I have been using apples as a flavoring stock for awhile and thought I would post here as I did no see anyone else talking about it. Apples are very inexpensive and I tend to use apples that are on clearance because they're often very ripe and they're less expensive. I find if you can smell the apples strongly through the packaging buy them. Bruises do not matter. I recently was able to buy six fairly large golden delicious apples for $1.72 at my market. I tend to buy all different kinds of apples. I just happen to use these because these are ones I could buy that day.
I found that the easiest way to work with apples in the pressure cooker if you're basically going to break them up to make like apple stock is just to put the whole peeled fruit in. It is not necessary to core and cut them up. All you really have to do is just get rid of the skin. The skin just turns leathery and doesn't have any taste advantage to it. I know people are going to say "all the toxins in the seeds blah blah blah." I don't worry about it.
Basically all you have to do is take peeled apples and place them in some water ( I don't measure) and cook for 15 minutes. What you end up with is a mush that kind of resembled applesauce with the cores of the apples not really dissolved. You have to fish the cores out and you can squish them to try to get more liquid out of them but there's not much left. Everything is in the water. I don't bother to add any spices as I feel apples have a strong enough flavor.
The reason why I do this as a separate step is you want to see how it's going to taste. Is it going to be too strong or too weak. You don't want to spend a lot of time cooking something and finding out you can't really taste it or it's too overpowering. Also you may want to strain the stock for a clearer product. It is up to your preference.
Once you get to this stage you work with it as any cooking stock. In my case I decided to cook white lima beans that I had soaked overnight in my refrigerator. You drain off the soaking liquid and cook them for 20 minutes at pressure. I added water so my beans were all covered. The only other ingredients I put into my beans at this point would be salt-and-pepper. After 20 minutes I cool down naturally and get this incredible mixture almost like a casserole. It is a robust mixture of apple and the bean flavor. There is a sweet kick to it because of the apple so I add in some sliced green chilies at this point.
This is a fabulous dish. . It is a very good way to get people to eat lima beans because they are flavored very well. Additionally the beans absorb more flavor as they sit in the liquid so as days go by you can leave it in the fridge and I'll get better and better. The chilies provide a very good balance to the sweetness of the apples. I have found you can often get reduced apples that are cheap. And I simply just peel the skin off and placing them into freezer bags in my freezer. And it's a fairly cheap way to make a flavorIng stock. A wide variety of apples are available. I used Lima beans here but this would be good with other legumes like black eyed peas and lentils. But you will have to dial in the apple taste to your preference. Fruits are a cheap flavoring agent for legumes many ppl do not consider.
Note: I only use a stove top cooker for all this work.
Submitted December 18, 2016 at 09:10AM by Anagram64 http://ift.tt/2gYVBNt
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