I remember being 10yo and scared of cutting off my fingers cleaning up and chopping a piece of beef chuck to make dinner for my family. Basically, it took me almost 3 hours to make a simple pressure cooker beef ragu pasta. That’s one of the first dishes I remember learning from my mother. If you can call learning simply looking at her doing it once and have to do it all by myself. No measurements. No explanations. Just chaos.
There were times were I didn’t watch it properly and burned the bottom of the ragu. I learned you could still save it by transferring to another pan without scrapping the burned bits.
There were times when I took it off too early of the pressure and the meat was still tough, and chewy, and my brothers hated it.
And then, there were more and more times when it was perfectly seasoned, the meat was falling apart beautifully and there were no leftovers.
Cubed beef pieces (clean up the stringy bits), diced onions, diced carrots, diced fresh tomatoes, sliced garlic (not minced), bay leaf, tomato passata or tomato paste (not tomato sauce), salt, 1 or 2 cups of water if using tomato paste. Fresh chopped parsley to finish. Sautée the beef in the pan with vegetable oil, take it off, add veggies, sweat them until translucent, add beef back, add sauce and seasonings. Lock the lid and cook on medium. Clean up the counter. Boil a whole box of pasta (6 people servings) and drain while the sauce is cooking. After 35-40 minutes, let the pressure out of the pan and taste sauce. Use a bit of salt and sugar to adjust seasoning. Throw the pasta into the sauce and the serve it on a giant casserole dish.
Looking back now, it’s pretty incredible how delicious it tasted just like that. She didn’t even put wine on it or lots of herbs. No black pepper either. It was just the meat juices and fresh vegetables.
Bizarrely, it didn’t matter if the main dish was pasta, the rice cooker was turned on for every meal at my house. Currently, it’s the first time I live in a place where I don’t have one. I’m still considering if I should buy it.
But I never bought a pressure cooker when I was living abroad. And it must have been more than 10 years since I cooked that dish.
Maybe I should just forget about the rice cooker.
Oh. But I did buy a non stick pan for eggs and pancakes. That is a must have for everyone (unless you have time to season and care for a cast iron skillet - I’m still saving that purchase for my “definitive” home).