Many people around the globe use pressure cookers. It is the best time-saving kitchen appliance. A pressure cooker is a combination of heat and steam, which is used for cooking food speedily, and the result is delicious food in less time than normal cooking methods. Because it has comparatively high pressure than boiling water, it can be extremely dangerous and can cause damage.
If the lid, seal, gasket or the lock of a pressure cooker is faulty, it can explode and can result in injury or death of anyone. A pressure cooker allows you to cook food speedily with less amount of water and energy as compared to the standard cooking methods. However, still, a question is needed to be answered: “are pressure cookers dangerous?” YES! They are very dangerous appliances. The main reasons for the explosion of a pressure cooker can be manufacturing defects or design defects. When the pressure cooker explodes, it can burn your skin with steam, water splashes, and hot liquids which are used for cooking food.
Why are pressure cookers dangerous?
A pressure cooker can be a dangerous appliance because it can explode for any reason, including overfilling and the lid being blocked. These are the countable reasons stated by the users. It can also explode due to the malfunctioning of any part.
Few tips for safety
Check before cooking
Every time you turn on the pressure cooker, you should check all the equipment, including rubber gaskets, because it is very important for your safety. A rubber gasket should not be damaged or have any cracks. Some of the brands have told us to change the rubber gasket once a year. It is an essential part of a pressure cooker and makes a pressure cooker safer for you.
Most people ask when we should replace the rubber gasket. It totally depends on its usage. You should always have an extra rubber gasket available at your home to replace it easily whenever you like or whenever it’s needed. If the dry food is left around the lid, it can easily damage the rubber gasket, so you should always clean it after using your pressure cooker.
Don’t overfill
The pressure inside a pressure cooker is built due to the steam which the liquid will create inside it. If you fill the food high to the mouth of the pot, it can clog the pressure released from the vent and result in a BOOM!
The steam inside the pressure cooker must be released. Otherwise, the pressure will continue to build until it explodes. So, if you have an electric pressure cooker, it might simply turn off by itself, but if you have a stovetop pressure cooker, it will not automatically turn off and can cause serious damage.
Overfilling a pressure cooker not only creates the possibility of an explosion, but the food also no longer has its flavor and quality because the Excess amount of pressure can damage the vital vitamins and minerals in the food.
Another danger which comes from the pressure cooker is unevenly cooked food, pressure cookers are not designed to cook your food in an uneven way, and this mistake makes one side of your food perfectly crispy and the other side frozen.
Open the lid when all air is out
If you are cooking something that needs to be cooked once the cooker is off, you have to wait until all the steam is out. Because opening the lid immediately after turning the stove off can result in an explosion. So, if you are trying to forcefully open it, wait approximately 10 minutes, but some people say that the exact time is 30 minutes.
And for safety reasons, some modern manufacturers design their pressure cookers to lock the lid so you can’t force the lid to open. It would be impossible to open it before the pressure is completely released.
But still, you shouldn’t try it because you could get burned as the boiling hot water drizzle everywhere in the kitchen, along with blistering water, the flaming hot food can burn you as well. Therefore, don’t stand near a pressure cooker if it explodes.
Don’t put oil in the cooker
Many experts highly recommend never using oil in a pressure cooker because a pressure cooker can sustain a habitat that can shove oil to its smoke point, which allows it to burst into flames. This would be the last thing you want with the pressure cooker while cooking.
But if you like your food to be oily, you can use only a quarter of a cup of oil, but I still recommend you to not use it at all. Not using oil can prevent the outburst of your food and the destruction of your pressure cooker!
Use an adequate amount of water
As we have told you earlier pressure cooker builds the pressure by making the steam of water or any other liquid in it. That’s why you should always add a sufficient amount of water or other liquids to cook the food. But for the dry food items, it can be tough. Try putting an extra amount of liquid to certify that the cooking process goes fluidly.
For a full pot of food, the frequently referred amount of liquid or water is one-half cup. You can experiment with this amount but during the cooking process, make sure that you are preparing your meal successfully by ensuring that there will be the necessary amount of steam to get through the food.
Keep cooker out of range of kids
As we know, a pressure cooker can be a very dangerous appliance, and we should not use it in the presence of any child. Children can pull them off the counter or can try to open them while they are still in use which results in more likely to explode, and we don’t want that to happen with any child.
Don’t buy a used cooker
Modern pressure cookers are reckoned to be the safest pressure cookers because of their secure characteristics as compared to the older ones. You should never buy a pressure cooker from anyone who has used it before because you don’t know the history of its usage.
