How does a pressure cooker work? How does it cook the food faster and why the whistle?
In: Engineering
Normally water boils at 100 degrees. So you can not get the water in a regular pot hotter then this. It takes some time for the heat to get into the food and cook it. But if you could get the water hotter then it would cook the food faster. This is what a pressure cooker does. You close it off so that when you heat the water to 100 degrees it does not boil because there is nowhere for it to go. It will just build up pressure and heat. And because the water is hotter the heat will move faster through the food and cook it faster. But there is one problem and that is that the pressure of the water might cause the pressure cooker to explode. In order to prevent this the cooker itself is built very strong and if it fail it will do so in a safe way. But there is also a safety valve or two that will release the pressure inside well before the cooker is in danger of exploding. When the steam is released it will create a whistling sound telling you that you should turn down the heat a bit.
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