My pressure cooker is perhaps the most used appliance in my kitchen, but I rarely ever post recipes made mostly in it. Part of the reason is that not everyone has a pressure cooker. But it could be time to change that.
I get that many of you think pressure cookers are scary. I did too. Growing up in India, where pressure cookers are in every home, I heard plenty of stories of cookers going rogue, blowing food all over the walls, blasting a hole through a ceiling, and so on. But I doubt that ever kept an Indian cook from actually using one– in fact, it is hard to imagine Indian cooking without a pressure cooker.
In India, pressure cookers always came outfitted with three round aluminum containers that stacked one on top of the other. Every day, without fail, the cooking ritual in my mom’s kitchen started with the pressure cooker: she put rice in the bottom container, dal in the middle one, and vegetables on top. Then she gathered the wire handles that held the containers together over the top and lifted them into the pressure cooker. Checking the black rubber gasket that slid into the lid and sealed off the cooker to make sure it wasn’t broken was a crucial step, and once that was done, she’d slide the lid in and lock up the cooker. One, two or three whistles from the pressure regulator later, which took just a few minutes, everything was done. The rice could wait at the table while the dal got its tadka and the vegetables got sauteed into a sabzi.
Indian cooks are nothing if not smart and frugal, and the pressure cooker was an invaluable accessory. In an India where cooking gas was a valuable commodity, the pressure cooker shortened cooking times and preserved valuable nutrients in the food. It was a win-win. Other than the blowing up, that is.
I was probably the only Indian who moved to the United States without a pressure cooker in her bulging suitcase. I regretted it as soon as I had landed. I couldn’t afford one made here, and I hated the hours it seemed to take to cook lentils and beans on the stovetop. I was thrilled to find out that a fellow Indian student Desi and I were rooming with had one and I made good use of it.
Now, I own two pressure cookers — a stovetop one and an electric one — and I can’t imagine my kitchen without them. Last week, the handle of my stovetop cooker — which I mostly used for my daily cooking — gave way, so I turned to the electric cooker. I had been using it almost every day too, but almost exclusively to make Opie’s meals, and it was looking rather forlorn.
For anyone concerned about safety, electric pressure cookers are a wonderful deal: they do not make scary, hissing noises or gush out steam without warning, the way the stovetop version does. Rather, they make comforting, gurgling sounds that let you know the food is cooking. They are also super-safe — in fact, so are the modern stovetop versions. Most electric pressure cooker manufacturers will include cooking times for common ingredients, like beans and rice, in their manuals, which takes a lot of the guesswork out of cooking. And you can set the cooking time and forget about it all: the cooker switches off automatically and some versions even keep your food warm.
My electric pressure cooker is actually a multi-cooker (this one is a more modern version of the cooker I have), with slow cooking and rice cooking functions included, but I rarely use it for anything other than to pressure cook. And most of the times I will cook the beans in the pressure cooker, then continue cooking on the stovetop. This time, pressed as I was for time, I decided to take the easy way out for my Vegan White Bean Chili by bunging everything into the pressure cooker, and letting it do its thing.
There was some stovetop cooking involved in this recipe: mainly sauteeing the leeks and garlic. I also cooked the beans separately first, because I wanted to be sure I got the amount of water in the recipe right. You could, if you would like to do some guesswork with the water, add uncooked beans and cook everything together, but I liked my way because the chili was very, very flavorful and the potatoes cooked just enough without breaking down completely.
This vegan White Bean Chili is lipsmackingly delicious. It’s smoky with cumin and jalapeno and rosemary, creamy with potatoes and a smidge of cashew cream, and hearty as can be. The leeks add wonderful, sophisticated flavor and their greens, of course, combined with the beans, make this a super-healthy dish.
Serve it up for Game Day. You’ll be so happy, you won’t care who wins.
- 1 cup dry white beans like cannellini or great northern beans, soaked for a couple of hours, then pressure-cooked until tender. My pressure cooker takes 10 minutes to cook beans without soaking them first. Alternatively, use 2 cups canned, drained and rinsed beans.
- 1 tsp olive oil
- 2 leeks, leaves washed thoroughly (grit gathers between the , so be careful to rinse them well), and cut into a small dice
- 4 cloves large of garlic minced
- 1 tsp ground cumin
- 1/2 tsp cayenne
- 1 jalapeno, chopped (remove the white seeds if you don' want much heat)
- 1 tsp dry rosemary
- 1 tbsp fresh oregano, substitute with 1/2 tsp dried
- 1/2 cup corn kernels
- 2 in medium potatoes, cut a small dice
- Salt and ground black pepper to taste
- 1/4 cup cashews soaked and blended with 1/4 cup water into a thick, smooth paste.
- 1/4 cup coriander leaves, finely minced
- Heat the oil in a saucepan. Add the leeks and garlic, season with salt and pepper, and saute over medium heat until the leeks are limp, about five minutes.
- Add the cumin, cayenne, jalapeno, rosemary, and oregano. Saute for a couple of minutes.
- Add the corn kernels and let them heat through.
- Transfer the entire mixture to a pressure cooker, and add the beans. If you cooked your beans in the pressure cooker first, no need to rinse the pot. Just drain off all but 1 1/2 cups of water and add the other ingredients to the beans. If using canned beans, drain and rinse the beans and add 1 1/2 cups of water or vegetable stock to the pressure cooker.
- Give everything a good stir and put the lid of the pressure cooker on. I set the timer at 10 minutes for the chili to get cooked, with all the flavors merging well together and the potatoes soft enough to be crushable.
- Once the pressure-cooking is done, wait until all of the steam's gone or release it following your manufacturer's directions. Carefully open the lid. Give the chili a good stir and add salt to taste. I like smashing some of the potatoes against the wall of the pot with a ladle to thicken up the chili.
- Stir in the cashew cream. I really like this because it makes the chili so creamy, but leave it out if you absolutely don't want to add it.
- Garnish with coriander and serve hot.
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Other chili recipes from the archives:
Chipotle and Cumin Spiced Chili
Vaishali, thanks for the recipe. It looks wonderful, as does everything else you post. Can you recommend brand(s) and model(s) of pressure cookers that you have had a good experience with? The old one I have is hissy, scary, and messy, and I could use an upgrade. Thank you!
Hi Catherine! Both the electric and stovetop cookers I have are from Fagor. I like them– the stovetop one whose handle broke recently has been with me for more than 10 years, and if I replace the handle I am pretty sure it will be good as new. And the electric one, which I’ve probably had around five years, is quite wonderful too and has a slow cooking function included. If you don’t want hissy and messy, I would definitely recommend the electric version. 🙂
Thanks, V, I will check it out!
Thank you so much for this recipe!! The story about your mom cooking rice, dal and vegetables together totally reminded me of my mother. She relies on the cooker for all sorts of dishes: stews, soups, sabhzis etc. I think she’d be absolutely lost without it.
I have some canned beans sitting around waiting to be used. I’m thinking about doing the sauteing step in the cooker directly and just adding all the ingredients and covering it later. That’d make it a real one pot meal: my favorite kind!
Hi Krithika, great idea to do everything in the cooker. It would certainly work. Hope you try!
This looks goood! I’m gonna give it a try. I’m pretty sure you’d enjoy this book by Robin Robertson called “The Vegetarian Chili Cookbook”. It’s vegan but before the term vegan was widely used hence “vegetarian” in the title.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Vegetarian-Chili-Cookbook-Deliciously/dp/1558321489/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top?ie=UTF8
Thanks for the recommendation! Sounds like a wonderful book and I’ll look for it at the library.
I also use a pressure cooker for my rice and beans. I would love to see more vegan recipes using the pressure cooker.
Hi Jeannie, absolutely– stay tuned!
Hi there! Love your blog. I have a Fagor electric pressure cooker, but the instructions say I can’t cook lentils in it. Dahl is my husbands favorite thing & I am curious do you cook lentils in your electric cooker?? Thank you !!!
Hi there, my pressure cooker says that too, but I confess I do cook lentils in it. It is probably not the smartest thing to do and I wouldn’t recommend it.
This was the perfect soup for a cold, damp day. It is warming, comforting and soothing. I cooked it stove top for several hours and enjoyed all the aromas, especially the rosemary, as I worked on my computer.
Ruth, so happy you liked it!
Hello Vaishali,
I have not been able to visit your virtual kitchen for a while as I was preoccupied dealing with few life scenarios. Hope all is well on your side.
Extremely sorry to hear about Opie.
On culinary side, I see so many new recipes. Need to catch 🙂
Will be back soon.
Sheela
Thanks, Sheela, and good to see you back.
What is the deal with lentils that we shouldn’t cook them in a pressure cooker? Once I know the reason I will probably honor it, but inquiring minds, you know …
Hi Catherine, I think it could be that lentils cook up in a mush and can block the pressure release valves.
Makes sense — thanks!
I must admit to not owning a pressure cooker (yet). If the beans are already cooked shouldn’t this work well on the stove top? Or does the pressure cooking really enhance the melding of flavors?
Hi Claire, yes you can totally do this on the stovetop but the pressure cooker helps everything cook really fast and also gives a much more tender texture to all of the ingredients which makes the chili creamier.
This looks so warming and perfect! We had a pressure cooker years and years ago, but I was too afraid to go near it :/. Now I use my rice cooker for everything. However, my husband has been missing the pressure cooker so I’m sure we’ll get another one eventually. I won’t be so lame about it if we do!
I made this on the stovetop because I do not yet have a pressure cooker. I have been wantkng one but I think this recipe may be one of the best reasons for buying one soon! YUM!
I couldn’t be happier finding your blog! My husband wanted Tikki Masala and found it here. Thank you for your hard work giving us such marvelous recipes, we are looking forward to trying quite a few of them. Thank you for letting us in on a pressure cooker recipe. I grew up with a pressure cooker and used one just for making mashed potatoes or potato salad maybe lentils here and there but didn’t realize the benefits of it until recently. I bought the instant pot and I love it. Can’t wait to make your bean soup.
Hi Michelle, thanks for your kind words! I love my pressure cooker too and use it almost every day, but I’ve hesitated to post too many recipes because most people don’t have one. I need to post more pressure cooker recipes!
Are these cooked or raw corn kernels?
Raw!
Looking forward to trying this! Does the recipe call for just two leek leaves? Or the leaves of two leeks?