With it’s unique sweet and tart dressing and stunning color combination, this salad made quite an impression at a recent Italian BBQ!  Admiration came with recipe requests and I realized I did not want to recommend spending all morning pressure cooking each bean variety individually.  I decided to find an easier way.

Just as I was about to get experimenting, a reader published his results on pressure steaming beans.  Reading this reader’s bean discovery gave me a little more confidence than usual at the beginning of my experiment – it was not unrewarded.

This recipe utilizes three cooking zones of the pressure cooker, three cooking methods (Boiling, Steaming and Bain marie) plus a little trick that involves using your freezer to get green beans to last in the pressure cooker for 13 minutes – even though they are usually ready in just three.

Don’t worry… despite all of the technical innovations, it is still an easy recipe!

Pressure Cooker Recipe:American Three Bean Salad

Pressure Cooker	Accessories	Pr. Cook Time	Pr. Level	Open
5 L or larger	Trivet, Steamer	13-15 min.	High (2)	Natural

1 cup Chickpeas/Garbanzo Beans, dry
1 cup Borlotti or Cranberry Beans, dry
about 1.5 cups of Green Beans, fresh or frozen
1 Bay Leaf
1 clove of garlic, lightly crushed

For the dressing:
2 celery stalks, chopped finely
1/2 red onion, chopped finely
1 bunch Parsley, finely chopped
5 Tbsp Apple Cider vinegar
1 Tbsp White Sugar
4 Tbsp Olive Oil
Salt and Pepper to taste

Aluminum Foil

The night before making this recipe: Rinse an put each bean variety in 4-5 cups of  water to soak in their own container with a teaspoon of salt.  In the morning, change the soaking water.  Before cooking, toss the soaking water and rinse the beans again.  If you’re starting with fresh green beans, put them in the an aluminum foil packet and put them in the freezer.

Wrap frozen green beans tightly in heavy duty (or two layers of regular) aluminum foil and set aside.

Prepare your pressure cooker by adding 4 cups of fresh water, and then adding the soaked and rinsed Chickpeas, Bay Leaf and Garlic Clove. Next, add the trivet and the steamer basket with the soaked and rinsed Borlotti Beans. Finally, add the tin foil packet of Green Beans . Use a second trivet or anything in your kitchen to keep the packet suspended above the Borlotti (small heat proof cup, stainless steel cookie cutters, or a second steamer basket) – see photos, below.

Close and lock the pressure cooker. Turn the heat up high and when the pan reaches pressure, lower the heat and count 13-15 minutes cooking time at HIGH pressure. When time is up, release pressure using the Natural method – move the pressure cooker to a cool burner and do not do anything, wait for the pressure to come down on it’s own (about 10 minutes). For electric pressure cookers, if the pressure has not come down in 10 minutes, release the rest of the pressure using the valve.

In the meantime, you can prepare the dressing. Slice the onion finely and mix in a small bowl with the vinegar and sugar. Set aside to macerate.

Remove and open the packet of green beans. Pour the beans from the steamer basket and bottom of the pressure cooker into a strainer (reserve the cooking liquid if you like to use in place of stock) and rinse under cold water to stop them from cooking. Slice the green beans into pieces and mix in with the other beans.

In the serving bowl, combine the Beans, macerating onion, celery, parsley and olive oil and mix well and add any salt and pepper to taste.

Serve immediately or after the bean salad chilled in the refrigerator several hours or overnight.

Serves 6-8

Prep time: 5 min
Cook time: 23 min
Total time: 30 min