So are water heaters and we use those pretty confidently.
Pressure cookers get a bad reputation for safety from the times when they were basically a metal box with a tiny hole in it, but modern cookers have a lot of additional redundancies. Particularly modern ones with timers. It’d take a lot of work to get one of those to go catastrophically. It’s more likely to get killed by lighting than by pressure cooker, at least in the US, and as far as I can tell from available stats, and most of the pressure cooker injuries the stats list are from people who got a contact or steam burn, not by explosions.
It’s also interesting that people are often afraid of exploding pressure cookers when they think of them as pressure cookers, but you don’t get as much anxiety from rice cookers (AKA pressure cooker - but small).
“Dedicated” is doing a lot of work there. Regardless, they are both a vessel with a small hole where you’re heating up a gas. The difference is the pressure cooker has a valve that lets the pressure climb higher before it vents while the rice cooker is only up to whatever pressure builds up due to the vent cap foam filter being narrower than the lid. The old “exploding pressure cooker” thing is about that valve getting blocked, broken or clogged and pressure building indefinitely.
Only that shouldn’t happen on modern versions of either because the electric versions of both are using timers and sensors to control the cook. My old-school stovetop cooker still relies on pressure building until the valve hits the pressure I’ve set and vents the steam, but the electric one I was using before didn’t have to vent (at least when used manually, some programs had venting built in), it just went to temp and pressure and stayed there for some time, then released the steam at the end.
But even if my stovetop’s valve failed, there is still a safety valve. And even if that failed again, there is a scored area on the lid that is designed to fail first and vent the pressure (although you wouldn’t want to be in front of it if that happens).
I’d still default to an instant cooker if I was worried about safety. Not only does it not build up pressure indefinitely in the first place, but it also won’t let you open it until it’s vented, so you won’t open it and get a faceful of pressurized steam. Which, honestly, is the real danger with old manual pressure cookers. Everybody freaks out at anecdotal reports of explosions, but from what I can tell “opened too soon or vented incorrectly, got a burn” seems to be the real scenario you should be concerned about.
Ironically, that can still happen with rice cookers. I’ve (lightly) burnt myself by popping the lid open while my rice cooker was still hot before.
So are water heaters and we use those pretty confidently.
Pressure cookers get a bad reputation for safety from the times when they were basically a metal box with a tiny hole in it, but modern cookers have a lot of additional redundancies. Particularly modern ones with timers. It’d take a lot of work to get one of those to go catastrophically. It’s more likely to get killed by lighting than by pressure cooker, at least in the US, and as far as I can tell from available stats, and most of the pressure cooker injuries the stats list are from people who got a contact or steam burn, not by explosions.
It’s also interesting that people are often afraid of exploding pressure cookers when they think of them as pressure cookers, but you don’t get as much anxiety from rice cookers (AKA pressure cooker - but small).
Every dedicated rice cooker I’ve seen has a permanently open vent. They aren’t pressurized.
“Dedicated” is doing a lot of work there. Regardless, they are both a vessel with a small hole where you’re heating up a gas. The difference is the pressure cooker has a valve that lets the pressure climb higher before it vents while the rice cooker is only up to whatever pressure builds up due to the vent cap foam filter being narrower than the lid. The old “exploding pressure cooker” thing is about that valve getting blocked, broken or clogged and pressure building indefinitely.
Only that shouldn’t happen on modern versions of either because the electric versions of both are using timers and sensors to control the cook. My old-school stovetop cooker still relies on pressure building until the valve hits the pressure I’ve set and vents the steam, but the electric one I was using before didn’t have to vent (at least when used manually, some programs had venting built in), it just went to temp and pressure and stayed there for some time, then released the steam at the end.
But even if my stovetop’s valve failed, there is still a safety valve. And even if that failed again, there is a scored area on the lid that is designed to fail first and vent the pressure (although you wouldn’t want to be in front of it if that happens).
I’d still default to an instant cooker if I was worried about safety. Not only does it not build up pressure indefinitely in the first place, but it also won’t let you open it until it’s vented, so you won’t open it and get a faceful of pressurized steam. Which, honestly, is the real danger with old manual pressure cookers. Everybody freaks out at anecdotal reports of explosions, but from what I can tell “opened too soon or vented incorrectly, got a burn” seems to be the real scenario you should be concerned about.
Ironically, that can still happen with rice cookers. I’ve (lightly) burnt myself by popping the lid open while my rice cooker was still hot before.
… Boston.
Peripherally it’s about our attention spans, too.
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Also, every rice cooker I’ve used has had a lid held down by gravity alone. It wouldn’t build pressure even if the vent were blocked.