Which size pressure cooker?

funkymonkey849

My mam said she'd buy me a pressure cooker for xmas and the Tower ones from argos look very reasonably priced.

They come in 4l, 5.5l and 7l (which is now cheaper than the 5.5l lol)

I am vegetarian so it will be used mostly for soups and batch cooking pulses. There is just the two of us (although we anticipate that in a few years there will hopefully be a few additions to this )

I was looking to get the 4l, but am worried this may be too small? I have no idea what size that actually is! As always, space is an issue so equally don't want a huge pressure cooker knocking around the kitchen. But then if I got the 5.5l it would seem a waste to pay more for a smaller cooker! Oh dear this is confusing.

Any advice from pressure cooker owners please, what size do you have or reccomend?

seraphina

OOoohh, another pressure cooker newbie!

I got the 5litre Kuhn Rikon for Christmas and it's fab. Like you, we're a vegetarian household and there's only two of us at the moment. Definitely go for at least the 5 litre size - I would say the 7 litre is probably a bit big but the 4 litre will def. be too small.

Beans and pulses can foam quite badly when cooking and the last thing you want is the foam to block the valves, so although it might only look like a small amount of pulses, you need a relatively big pressure cooker to cook them in because of the foam. You can easily cook 500g of dried chickpeas in my 5litre and could easily fit in more.

Mine comes with a trivet so you can pop smaller bowls, wrapped in foil, on top of this as well.

Although you don't need to soak most pulses before pressure cooking (kidney beans still need their hard boil first), if you want to save even more energy/money still soak them as usual and they'll cook even quicker. I particularly love steaming potatoes, they stay lovely and dry and fluffy, rather than a waterlogged mess and they only take 10mins or so at full pressure.

Have you had a look to see if you can get a deal on a set? I've seen some offers where they sell you a deep frying pan sized pan, a big stockpot size pan and one pressure lid that fits both pans, and one normal lid that also fits both pans. That way you can use the deep frying pan one as a smaller cooker as well as getting a big stockpot sized one as well, IYSWIM?

They're brilliant, hope you have lots of fun!

funkymonkey849

Thanks, I guess the 5.5 is the best size