Bobo Bonobo® wrote:
aem wrote:
Bobo Bonobo® wrote:

I put a whole chicken breast in the pressure cooker with two cloves of
pressed garlic, salt, cracked black pepper, Penzey's Aleppo chile
flakes, and a bit of water. It just seemed like a good idea.
The apartment smells very strongly of garlic. I hope the flavor gets
infused nicely into the chicken. [snip]

The flavors sound good, but I'm wondering why the pressure cooker? I
think of a pressure cooker as a way to deal with dishes that need long
cooking, where the pressurized heat speeds up the process. And I
think of chicken breast as a thing that cooks quickly. So I wouldn't
have associated the two......how did it occur to you to take this
approach?

I was hungry. The pressure cooker was clean, and right at eye level
in the cabinet. I thought it would keep the breast moist, and it
would be fast. All that was true. It only took about 7 or 8 minutes
of cooking. Next time, I'll only pressure cook it for about 5
minutes, then put it under the broiler to make the skin nice.

I thought of pressure cooking as a way to forcefully diffuse the
flavor of the garlic into the meat. With the faster cooking as a
side effect of the pressure cooking method rather than the first
goal. The opposite approach would be to mash the garlic, add
to a marinade, then use a vacuum sealer to force the flavor into
the meat. One's a positive pressure method, the other a negative
pressure method.

If two cloves made your house seem filled with garlic, you
don't cook with garic as often as we do. ;^) It's a great amount
for one or two chicken breasts but a common amount at my
home.