Extract Fruit Juice Easier, Faster with a Pressure Cooker

Look at this beautiful blackberry Italian soda! It was made with real blackberry fruit syrup. Does the thought of making fruit syrup from scratch sound a little tedious, though? All that chopping, pureeing, boiling? Well, Laura from Hip Pressure Cooking has found a serious shortcut!

Laura’s shortcut is this: Pressure cook fruit, and get maximum juice in 10 minutes flat.

That’s it. All it requires is a pressure cooker. Which, of course, is a somewhat unfamiliar appliance to many American cooks. It’s extremely common in Europe, India, and other parts of the world, but not as frequently used in the States. And yet it is far more convenient, in many ways, than its inverse countertpart, the slow cooker. It cooks tough meat and dry beans very quickly, and it has some other, unexpected uses, like this one.

What happens, as Laura shows, is that berries or other fruit, cooked in the pressure cooker with a little water, have all their juice squeezed out by the pressure. It is an extra easy, much less messy way to extract juice for syrups or jellies.

• Read more: Blackberry Italian Soda from Your Pressure Cooker! Making Extracts or Steam Juicing Under Pressure at Hip Pressure Cooking

Have you ever tried something similar? Do you use a pressure cooker at home? I have one but I am just beginning to experiment. Look for more on this topic later in the fall season as I bring you some of my pressure cooking experiments.

Related: Pressure Cookers: Making a Comeback?

(Image: Laura of Hip Pressure Cooking)