Tuesday, August 18, 2009

The dreaded pressure cooker

I was rather excited about the purchase of my newest cookbook America's Most Wanted Recipe's by Ron Douglas. In the book cites the possible secret recipe for original KFC chicken. I had worked at KFC when I was 17 & did not really pay attention to what was going on in the back. I had to face the hot sun through the window & try to not be blinded. Anyway, shopping for a pressure cooker was limited to small pots with no instructions or a large digital one by Cook at JC Penney. I had to order one which took 2 weeks to be delivered. Saturday the large box was dropped off so Sunday I purchase my dead chicken. David read the instructions no fewer than 5 times. Recipes call for medium heat selection, new expensive cooker does not have a medium selection. Instruction book from Cook is in 7 languages and English is hard to understand. There are no recipes. When I google recipes, they mention medium heat. No mention of how much water needs to be added or if we add oil how much except 1 1/2 inches then they say cover the chicken in oil in one recipe from google. I ask David if we need to install pressure cooker outside in the event it blows up cause I am adding the oil. David looks at me & begs to go out to dinner eyeing the clock knowing our area is rolling up the welcome mat right then. We use the candy gage we already had & the boiling oil isn't getting hot enough to really fry or brown the chicken. David again wants to go out to dinner but I want to at least see this through. There are blue lights going off on the bomb but I want to venture where no Taffinder has gone before. We seal the pot after we loaded the slightly brown oil soaked chicken into the pot & David secures the hatch and we stand back and wait 13 minutes. Then we waited for some sound....no sound. David takes a utensil and stands back 5 feet to move the pressure lid thing and notice we are giving our cabinets a hot steam bath so note to self do not use under the cabinets. David again asks to go out, but I persist. Now at this point I had not prepared anything to go with the chicken just in case it worked out. We finally remove the secured hatch and lift out the oil soaked but falling off the bone chicken and have to use a rather large amount of paper towels to soak it. One of the chicken legs is broken in half so it must be a Chicago chicken hit at the kneecap. We throw together a salad & mac n cheese and eat. It is tasty but I am way too concerned about all the oil & not sure if it was hot enough in the browning to not be totally soaked in oil. So right now Darth Vader remains in the kitchen, he may be going into the outer space of the garage storage. When David wanted to know what to do with all the oil, I suddenly threw myself into bed falling quickly asleep. The kitchen fairy had cleaned it out by the next morning.

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