Cookbook Countdown: Garlic Lemon Chicken

About a year ago, we retired our old pressure with its warped bottom, and replaced it with a more modern one. For one reason or another I've hardly used this in the last months. I'd already planned to declare January Pressure Cooker Month and cook from my assortment of pressure cooker cookbooks. The lovely folks who run Cookbook Countdown were reading my mind when they suggested participants could cook from one or many cookbooks each month. So here I am, leaping in with my many.

To start off my month of pressure cooking, I chose Garlic Lemon Chicken, a recipe I collected from EAT-L in 2000. (Yes, it's been languishing in a stack for quite a while.) The recipe from The Best Pressure Cooker Cookbook Ever, by Pat Dailey (p34). The person who contributed the recipe recommended the book, so I bought myself a copy.

The result was very tasty and easy to assemble. Because there are only two of us and I didn't want to deal with leftovers, I made a half recipe with four largish thighs standing it for half a chicken. These are first browned in the pressure cooker. Then you add some small red potatoes, a lot of minced garlic, some dry white wine and chicken stock, the juice of a lemon, dried oregano, and a big pinch of crushed red pepper flakes. To be sure I had enough liquid for cooking, I used the full amount of liquid.

From this cookbook, I learned that chicken is best cooked at the lower pressure of your pressure cooker. Our old cooker didn't have that option, but now I can do this. The chicken takes 16 minutes at the lower pressure or 12 minutes a high pressure.

This being a new-fangled rocker-less pressure cooker, I haven't gotten hang of recognizing when it's up to pressure. The instructions say it makes a steady PSCHHHT (that's French) when it's up to pressure. I didn't especially notice a change from no noise to PSCHHHT, so I started timing a bit late. After a bit we both noticed the start of a burning smell, so I released the pressure. The chicken and potatoes were fine, but the sauce was a bit burnt on the bottom of the pan. It still tasted fine, if just a bit smoky. The chicken was perfectly cooked with a nice texture and taste.

I'm looking forward to trying out some more pressure cooker recipes and to getting the hang of hearing the PSCHHHT at proper time.

January starts a new year with Cookbook Countdown. Why don't you choose a book, or two, or more, from your cookbook shelf and join in?