by Kendall Hurst
High altitude pressure cooking
When cooking at high altitudes the cooking time must be longer because the liquids come to a boil more slowly. As a rule increase cooking time by 5 percent for every 2,000 feet above sea level and 10 percent for every 4,000 feet above sea level. You may also have to add more liquids because some of it may disperse do to the longer cooking time. For example if you increase the time by 10 percent you should increase the liquid by 5 percent, however there is really no exact rule on this you should try some different things on your own.
History of pressure cookers
A French inventor in the seventeenth century was interested in figuring out a way to cook foods faster, so he came up with a pot with a locking lid the food heated in its liquid and the steam was trapped and it raised the temperature as much as 15 percent higher than the boiling point. And that cooked the food a lot faster, but it was not perfect he did not have a way to regulate the pressure which led to exploding digesters.
Early pressure canners had six or eight wing nuts to hold the lid down, manufactures were impressed by this and tried to develop something that was easer to use. In 1938 a man named Alfred Vischer after much trail and error made the Flex-Seal Speed Cooker, and it was the first saucepan size pressure cooker. And soon after that the competition was on, by the late 1940's there was peace in Europe and the consumer pressure cooker took off. But they still had too many accidents with them and little by little companies started to drop out of the market. It would not be until the late 1960's early 1970's that saw an awareness of eating healthy that would bring the pressure cooker back and were popular again. In the 1990's most of the baby boomers had never used a pressure cooker before and they started to see what they had been missing. I recommend the Fagor I think they make the best and affordable that there is.
