The pressure cooker pressure test: We put the appliance through its paces

When road-testing a slow cooker and casserole pots, I was seduced by the extra functionality of the Fast Slow Cooker: it pressure cooks as well as slow cooks.

Pressure cooking was never something I was that interested in but I am a bit of a fan now and I am finding it less scary each time I use it. I don’t like the fact that you can’t look, taste and adjust as you go. It’s more recipe-focused and less intuitive. If you are cooking a well-loved dish over and over, it’s great. If you like experimenting and being creative or are a bit disorganised (hi!) it’s less of a friend.

Is the Breville Fast Slow Cooker going to earn its spot on my kitchen bench? Yes, but for the pressure cooking, not the slow cooking.

Here’s how my kitchen pressure cooker experiments unfolded:

Pea and ham soup

Adding split peas, a smoked ham hock, carrot, celery, bay leaf and water to the Fast Slow Cooker, I set it to high pressure for 40 minutes and ended up with the best pea and ham soup of my life. The only downside is that you get a meek and intermittent sizzle for company, rather than the fragrant constant burbling you would get from a stovetop soup pot.

The pressure cooker requires less liquid for cooking, so you end up with a concentrated soup that is great for freezing and diluting when reheated. I’ve made pea and ham soup in a casserole for years: the flavour is just as good in the pressure cooker, and it’s at least two hours faster.

Result: Pressure cooker for the win!

Chickpeas

Here’s how I normally cook chickpeas. I start by forgetting to soak them, then open a bunch of tins in an urgent flurry. But now I have a pressure cooker, I can give the impression of being much more organised. I cook two cups of dry chickpeas for 30 minutes and they are perfectly soft for making hummus.

This is my first outing with a pressure cooker and reading the instruction manual and other tip sheets is a litany of “Do not…” and “Under no circumstances…” and “Never…” As the chickpeas are cooking, I frantically Google “Pressure cooker hissing sign of doom”.

But nothing explodes except my preconceptions, and I’m left with lovely smooshy chickpeas. Do it the old-fashioned way and you’ve got overnight soaking and two hours of supervised simmering in a casserole. Do it my usual way and you’ve got all those cans to recycle.

Result: Superior speed in the pressure cooker

Dhal and rice

Millions of Indian cooks, both professional and domestic, swear by Hawkins stovetop pressure cookers. I haven’t used one but they sound cool, with some models having inserts that allow you to cook pulses and rice separately but at the same time.

I absolutely loved the pressure cooker for making a simple spiced dhal. It was quick and extremely creamy.

I followed up with long-grain rice, following the Breville instructions, which resulted in crunchy baked crusty grains. Fail. But after playing with the proportion of rice and water, I nailed it. Pressure-cooker rice is pretty good and there’s no stovetop casserole boilover. I don’t have a rice cooker and would almost keep the Fast Slow Cooker just for this.

Result: Darling dhal in the pressure cooker

Quince

I love quinces but I don’t love thinking ahead two hours for poached fruit. I rate producing poached quinces in a cinnamon-scented syrup in 15 minutes as a fabulous pressure cooker success versus regular slow poaching in a casserole either on stovetop or in the oven.

Result: Pressure cooker perfection