Once you have become a skilled in the use of your pressure cooker, you will want to adapt some of your own favorite recipes to pressure cooking. Spending a few minutes in converting a pet recipe will pay dividends in time saved ar you use the recipe over and over. Recipes for soups, poultry, seafood, vegetables and many combination foods can easily be adapted to pressure cooking. Here are the three important things to determine and check. 1. AMOUNT OF LIQUID: Use comparable recipes in this book as your guide. In general, when preparing soups and braised meats, the amount of water can be reduced form the traditional recipe because it allows for water evaporation during the long cooking. Therefore, vegetables and mixtures including vegetables may need only small amounts of water. At least 1/2 cup water is always add to the cooker for the production of steam. 2. COOKING TIME. The length of time that a food should pressure cooked is usually 1/3 (one-third) of the cooking time given in your recipe. Do not start counting time until 15 lb pressure has been reached and you lowered heat for cooking. 3. METHOD OF COOLING THE COOKER. Whether you should cool the cooker immediately or let pressure drop of its own accord depends on the type of food being prepared. Again, checking a similar recipe in this book is helpful. In general, large solid pieces of meat, like roasts, should continue to cook while pressure drops by itself. For other foods, the cooker can be cooled right away and food served immediately. Use the rack is another thing to decide upon in adapting personal recipes to the pressure cooker. When you want to blending of flavors during cooking, place food in the cooking liquid (water, broth, beer, etc.). When you wish to cook foods such as roasts out of the liquid, place them on rack, above the liquid. Some cooks like a crisper exterior on their meats then is usually produced by the pressure cooker. For a crisp outside, just broil meat a minute or two after removing from the cooker. In a high altitude areas, cooking time should be increased 5% for every 1000 feet about the first 2000 feet. Posted to MM-Recipes Digest by THEHOGUES@t-online.de (John & Trudi Hogue) on Sep 5, 1999