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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?

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2 Answers

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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.

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Exceeding interesting! To get the fall apart fork tender result, do you cover the meat in water, or do you just add a small amount, so it it the steam that cooks the meat? – Sandra Schlichting Feb 22 '12 at 23:28
I used a slab of chuck and it still came out dry and hard. I once read somewhere that dry and hard means you cooked in the pressure cooker too long and wet and hard means you cooked too little. Is that true? I cooked it about 45 minutes for a 1.5 lb single piece of chuck. – highBandWidth Mar 1 at 23:17
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Most cuts of beef are not really suitable for the pressure cooker

If your want moist and fall apart texture you need a slow cooker, or covered in a slow (low temperature) oven

A slow cooker cooks at less then 100°C (210°F), while a pressure cooker cooks above 110°C (230°F)

Corned beef (whole piece cured with salt and nitrate) works in a pressure cooker. Make sure to add a little acid to react with the salts e.g. vinegar. With corned beef, you can do this from frozen with acceptable results

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I also thought that a pressure cooker couldn't possibly replace a slow cooker - but then I did a bit of quick searching, and found things like this: allrecipes.com/recipe/pressure-cooker-beef-stew – Jefromi♦ Feb 20 '12 at 1:42
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In my experience you never get that real fall apart texture with the pressure cooker. You can make casseroles since the fluid loss is acceptable as the fluid is part of the dish, but only with certain cuts – TFD Feb 20 '12 at 2:11
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I can attest personally, that stews like that and larger, fatty roasts do fall apart in the pressure cooker. I use it quite regularly for such. – rfusca Feb 20 '12 at 20:07
@Jefromi Is a "slow cooker" a piece of equipment or a term? – Sandra Schlichting Feb 22 '12 at 23:34
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@SandraSchlichting: It's a piece of equipment. – Jefromi♦ Feb 22 '12 at 23:45
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