Pressure Cooker Love and Simple White Bean Salad

I inherited a pressure cooker just over one year ago. It is not new or fancy, but it has my heart. I used to use beans from a can because otherwise beans can take forever to cook and that requires advance planning, and I haven't always specialized in that. But a good pressure cooker can change your life.

I can now cook beans in 25 minutes. Without ever remembering to soak. Awesome. I never buy hummus anymore because I can make my own on a whim and for super cheap. Cooking brown rice or any grain for that matter: much, much faster. A pressure cooker makes eating legumes and grains so much easier. And for when even those 25 minutes seem like too long, I often cook a double batch of beans and freeze half of them for later for something quick.

Which is exactly what I did tonight. I pulled out some white beans I had cooked weeks ago and frozen, defrosted and tossed with a simple vinaigrette. A perfectly simple salad. And tasty too. Enough to make you think long and hard about purchasing or hopefully inheriting a pressure cooker of your very one.

Simple White Bean Salad

adapted from Elise Bauer

• INGREDIENTS
• 1  1/2 cups white beans, cooked
• 2 Tbsp chopped red onion (a sweet onion is also nice here)
• Juice of half a lemon
• 2 teaspoons red wine vinegar
• 1 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 1/2 teaspoon dry herbs de provence (crumbled) OR 1 teaspoon of some combination of finely chopped rosemary, tarragon, thyme, and lavender (I used thyme, tarragon and a pinch of lavender)
• Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

METHOD

After you chop up the onion, squeeze a little lemon juice over it and let it sit while prepping the other ingredients. Alternately, you can puree the entire dressing including the onion as I did.

Combine all ingredients into a serving dish. You can serve right away if you want, but if you chill for a few hours, the flavors will come together better.

Serves 4. Lasts a couple of days in the refrigerator.