Does using a pressure cooker to cook vegetables or legumes lower their nutritional value?
Does the higher heat & pressure break down the starches & fiber more than steaming or boiling? Are more vitamins and antioxidants lost using a pressure cooker than other cooking methods?
Please provide links & resources. Thanks.
I’m pretty sure it steams all of the nutrition out of it.
Yes, higher temperatures denature the very DNA of the vegetables. So, yeah, it breaks down the nutrients of the veggies. Pressure does not. It simply seals the can by creating a vacuum. The high temperatures are needed to kill the Clostridium botulinum toxin and other microbes.
Well with any vegetable if you over cook them, yes it lowers the nutritional value. Your supposed to cook vegetables as little as possible to retain all of its nutritional value. The best way to cook vegetables is to steam them. You can use a steamer or wrap the veges in aluminum foil and put them in the oven for 3-5mins.Steaming cooks the vegetables as quick as possible so you will get more out of it. The only vegetable that I would pressure cook are very hard vegetables like butternut squash (poke holes in it before cooking. But by using a pressure cooker, you will have a higher chance of over cooking them, which will lower the amount of vitamins and antioxidants.