h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I had a teacher in school who told us about a disaster with a pressure cooker her mother had once. The instructions warned her not to cook soup in the unit, but she knew better. She put it on to cook and left the room. Later she heard a loud noise, and rushed in to find a pea soup geyser in her kitchen.

I bet she didn't reduce the heat as she should have done. I cook soup in mine regularly, and this has never happened to me.

Could be, I don't know, and I have no way of finding out. My teacher was an older lady and it had happened back when she was a kid so was probably back in the 1930's-1940's. And of course I've been out of highschool for around 18-20 yrs and have no way of knowing if my teacher is even still living so I can't ask her either. The story does point out one thing though. Always be careful when cooking things. I understand the "best friend of charlston" which was an early steam train here in the U.S. met a similar fate. The fireman got tired of hearing the whistling sound of the steam release valve so he tied it down. Needless to say the engine didn't continue in proper operating condition for long after that.

I've thought about your story some more, and I think that maybe the pot was too full - there is a maximum when you cook liquids like soup or stew, and even nowadys, you have to be careful to follow the instructions, or else, chances are that soup will find its way through th first valve and may even block it, which is why you have the second security valve. You're right, it's always better to be careful when cooking.
As for the fireman:

Oh, and thanks for your feedback, it's great you took the time to read and comment.

Another disaster story ...

I came home from university to find my mother cooking beef stew in a pressure cooker. She'd put a tin of beans on the safety valve because 'too much steam was coming out of it'. I told her to take the tin off and turn the heat down. She got on her high horse and said, 'I know what I'm doing, I used to have to do this with an old one I had before you were born'.

I turned to walk into the living room. There was one HUGE BANG and the whole kitchen, my back and my mother were covered in beef stew ... it took hours to clean up ...though I still chuckle when I remember her face with stew dripping off it and her glasses as she stood still in stunned disbelief.

Thanks for sharing your story.

She was very lucky if she wasn't burnt by the hot stew, or otherwise injured.

My reminiscences of using a pressure cooker were all positive.
We used it a lot when we were first married and the time saving nature of it was always welcome when people were hungry and we couldn't afford take-away food.

We still have the pressure cooker somewhere I believe and this article makes me think I should hunt it out - or even go and buy a new one as the old one was aluminium and I believe is linked with alzheimers disease.

Did I tell you we used to have an aluminium pressure cooker?

Yes, we talked about it when this entry was first published. I think I read up on aluminium pressure cookers, but I don't recall what I found.

Gaaah, I just cleaned out all the pantries in this house, and found about a dozen pressure cookers left by the granny who lived here before. She must've gotten a new one for Christmas every year

Wow, she must have generous relatives, cause they're really expensive (the pressure cookers, that is).

Can you still use one of them?

We plan to try out some of the newer ones.

The one I got more than 25 years ago served me well. It's only that it was an enamel pressure cooker, and once it fell on the kitchen tiles and some of the enamel burst off of the bottom inside - a place where things burnt afterwards. If it hadn't been for that, I'd still have it.

Makes me think we should've tried to sell them rather than giving them to the scrap metal guy...

Sure, you could have made a fortune.

Riiiight

They are expensive - but finding parts for some of the older ones may be problematic.

That's true. It's why it is best to initially spend more money and buy a well-known brand - they're most likely to still offer parts once your model gets old.