What am I doing wrong with my pressure cooker?

Question

Every time I try to cook beef in my pressure cooker it gets dry and inedible.

Today I tried with 2 x 450 g (2 x 1 lb) beef, with .5 l (2 cups) water and 25 minutes.

The result was very dry and there were .7 l (3 cups) liquid.

What I was hoping for was the meat would be so tender that it would pretty much fall apart when trying to cut it.

I have seen charts like this one, but that would cover the meat in water. Can that be right?

I suppose that .5 l water is way too much, as I ended up with .7 l afterwards.

Question

Have anyone experience with beef in pressure cookers, and can guide me on what the problem could be?

Should I have fried the beef on a pan before putting it in the pressure cooker?

Asked by Sandra Schlichting

Answer

I use a pressure cooker quite often and its all about the cut of the meat. Much like slow cooking, using a often cheaper, fatty cut with lots of connective tissue - a chuck roast for example, yields much, much better results. Lean cuts of meat are make for fast searing and that's about it. If you try to coax them to be fall apart fork tender, you'll fail - those are the cheap, fatty cuts that go that way.

Answered by rfusca

Check more discussion of this question.