Converting Pressure Cooker recipes for cookers with lower PSI

caramelizationpressure-cookerstock

Most of the recipes I'm using (mainly Modernist; stocks, caramelized vegetables, confit) suggest cooking at 15psi. My pressure cooker has two settings 12psi and 7psi. I've always had success just using 12psi in recipes where it says 15psi. However recently the 12psi mode has broken on my PC. I can now only cook at 7psi. How can I convert my recipes to use this lower pressure?

For example I would cook a chicken stock at 12psi for 90mins, I presume at 7psi the cooking time would need to be longer but by how much?

Best Answer

Here's a table that claims to give time equivalencies for cooking at different pressures. (This is from a website dedicated to pressure cooking information, so it's pretty standard.)

It doesn't go down to 7 psi, declaring 8 psi to be the lowest acceptable pressure, but the time increase for 8 psi is listed as 47%. Therefore, I'd try increasing the times by 50% or a little more than the recipe states.

Keep in mind that although this chart looks precise, it's really not. Pressure cooking at lower temperatures will significantly change extraction rates for various flavor components in you stock, for example. Some things will still cook out at roughly the same rate, while others will take a lot longer at the lower temperature. I'd guess that increasing cooking times by about 50% is a good place to start, but you may find that's too little or too much, or even that the result in some recipes just isn't right. (Sometimes boiling for too long alters flavors or textures in undesirable ways, so the fast cook in a high-pressure pot may be okay, but a slower longer cook may end up with just a boiled "overcooked" result.)