As more and more of my cooking becomes elaborate, the recipes that I'm excited about increasingly involve slow cooking. I've tried to figure out ways to monitor temperature remotely and otherwise figure out how to do slow cooks during a working day, but it's been difficult.

I played with the pressure cooker a bit early on, but I decided to give it another go to see if I can compress the cooking times on some things that I would normally leave for the weekend or try to mash into a week day.

This week, I tried two dishes that I would normally have not used a pressure cooker for.

The first one was the Bolognese-Sauce-Recipe-Instant-PotBolognese Sauce Recipe (Instant Pot)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1-1/2 cups diced yellow onion
½ cup diced carrots
1/2 cup diced celery
1 pound ground beef chuck
1/2 pound ground pork
4 ounces diced pancetta
2 cloves garlic , minced
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1/2 cup dry red wine
28 ounces crushed San Marzano tomatoes , in purée
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup Italian parsley , divided
1/4 cup heavy cream
pinch ground nutmeg (to taste, optional)
kosher salt and freshly-ground black pepper
cooked tagliatelle, pappardelle, or your favorite pasta... yesterday. When making Ragu/Bolognese, I traditionally used a recipeRagú Bolognese
1 carrot, peeled
1 celery rib
1 small onion
1/2 cup olive oil
1 garlic clove, crushed
1 pound ground veal
1/2 cup tomato paste
2 tablespoons flour
1/2 cup dry white wine
1 quart chicken stock or veal stock
1 teaspoon salt
Freshly ground pepper
1 fresh rosemary sprig
1 fresh thyme sprig
2 flat leaf parsley sprigs
Cheesecloth for bouquet garni
from Harry's Bar Cookbook and cooked it for several hours instead of the 1 hour in the recipe. The Instant Pot recipe wasn't as good as the slow cooked Ragu, but it was quite good and much better than just quick meat sauce without the simmering - the meat was softer, the sauce creamier and the veggies very soft. I think next time, I'll try sticking the veggies in the Thermomix to see if I can get the soffrito to be better.

Tonight I tried making Beef Back Ribs using an Instant Pot recipe. The recipe involves blasting the ribs in the Instant Pot pressure cooker with apple cider vinegar after a few hours in the fridge with a spice rub. Then, the ribs go into the oven at high heat after basting with BBQ sauce to get a crunchy skin. Again, they didn't come out tasting like they were slow cooked - indeed they looked and tasted like pressure cooked and then seared ribs, but they were pretty good nonetheless.

I'm going to keep experimenting and I'm excited to read Dinner in an Instant by Melissa Clark that Adam recommended to look for some other tips. My current thinking is that the pressure cooker is definitely better than doing these things quickly without the pressure cooker, but I still prefer the slow cooking if I have time.