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I usually cook Chicken curry in pressure-cooker so that it gets done fast. I usually get advice for expert cooks that its better to cook it in a pan on low heat. But I don't really find a great deal of difference in the taste?
If we marinate the chicken well in advance, does cooking in a pan slowly really make the dish more delicious?
To answer your question about pressure cooker vs pan cooking, the answer is...it depends.
You're right about the pressure cooker speeding things up. And if your recipe is pretty basic, you probably won't notice much of a difference in flavor between your pressure cooker method and a slow pan cooking.
But if there are a lot of spices and time for flavors to meld, maybe even different spices added over the cooking time, then the slow pan method is going to make a difference. While the pressure cooker will make things cook faster, it won't necessarily make the flavors extract dramatically quicker, so you may find that the flavor hasn't really peaked in the shorter cooking time. Or if you expect wine, for instance, to permeate into the meat, it will do more of that over a longer cooking time, than the short, but more intense time that your food spends in a pressure cooker.
An easy way to decide might be to think about if you have one of those recipes that is "better the next day". That recipe is likely to benefit from the low slow pan cooking.
In the end, your best bet is to make it twice, in a reasonably short space of time, and then decide for yourself.
But there are some days when you just need to get the food on the table, and as you've experienced, the pressure cooker is one of the greatest kitchen time savers I know.
I can't speak about cooking in a pressure cooker vs. a pan, but I can tell you about my experience with using a pan to cook chicken.
I've always found that using a grill or pan on high heat to sear the chicken works wonderfully. Either with a marinade or just salt works well. Follow that up in the oven at 300-350 until it's up to temp and you'll find yourself with some delicious chicken.
The reason for searing the chicken at the start of cooking is not to "seal in the juices" or anything like that. It's because of the Maillard Reaction. It's a reaction similar to carmelization on the outside of what you're cooking. More information here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maillard_reaction
I hope this helps!
