We’ve had this thing for a while now, but haven’t done much with it.  TaMara has mentioned her pressure cooker a few times, and I’ve heard about them on various forums.  This one is Amazon’s best seller, not that their sales rankings provide a slam dunk guarantee of quality.  It will do much more than I expect to ever call on it for – cooking rice, for example.  I have a purpose built device for that I wouldn’t expect this thing to match.I cooked a small beef roast in it the first time I used it, and made that into Italian beef for sammiches.  It did a competent job, the saute cycle even did a good job of browning the meat.  Baked beans from dried navy beans seemed a good place to test the speed advantages of pressure cooking.  I looked at this recipe to get a look at what to expect.  Opening the cooker after a 40 minute run and slow cool down left me underwhelmed.  The method the recipe called for was continued cooking with the lid off until they looked good but I gave them 15 more minutes of pressure and another slow cool down.  Better.  Might not have ended so dry if I hadn’t left the vent open for several minutes before seeing the steam blowing off.  I won’t talk about the recipe much, I’ve had better beans, but they did all come out with the right texture, not too hard, not mushy.  So far, so good.  Stay tuned!