metal top shaky thing starts going crazy, reduce heat to medium and cook for 45 mins.

7) Let pressure reduce, shred meat, and enjoy!

Great with white rice, salad, and Goya black beans.