Parent Category: Earth Therapy
Category: Sakthi Kitchen
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The Sakthi Kitchen-2
What is needed?

The two important appliances needed to make healthy, quick and tasty food are a pressure cooker and a blender (mixer-grinder).

Pressure cooker:

      We recommend stainless steel pressure cookers for health reasons but if you want you could use aluminum cookers too. We prefer to avoid Teflon quoted utensils or non-stick vessels which are not good for health. The chemicals used for coating the non-stick vessels leach into the food and invade our body. For safety we recommend Hawkins pressure cooker which has a lid that goes in. cooker

When pressure builds up it keeps the lid really tight as a part of the pressure cooker. An 8-liter or 10- liter pressure cooker is a good size for a small family or even for a bachelor. The use of separators with the cooker is important to save time in cooking. Usually there will be three separators provided with the cooker, sometimes even four. Three are convenient because in one you can cook rice; in another you could cook vegetables and in the third beans or dal. This is how you save time, by cooking all three at the same time. Usually it takes less than 15 minutes to cook all three items in one time.
Save time using separators

If you want to take food to work, then first thing in the morning set the cooker and then by the time you get ready your food will be ready. It is convenient if you soak brown rice the previous night in the cooker separator and keep it in the cooker. The rice will cook in one separator with twice the amount of water (add a little less of water to avoid over cooking, example, for one glass of rice instead of adding two glass of water I add one and ¾ glass of water).

In the next separator add dal and in the third vegetables. To save more time I keep the cooker on stove with water and by the time I get my separators ready, the water in the cooker boils and so instead of 15 minutes it takes more like 8 -10 minutes. You can save 5 minutes. In the morning when you have to rush to work, 5 minutes are very valuable!

Keeping the separators in a particular order is important. The lowest separator should contain hard things to be cooked, or whatever will take the longest to cook, for example, lentils, beans or even dal like toor etc. The center or the middle separator should contain the vegetables. Do not add water to vegetables so that they will not be mushy. The top one will have rice.

After the cooker whistles three or four times (steam comes out through the vent) switch off the stove. Allow five or six whistles if you want to open immediately. Wait for the steam to die down naturally and then open, if you have the time. If you are rushed for time, after five or six whistles, hold the closed cooker under a cold stream of water, with the water pointed at the whistle. The steam will die down quickly and the cooker will open. Your food is ready!