I love cooking with my pressure cooker and this braised pork recipe what white beans is to me the quintessential fall and winter recipe.
Cut up some pork, with some dried beans, add onions, some herbs, in for the pressure cooker 30 minutes later you’re done. Isn’t that amazing?
I could probably eat white beans every day all winter. They just have this kind of magic quality and you really haven’t done anything. Maybe you added some onions and garlic, some olive oil – just a little bit of something and boom amazing. What I really like to do is save with the cheese rinds from Romano and Parmesan cheese, and when I’m cooking white beans, I throw them in. I chopped up the cheese rinds into 1 inch chunks, and throw them in while I’m cooking the beans. The rinds gives off a magic flavor quality which I love.
This pressure cooker recipe works really well for this recipe. If you wanted to go a little faster you could add in frozen carrots at the end of the dish instead of chopping up carrots in the beginning. Just one little cheat that might work and make it a little faster for you. I posted about pressure cooker reviews and a really good pressure cooker cookbook I like here.
Pressure Cooker Braised Pork with White Beans and Peas Recipe
This is for your average 6 quart pressure cooker, if you have a larger pressure cooker you can increase the dried white beans to 1 pound.
2-3 pound boneless pork shoulder or pork butt, or a pork shoulder you have deboned. Cut into 1″ or so cubes. Cut off large pieces of fat.
8 ounces of dried white beans, Northern, Cannenelli, or whatever you have
2 Medium Onions, or one large one chopped into 1/2″ pieces
6-8 cloves of chopped garlic depending on how big the cloves are
2 tablespoons Italian Seasoning herb mix, or Herbs de Provence herb mix
4 bay leaves
1 cup white wine dry wine is better, I think
3 cups chicken broth you can use beef broth if you want a bigger flavor
2 lbs of carrots chopped into 1″ lengths
16 ounce bag of frozen peas.
Rinse the white beans, put in a bowl and cover with hot water, add in 1 tablespoon of salt and let sit for an hour or longer.
Heat a glug of oil in a skillet and add in the chopped onions and chopped garlic, you want them to start to brown.
Heat a glug of oil in the pressure cooker and brown the cubed pork shoulder. You don’t want to cook the meat, just brown it.
When the onions-garlic is browned, put them in with the meat. Pour some white wine into the onion pan, deglaze the bottom, and pour this into the pressure cooker with the meat and onions. Add in white wine to 1 cup or so.
Add in the carrots to the pressure cooker.
Drain the beans in the salt brine – do not rinse them – and add to the pressure cooker.
Pour in the 3 cups of broth.
Drop in the herbs. I go kinda heavy on herbs, follow your nose…
Important: follow your model’s instructions on how full you can fill the pressure cooker, most limit it to 2/3 or 3/4 full. You may have to hold back on some of the beans or carrots.
Close up the pressure cooker and bring to high pressure, lower the heat and cook at high pressure for 30 minutes. Let it sit for 10-15 minutes and then quick release any residual steam.
Drop in the bag of frozen peas, stir into the mix.
If you have any cheese rinds from Romano or Parmesan, you could cut these into big chunks and drop them in. Carve off the hard edge or wax rinds themselves, as they will dissolve.
If you want make this a bit faster, omit the chopped carrots and when the pork is done, drop in a bag of frozen sliced carrots when you put in the frozen peas.
