A Pressure Cooker Misadventure - Cooking Soybeans

I won’t say that we were exactly hippies, but we definitely had a different perception of life than the average young couple our age.

Married young, by the time I was twenty five I had three boys under the age of five.  Unbelievably, I had energy left over for the many pursuits which caught my interest.  Cooking, gardening, sewing, painting, milking the goat (well, maybe I was a little bit of a hippie), there was always something to do.

Of course, parents back then tended not to hover over their children much,  especially parents who lived in the country.  We got them fed and dressed in the morning and turned them loose to play outdoors (THAT was a mistake more than once, let me tell you!).  Even with the kids in and out of the house, I had lots of time to work on my garden or art projects and still dream up new and interesting things to do.

We had been married about seven years when we moved out of New Jersey to the wilds of Upstate New York. (The move itself was a fiasco of kids, furniture, dogs, cats and a goat. ) It was 1969, and we were delighted with the real estate bargains we found in central New York near the Finger Lakes. For $10,000 (cheap even back then), we bought a 100 acre farm with a run down Sears kit farmhouse. The ten room house had a crooked roof, no central heating, no insulation and a dark green kitchen. Water came from a hand dug well that had water in it when we moved into the place. We named it The Funny Farm as a joke, but some of our experiences there certainly proved it well-named!

There was a huge barn on the property. It didn’t bother us a bit that it leaned a little to the left. Our parents were horrified when they saw what we had gotten into, but Bill and I were young and naive and didn’t see anything but the lovely view from the back forty. We were delighted with our purchase. Besides, all it needed was a coat of paint, right? How wrong we were on that one!

Along with many of my peers in the 1960’s and ‘70’s, I was ready to get back to nature. I grew up in the country and spent my childhood exploring fields, streams and woods in New Jersey with my brother. I figured I was well prepared for a rustic life, and living on our big chunk of land in Upstate New York was the perfect opportunity to go back to nature. I couldn’t wait to live off the land!

Euell Gibbons of Stalking the Wild Asparagus fame was suddenly my favorite author. His book promised to help me find edible wild plants and to turn every roadside, field, forest and swamp into a natural food supermarket. That sounded pretty good to me as it should help keep our grocery bill down. So, with Euell’s book in hand, the kids and I would walk the fields, woods and ditches searching nature’s supermarket for edible wild things that I could cook up.

At the same time, some of my more adventurous friends were espousing vegetarianism and the joys of tofu and soybeans, beans and brown rice. I figured if we cut back on meat, we could live mostly off the land, supplementing our garden produce with foraged food.

Since the days of the pressure cooked Thanksgiving turkey, I had become pretty adept at cooking. Like many young mothers of the '70's, I did not work outside our home, but kept busy with the kids and my various projects and interests at home. I was willing to try cooking anything, and my family was game to taste just about anything. I didn’t tell them that they were about to become vegetarians —I thought it would be better to let them be surprised.

Another Try at Using the Pressure Cooker

If you’ve read my about My First Thanksgiving Disaster, you know that I already have had experience with a pressure cooker. Before the days of microwaves, it was, and still is, a great way to cook things in a hurry as long as you knew how to use it. I had cooked many successful meals in the pressure cooker (spareribs and sauerkraut, beef stew, sauerbraten), so I was not afraid to try some new things on my own. I should have been very afraid!

For those not familiar with the mechanics of pressure cooking food, let me give a little background. The pot has a lid with a rubber gasket that creates an airtight seal when closed properly. On top of the lid is a steam vent which holds a round steel gauge that regulates the pressure inside the pot. This gauge has three holes in it to fit over the air vent tube and changes the pressure inside the cooker according to which hole is place over the vent.

When the heat is on under it, the pressure inside the pot eventually reaches 5, 10 or 15 pounds. The gizmo on top jiggles, letting just enough steam escape so that an even pressure is maintained inside the pot. Also on top of the lid is little rubber plug. This, I learned later, is an emergency escape vent in case the steam gizmo gets clogged and the pressure inside the pot builds to a dangerous level. When that happens, the emergency plug blows out and lets steam escape to bring the pressure down.

In my quest to persuade my carnivorous family to become vegetarians, I had collected some recipes for nutritious soybean meals. Remember, this was in the early 1970’s. There was no internet, no computer, no microwave, no cell phones… How did we survive those primitive conditions? I actually had to go to the library to find any recipes that Mr. Gibbons didn’t provide in his books.

Pressure Cooking Soybeans

One day, in a mood for trying something new, I decided to try cooking dried soybeans in a pressure cooker. My little instruction book didn't tell me how to do it, but it seemed easy enough. Soybeans, water, cook at 10 pounds pressure for an hour or so. I could do that while I whipped up a batch of cookies in our big old fashioned country kitchen. The kids loved making cookies, so I had plenty of volunteers to mix, lick out the bowl and put the cookies on the cooling racks. The pressure cooker was jiggling along, getting louder and louder. When the cookies were done, the kids and I took a plateful out on the porch to escape the noise in the kitchen. Our faithful German Shepard, Taffy, followed us out to see if she could garner some peanut butter cookie crumbs.

As I came back in the kitchen with the plates, I thought that the tone of the pressure cooker had changed. Suddenly, the steam escaped in steady stream then stopped abruptly. Uh, oh. This was not good!

The kids and I stood there for a moment looking at it, then I realized it was trouble brewing and turned the flame off under the pot. Too late!

The little rubber escape valve blew and steam whooshed up. THAR SHE BLOWS!

“Get back, get back, kids! That could burn you!”

We all scrambled out of the way as the initial steam eruption was followed by a lethal stream of soybean mush being forced through that tiny escape hole. Hitting the ceiling, the soybeans hung in steaming stalactites for a moment before dripping onto counters, floor, table and chairs. Since we couldn’t get close to the volcanic eruption, the four of us just stood well out of the way and watched.

“Mom!!! Why is it doing that? Is it supposed to do that?”

I don’t think so.

Did you know that soybeans are not only nutritious, but that, when cooked, they turn into sticky glue that can quickly dry into a solid cement?

It was hard to decide where to start: should I skid through the stuff on the floor to wash the ceiling, or should I clean up the floor while the stuff dripped on my head? Even my trusty dog was no help. She would eat almost anything, but apparently soybeans were not in any of her food groups.

Several hours later when Bill arrived home from work, the kitchen was back in order.

“What’s for dinner?”

I threw vegetarianism to the winds, “Hamburgers!”

But for tomorrow… There’s a recipe for batter fried tiger lily blossoms and cattail roots…I’ll just surprise him.

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Copyright ©2010 Stephanie Henkel All Rights Reserved

Have you had any interesting cooking experiences or disasters? I'd love to hear about them and have your feedback and comments on this article!