Space Research Initiative.

Recent cooking attempts have revealed a condition where a little scientific investigation has occurred on my part.   As every real chicken connoisseur understands, a properly prepared fried chicken dish should always be accompanied by a dish of egg noodles cooked in the flavorful juice of the chicken.  And to obtain that chicken juice, it is necessary to first cook your chicken pieces for 8 to 10 minutes in a pressure cooker.  Along with the chicken should be one small chopped onion, and two stalks of celery finely chopped.  Said pressure cooking to render the chicken fat from the chicken to a broth desired for perfect noodle cooking, by melting away the chicken fat without removing the birds outer covering (skin).   Cooking in the pressure cooker serves a secondary purpose, that being to precook the chicken’s internal parts.  The sweet meats closer to the bone, are never bloody after a five to eight minute precooking stint in a pressure cooker, prior to pan frying in cooking oil..

Now of course when the chicken comes out of the pressure cooker, it is a rather disgusting sight, all natural and animalish looking.  So it’s necessary at that point for the chicken having already been cut into pieces,  to be rolled around and coated in an appropriate flour mixture of your choosing.  My favorite being plain flour with salt ( Janes Krazy Mixed Up Salt) and pepper (Janes Krazy Mixed Up Pepper) along with a nice dash of red pepper.  You might prefer an egg and water dip prior to coating.  You are after all the cook, and best able to determine how and what to use when coating chicken for frying  to achieve just exactly the way you desire the finished product to be.   The coated pieces are fried then to a lovely brown and crispy coated crust in an inch or so of hot oil..

There you have the ultimate fried chicken dish.  The remnants left in the pressure cooker are the basis for the most delectable egg noodle side dish .  After removing the separator in the bottom of the pressure cooker, the juices  are increased in volume with additional water and brought to a boil for the egg noodles to cook in.   Delicious noodles, boiled in the pressure cooker pan, but without pressure.

Central to this operation you note, is the pressure cooker.  In the rare event that you may have been isolated on a desert island these past 100 years, a brief explanation follows.  A pressure cooker is a pot.  The bottom of the pot is where a cup or more of water is placed.  A pan insert placed over that water holds the food being cooked out of the water.   A lid placed on the cooker and heat applied, causes said water to boil and create steam.  As this is a closed system, and the steam has no place to escape a pressure builds up in the pot.  Usually 12 to 15 psi  in the home cooker.  The temperature of the steam is around 225F degrees, (107C)  and is adequate to cook most foods quickly, and with pressure to force the heat in, to cook it throughly and completely in a brief period of time. There is the secret and attraction to pressure cooking.   Speed…   A complete dinner in 30 minutes.  Meals in a flash with a tool remaining from my bachelor days.

My 30 year old cooker has never failed me.  Using it has become an automatic, thinking cap off, operation.  Coat the rim of the pot with butter to allow the rubber seal to slide nicely when the lid is turned to lock down.   On this day, I notice a bit of a change here.  The once hard rubber seal seems to have become softer and stretched just a bit.  That’s OK, I’ll just work it around a bit and it will be fine for one more use, or so figures I.  Tuck that excess in a bit, a new seal must be ordered.  Guess thirty years is stretching things a bit for rubber retaining it’s shape and form.  Next week I will get one.  I shall make a note of that after dinner.  (Yea, right)   Pressure has built up and the cooker is sitting there, gently spitting out small amounts of steam as the well engineered device it is, was intended to do.  All is well, another few minutes and I will turn it off.  Get on with preparing the frying mixture.

If you have never been quietly working away in your kitchen, to then have a loud pop like a balloon bursting in your ear behind you, you might not be able to grasp the full meaning of the word surprise.  Turning around rather quickly you see a pressure cooker, a pot with a six quart capacity, a pot weighing at least three pounds, with a half chicken, a cup of water, an onion and two stalks of celery inside, rising into the air over your stove.  Rising to a height of maybe two feet above the stove, spinning like some weird gyroscope gone mad, spaying steam out of a small spot under the handle for propulsion.   I should clarify, this is not a small amount of steam, but a jet of steam at least a foot wide and two feet in length, spinning in a circle, decompressing the contents of the pot.  Little pieces of celery, onion, and chicken coating the stove, me, and all other appliances like some spray painting robot in an auto plant gone berserk.  Then as quickly as it rose, the pot comes crashing to the ground, to sit in the middle of the kitchen floor still spinning and spraying what was to have become my supper on the cabinets and walls.  Even the ceiling fan received it’s share and required cleaning.

To say it was a jaw dropping stupefying experience is an understatement.   In a state of shock, I could do nothing but stand and observe for what was logically, less than a full minute, but for my numbed brain a show that seemed to go on for a much longer period of time.   Time enough for the thought to cross whatever was left of my thinking apparatus, “gee, I wish I had my camera.”
Dorothy came running to the kitchen of course, just as I had recovered enough of my senses to turn off the heat to the stove and lift the hot pot off the floor.  Now Dorothy doesn’t use profanity lightly.  Seldom will you hear her say something off color.  When she saw what had occurred, she said “bad” words, many bad words.  I was forcefully evicted from the kitchen as she dove under the sink to retrieve her cleaning products.

After she had cleaned the kitchen adequately, amazingly, I was allowed back in, to finish my chicken dinner.  Luckily the chicken was cooked by the time our spaceship launching research project as it has come to be called, was initiated.  I was even allowed to buy a new pressure cooker and have even been allowed to use it in preparation of the first roast beef dinner produced by the newest marvel.  Pictured above, the product of twenty minutes total time using a pressure cooker.  Isn’t it’s appeal apparent.

Pictured below in all of it’s glory, a lovely stainless steel creation, one where I will surely remember now and forever “to change the seal every few years.”