Hacking kitchen equipment

[unixronin]

Pressure cookers are great.  They're the best way to do various things — make stock, for example, or cook suet puddings or English christmas puddings.

There's just one problem.  They invariably come with crappy strainer/steamer baskets like this one.

Let's catalog what's wrong with this thing.

Well, we could pick nits with the fact that the drain holes in it don't go all the way to the edge, causing it to trap water at the edge.  But that's a relatively minor problem.  And we could find fault with the gauge of the stainless-steel sheet it's stamped out of, which is just barely thick enough to get the job done.  But it doesn't (quite) collapse under the weight of the food in it, so it'll do.  Barely.

No, the real flaw of this thing is that totally inadequate wire bail that passes for a handle.  It's just a piece of not-particularly-stiff bent wire with the ends snapped into two holes.

First of all, it drops down flat at any excuse (yeah, that makes it REALLY easy to fish the basket of bones out of the stock, doesn't it?).  Worse than that, if the basket isn't perfectly balanced (which it seldom is) and the weight isn't below the pivot points (which it virtually NEVER is), the basket is going to tip when you start to lift it.  And since all that holds the ends in place is weak spring tension in the wire, it's very easy for one or both ends to just pop right out.  (That makes a wonderful mess if you've just lifted a chicken or turkey carcass out of a couple of quarts of hot stock, let me tell you.)  As if those weren't enough flaws, many food items you might want to put in your shiny pressure cooker just plain won't fit under that fiddly little bail in the first place.

So what are we going to do about this?

Well, let's start with that wire bail.  Here's what it looks like when it's taken off.

First we're going to cut it in half, and straighten the long leg of each half.  Then we're going to take the curved portion at the top and bend it into a finger loop.

Finally, we're going to take the two pivot ends, bend them more tightly (from a sloppy 70 degrees to a nice tight right angle), then grind them a little shorter.  We're not going to need the quarter-inch of protrusion we have now.  0.125" is going to be plenty.

Oh, and at some point during this process, we're going to twist our pieces of wire so that both ends protrude in the same direction.

By the time we're done, they'll look something like this.  What can we do with those?

Well, not much, yet.  We need to make some other changes.  Specifically, we're going to take the basket itself, and add two more holes in the rim adjacent to the existing pivot holes, like this.

(We need to do this very carefully, because stainless steel is tough and difficult to drill, and because this is very thin sheet metal.  Use a good sharp bit, clamp it down on a block of something like MDF before drilling, centerpunch first before you drill, and deburr the holes carefully afterwards.)

Now that we've got two mounting holes each side, we're going to thread our modified handles down through the rim, pop the ends through the existing pivot holes, and then we need to fasten them permanently in place.

Whatever means we use for attachment has got to be strong, food-safe, and able to stand up to extended immersion in boiling liquids at 125°C (257°F) and live steam at two atmospheres of pressure.  Welding it would be ideal, but lacking a welder, I used nickel-silver brazing.

(Besides, I said this thing was thin, and I wasn't kidding.  It's maybe .018" thick.  Welding metal that thin without blowing holes in it is not a trivial exercise.)

After we braze the handles we made in place, and do some cleanup to remove surface oxidation and flux residue with a nice well-worn piece of 400-grit wet-or-dry paper (used wet) or a Scotchbrite pad, the basket's going to look something like this.  Our new handles now stay pointing straight up where we can get at them.

And if we do a trial fit in the pressure cooker to make sure ... yup, they come just above the rim of the pressure cooker.  (Caution:   Depending on the proportions of your pressure cooker, you may need to adjust the length to get this right.  Measure first.)  They clear the lid, but can be easily grabbed with a pair of heat-resistant gloves to lift the basket and its contents out.

Most importantly, never again is your steamer basket going to tip as you try to lift it and dump your stock bones back into your stock, or dump your freshly steamed cauliflower into the sink.

(Larger, but not huge, versions of all photos are behind these.)

Comments

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

How would you use the handle inside the pressure cooker? If you didn't use the handle, how would you get it out?

[brownkitty.livejournal.com]

Me personally? I'd take three short lengths of fine chain, hook them equidistant around the rim of the strainer, and hook them to a ring in the middle.

Ring would most likely get in the food, unfortunately.