Create Great Meals with a Presto® Pressure Cooker

Under pressure to get a hot meal on the table every night of the week – join the club. It can be a challenge to turn out healthy and tasty meals on a regular basis, especially if you work outside of the home. There are many modern time-saving devices designed to make meal preparation easier but sometimes it pays to go with tried and true methods such as a Presto® pressure cooker ($34.99 - $49.99, at www.bedbathandbeyond.com); home cooks have used them for generations and with good reason.

Pressure cookers can prepare food anywhere from three to ten times faster than most ordinary cooking methods; superfast cooking means lower fuel bills and more for your money at the supermarket. When you cook food under pressure you can transform lesser cuts of meat into tender and tasty meals. Food cooked this way also retains more of its natural colors so vegetables look fresh and attractive; flavors remain intact and more nutrients are retained in the cooking process. With today’s focus on maintaining a healthier lifestyle, diet is important – pressure cooking is one way to introduce more vegetables and healthy foods into meals and a great way to cook using less oils and fats.

With practice you can turn out everything from a simple dish to a gourmet meal using a modern pressure cooker; they are ideally suited for crafting one-pot dinners which means less clean-up too. When you consider the many benefits including speed, convenience, energy savings and enhanced nutritional results, you may wonder why you have not try cooking this classic way.

When it comes to classic there is perhaps no more traditional way to cook than over an open flame – the concept of grilling food has been around ever since the discovery of fire. If you are not fired up about cooking with a gas, electric or charcoal grill then it’s time to give it a whirl; not only can you grill meat, fish and poultry, certain vegetables and fruits are great when grilled. Grilling food opens up a new world of taste and flavor possibilities plus you can grill all year long if you are so inspired.

Gas grills are perhaps the most popular way to grill food because there is no need to worry about wood or charcoal as a fuel source. With a gas grill you can begin cooking right away while cooking with charcoal or wood generally means you need to fire up the grill at least an hour or more before you plan to cook.