Pressure Cooker Cookbook for Beginners: Make the Most of Your Appliance and Enjoy Super Easy Meals

by Ramona Cruz-Peters

Delicious recipes for a perfect pressure cooker meal every time.

There’s a reason everyone loves having a pressure cooker; whether it’s time saved in the kitchen, the convenience of set-it-and-forget-it cooking, or simple dishes loaded with delicious flavors, these appliances have a lot of potential. The Pressure Cooker Cookbook for Beginners is your guide to everything you need to know about this culinary gadget―and how to make it work for you.

Learn how your pressure cooker works and the foolproof ways to make a fabulous dish every time. Then set up your kitchen for success with pantry essentials and equipment must-haves. Enjoy step-by-step instructions for 75 different delectable recipes that help tackle meals during a busy week or create appetizing dishes for entertaining like Garlic-Sesame Chicken Wings, Sweet Jalapeño Cornbread, or Shrimp Scampi. Tasty, easy, and affordable―every time.

Inside the Pressure Cooker Cookbook for Beginners, you’ll find:

- No pressure cooking―Take comfort with simple recipes that are designed for maximum flavor and minimal prep time.
- Customize it―Tips, tricks, and substitution hints help make every recipe exactly how you like it, using ingredients you already have.
- Steamed up―Learn the differences between a stovetop and electric pressure cooker, then use the buyer’s guide to select the best one for you.

Genres: Cookbooks, Nonfiction

214 pages, Paperback

Published March 17, 2020

Reviews

[Bonnie DeMoss · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pressure Cooker Cookbook for Beginners provides guidance on choosing a pressure cooker, both electric and stovetop, and tips on care and cleaning. The recipes include everything from Breakfast to Lunch, Main Dishes, Vegetables, Side Dishes, Soups, Stews, Sauces, and Desserts.

The directions are set up for the electric pressure cooker (such as Instant Pot), but there are conversion instructions for stovetop pressure cookers.

The breakfast recipes include sausage and spinach quiche and blueberry coffee cake. The Seafood recipes include barbecue shrimp and seafood gumbo. The chicken recipes include Mississippi Chicken Thighs with pepperoncini peppers, chicken piccatta, and chicken and dumplings. There are many more recipes, and the main theme with all of them is: Anything you can do in the oven or on the stove, you can do in a pressure cooker, and in a delicious way.

I received a free copy of this book from Callisto Media. My review is voluntary.

[Alicia Bayer · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good book for those who don't know how to use a pressure cooker as it goes into lots of details into how to operate it. I appreciate that it also has instructions for stovetop models, as that's what I used for years before breaking down and getting my Instant Pot and they work well. The recipes are very "standard American diet" sort of recipes, the sort that you'd see in a 1980's cookbook as much as a modern one... shrimp scampi, cinnamon applesauce, chicken piccata, salisbury steak, stuffed bell peppers, ginger soy salmon, stuffed mushrooms, etc. A lot of them struck me as recipes that work much better on the stovetop or in the oven. Many require special pans and accessories, like the ham and cheese egg bites recipe that starts out telling me to spray a silicone egg mold. I'm supposed to have a silicone egg mold? I have a lot of gadgets, but I don't have enough for most pressure cooker cookbooks. Expect to buy lots of trivets, specially sized bowls and pans, etc. for most of these cookbooks.

Nutritional information is provided for each recipe, which I appreciate. Very few photos are provided. The recipes are not very suitable for folks on special diets like vegetarian, gluten free or paleo, as they rely heavily on meat, wheat, sugar and dairy. Substitutions are not offered.

It'll still be a good fit for people who just want a standard American cookbook of fun recipes to use with a new pressure cooker.

I read a temporary digital ARC of this book for the purpose of review.

[Weslyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wasn’t a huge fan of the recipes in this book. I found myself bored and questioning why anyone would bother making these in a pressure cooker as opposed to any other method. A lot of these recipes are things I already know how to make and/or have no interest in making, especially in a pressure cooker. Perhaps I’m being too hard on this book, but there wasn’t much in it that appealed to me and I’ll be passing this book along to someone else.

I received a copy of this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

[Online Eccentric Librarian · Rating 2 out of 5]

More reviews (and no fluff) on the blog http://surrealtalvi.wordpress.com/

Update: I've tried a lot of the receipes in the book and found some serious issues. 4 recipes were awful tasting: orange soy chicken, applesauce, chili, broccoli beef. They were a complete waste of my time: bland, uninspiring, and very tasteless. I also came across errors and issues (which may be corrected when this publishes): one recipe for the broccoli beef said to put the pressure cooker on 0 minutes without explaining why a 0 cook time (I thought it was a typo). That same recipe also started with broccoli steaming but then never mentioned the broccoli again - when to add them into the recipe steps. I wasn't quite sure when to introduce it to the dish. With 3 recipes coming out awful, I'm done with the book. The only one I liked was for hearty pasta beef (aka chili mac).

Original review:

When looking for a recipe book for my new pressure cooker, I was hoping for something that started with the basics: easy to make, simple directions, tips and cautions, and a clean presentation. I was new to pressure cookers and didn't want to be overwhelmed from the beginning while learning to make the most of this new appliance. Fortunately, this book was nearly everything I hoped to find, missing only images to make a perfect cookbook. The book is suitable for stove top and electronic cookers - tips/directions/notes are given to explain the differences and how you will approach the recipes for each.

The book has a simple and clean presentation. Chapters include ABCs of pressure cookers, pressure cookers for cooking perfection, breakfast, snacks and appetizers, vegetables and sides, seafood, poultry, beef/lamb/pork, beans/rice/pasta/grains, stews/soups/chilis, broths and sauces, desert, measurement conversions. The recipes aren't meant to be comprehensive and each chapter has around 8 recipes. But each recipe is a very common meal or food item that you can use as a litmus to ensure you are using your pressure cooker correctly.

Recipe examples include New Orleans BBQ shrimp, one pot chicken and rice, beef with broccoli, pulled pork sliders, spaghetti squash, stuffed mushrooms, feta and spinach artichoke dip, blueberry coffee cake, pepperoni pizza dip, garlic sesame chicken wings, and herbed asparagus.

Each recipe has a blue font italic title, a bar with time/allergy info/serving size, then a very short 1-2 sentences about the recipe in red italic font. Another bright yellow callout box makes finding prep time/cook time/pressure build time/ cooking/release time easy to find. I especially like that the recipes are honest about the time to make, which includes having to wait for the pot to heat up and then to slowly cool down and relieve pressure. Actual cooking time is often the shortest time for a recipe. After the yellow callout box are the ingredients. Then the numbered short steps. Cooking tips and per serving nutrition info (calories, fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, sodium, carbs, fiber, protein) are listed at the bottom. Tips include substitutions, cautions, and other info. Some recipes have ingredient tips (such as using different apples for applesauce or ground cinnamon instead of stick cinnamon).

The downside to this book is that there are only 3-4 photographs in the entire book. Since the recipes are simple and familiar, that isn't a deal breaker. But I always appreciate photographs, especially in a book targeted at beginners. I often had to look up terms such as a pressure cooker sling.

With the lack of photographs being the only reservation, this is an excellent book. It truly is written for beginners in a friendly way. The presentation is very reminiscent of old fashioned cookbooks like the old Betty Crocker ones, which is a nice touch. Reviewed from an advance reader copy provided by the publisher.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is, without a doubt, the BEST pressure cooker book I have come across yet. I am new to the pressure cooker game and still trying to figure out how to use mine, and that is the target audience of this book.

The first few chapters of the book are devoted to the how's and why's of pressure cookers, their history, and the different brands on the market. I am so glad this is not a branded pressure cooker book as I don't have the most popular one that all the books seem to be geared to.

Now, onto the recipes. If you an experienced pressure cooker user, you probably have these down pat. For a newbie like me, they are PERFECT. Oatmeal, queso, dips, wings, meatballs, steamed veggies, and more! Simple, classic foods.

I try to avoid buying too many cookbooks but I am getting a hard copy of this one. I definitely recommend it to anyone who is new to pressure cooking.

[Alyssa Edwards · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have never used a pressure cooker as I have always been a little afraid of them haha. I have always heard really good things about them though so I am eager to try it out. The beginning of the book goes over everything you need to know to get started. There are diagrams showing how to use your pressure cooker and what all the settings are and how to find your perfect stove top pressure cooker model. The author discusses how to make the most of your pressure cooker. I like how it goes over cautions regarding using your pressure cooker, the dos and don’ts. There is so much just in the beginning of this book, so much useful information. After all of that you get to the recipes which sound delicious.


I received a free copy of this product from Callisto Publishers in exchange for my honest review. I was not required to write a positive review nor was I compensated in any other way.

[Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full disclaimer: I haven't tried any of the recipes in this book yet, but I'm definitely excited to. This is one of the few recent pressure cooking cookbooks that isn't Instant Pot-specific, which is definitely an advantage. There's good, practical advice and a great selection of starter recipes for beginners to pressure cooking. Most of the recipes don't have photos, but the layout of the book is beautiful.

I received an ARC of this book from the publisher.

[Amy Bell · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a great resource for beginners. I liked that the author had explanations for how to use both a stovetop and the electric pressure cooker. The recipes are easy to follow and use easy to find ingredients. I liked the formatting of the book as well. If I had a minor complaint it would be that more pictures would have improved it just a bit.

[Cristie Underwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a great resource for those of us that do not enjoy cooking and want easy meals that we can put in the instant pot and forget about until they are ready. I will be using my pressure cooker a lot more now that I have found so many delicious recipes in this book!

[Jenn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was super fun! I enjoyed many of the recipes. They were clear and the pictures were lovely! definitely recommend to all of you looking to try out your new pressure cooker. Pull it off the shelf, dust it off and buy this book!