Thai chicken in the pressure cooker

After last night's burned beef, I decided to look up how much water you're supposed to put in the pressure cooker with your meat.  My search yielded my now educated guess of about 2 cups.



The experiment:
cooking chicken breast, from frozen, with a thai red curry marinade (which was just spread on the frozen chicken breast).  I put the meat on a rack in my pressure cooker, and added 2 cups water for steaming.  It brought to pressure quickly, and I held it at pressure for 15 minutes.  The sites seem to say that when guessing at cooking times, it's best to guess low.  I would agree with that after last night -- I can still smell the charred meat.



After 15 minutes, I dropped the pressure (with a wooden spoon), and opened it up.  Looked perfect on the outside, but the inside was still frozen.  I cut it into two pieces, and put it back on.  There was still enough water that I felt safe about it (probably 1.5 cups?)



Another 10 minutes, it was mostly done, still pink in the middle of the largest piece.  So I chopped the done portions of the chicken, and cooked the middle piece just a tad more.




Total time taken
Hmm... hard to know.  Probably about a half hour.  It was in reality a bit over an hour from when I started to when we ate.  Part of that was because I didn't start the rice in a timely manner.


How'd it work?


I separated the chicken into two sections - the part near the surface, with the marinade on it, and the middle-parts, without the marinade. 



In a skillet (I could have done it in the same pot I used to cook the chicken, but it was still cooking that not-quite-done piece), I fried some garlic, then added some basil, the marinaded cooked chicken and a half can of coconut cream.  It made a lovely, but spicy, curry.


In a sauce pan, I melted some butter, threw in a half-green pepper, chopped, and some more garlic.  When it was boiling, I added flour, then milk and made a white sauce.  I finished it off with some salt and parmesan cheese, then added in the rest of the cooked chicken.  It made a lovely chicken a la king sauce. 


We served both over rice.  In spite of the rough start, it was really delish.