I agree with pressure cookers having a place for certain foods like you mentioned with rice, legumes and chili/soups. Even putting in uncooked noodles for mac and cheese and lasagna when browning isnt wanted. Everything seems to come out of a pressure cooker with the same texture when it comes to animal protein which is pulverized falling off the bone which I dont care for. Except chichen for soup. Chef Eric Theis cooks buffalo wings in the pressure cooker XL on tv. Soggy chicken skin isnt for me.
-Kurt
Yes, there is most definitely no universal cooking tool.
To that point, I remember when I got my first microwave oven back in 1979 (I still have it and it still works, although I did have to replace the magnetron back around 2000). I thought it would make everything faster and better, and I actually did try almost everything. This led to some epic failures.
Don't laugh, but I actually made the following in my microwave oven:
Biscuits. The ultimate mismatch. They turned out like a really bad gnocchi dumpling.
Brownies. Not only did they fail to have the right texture, but the unevenness of microwaves (and I did turn the pan several times) led to a really amazing combination of something resembling brownies interspersed with un-cooked batter. If I'd worked at it, I suppose I could have figured out a way to make a "chocolate volcano."
A whole, 12-pound turkey. Talk about bad skin, this was absolutely horrible.
Eggs. This is where I found out about microwave oven explosions. Quite a mess to clean up.
Back to the pressure cooker. I did try pasta in it just the other day. I used a "trick" of putting a small amount of water in the pressure cooker, and then putting the food in a metal bowl placed on top of a trivet above the water. Thus, the food is cooked by high pressure steam. I found this trick in the "bible" of pressure cooking, Lorna Sass' "Cooking Under Pressure:"
I highly recommend this book to anyone who is serious about using their pressure cooker correctly.
[edit]I just saw the post about the Cajun Express smoker. That actually looks interesting. I'm researching this forum (and elsewhere) to see whether it is good. It sure looks to be well-built.
[edit2]I watched their demo video on YouTube, and it achieves shorter cooking times primarily because it smokes at 350 degrees. The "pressure" part of the design is totally bogus, as you can tell by the lack of any sort of interlock for the front door. If there was any sort of pressure inside, and you opened up that door, really bad things would happen.
