Miriam’s Earthen Cookware can transition from being a pressure cooker to a Dutch oven to a slow cooker all in the same cooking session, depending on how it is used!

To use MEC as a pressure cooker, add your ingredients to the pot (i.e. dried beans cooking from scratch, or meat), add enough water, and cover and cook until your ingredients are 3/4 way done. It is important in this case to leave ¼ of the pot empty to provide room for steam to build up – this steam pressure is what cooks your food quickly and efficiently.

Once your beans or meat is done, you can let it cool down and either store/refrigerate it (to add it to recipes later), or you can now convert the pot into a Dutch oven for the next cooking steps. You can do this by stirring in other ingredients (i.e. Vegetables and spices) as needed to complete cooking your dish — like when making a Chili.

Taking it one step further, you can transition your pot into a slow cooker: you turn the heat down to low and let the ingredients simmer and complete the cooking process. In most cases, the stove can be turned off 15 minutes before the food is fully done: the heat retained inside is sufficient to finish the cooking your food to perfection!