So last night, very cleverly I stacked the pressure cooker, feeling very proud of myself for deciding on dinner in my head while walking, Mi!
Fifteen minutes later not a peep from the cooker! Also, a strange smell. Of course we assumed it was not our kitchen. Then anyway, seconds later I thought I’d check and imagine my surprise to see fumes coming from around the handle of the cooker! Gosh. And when I touched the weight, no hissing! I quickly turned off the stove. And waited.
Then of course we had a small conference in the kitchen, contemplating over the next step. I absolutely forbade everyone to touch the cooker. Simply because I recalled how, years ago, we had attempted to open the cooker and the next thing we knew was….
rice rice everywhere and all the walls did stink!
rice rice everywhere and nary a thought to think!
Yeah okay … and I remembered how chunks had stuck to the ceiling and the walls and practically every possible surface and utensil. And there 9-year-old Vidur was, impatiently waiting to leave for school, pacing the living room. And you, you were so worked up about it until I thrust a cup of coffee in your hand and ordered you to sit in your chair until I came back from dropping off Vidur, so we could tackle the mess together. We made such lame jokes over that!
Gosh. As an aside, a few years ago, someone visited and wanted to know what happened to the kitchen ceiling when she saw the wipe marks.
So anyway–we decided to wait ten minutes. Then I opened the cooker. The water in it had evaporated and hence the fumes. Turned out the gasket was loose. So no pressure. So water evaporated.
What about dinner? I had kept kabuli chana, rice and aalu. All had perfectly cooked. Go figure!
Anyway, we enjoyed our dinner.
Yesterday I made chhole puri.
Today I made dum aloo.
So …. all is well that ends well, it seems.
Funny no? I didn’t even stress over it. My only worry was opening the cooker too soon because–ugh–cleaning up would be horrendous.
Okay, I am going for a walk.
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I’ve had something similar happen to me as well. It’s a good idea that you waited before opening it, I think. We had a similar cooker explosion several years ago – in our case the whistle vent got plugged and I didn’t know. The safety valve blew out and sent everything splattering on the ceiling. Not a fun cleaning exercise for sure!