Pressure Cooker Explosion Paranoia

One of the (many) things I've never done is use a pressure cooker. 

Several years ago D. bought me one and I looked it over and immediately became confused by the directions and worried by the WARNINGS. Plus my grandmother had one explode on her...no joke..and that's why my mother never even considered using one. 

D. was discussing this with a colleague from India and he got a look of disbelief. I guess pressure cookers are pretty common in India and Indonesia so we were considered quite odd. 

We probably had that coming. 

Anyway, I had 'cook beans in a pressure cooker' on my goal list for the year so I thought I'd give it a try. Feel free to critique my technique because the instructions were pretty vague. I made the kids stay out of the kitchen when I opened it. 

1. I had no beans soaked, and it was an hour or so before dinner, so I 

rinsed the beans,

 brought them to a boil (no cover) for 2 minutes,

 and then put on the cover,

 turned off the gas,

 and let it sit for an hour.

2. With the cover snapped in place I then cooked them on medium heat for @15-20 minutes. 

3. This is where the tricky part came in. 

I couldn't tell how long I should wait to open. An hour? 15 minutes? Put the whole thing in cool water and open a little at a time? The instructions have each of these options and it seems to depend on what food or food combination is used. They aren't very good at explaining what is a dried vegetable and what is a fresh meat, etc. etc. 

I let it sit a bit and then I messed around with the pressure spigot with a long spoon. No burning steam came out so I opened the lid. To be honest, I'm not sure it ever attained pressure. It was a bit like my first time canning. I couldn't say for sure that the jars had ever sealed because I never heard a ping and couldn't tell if the tops looked right. 

Eventually the roasted corn/black bean salad was done. D. said the beans were great. 

Not sure I'd do this again. It didn't seem any shorter than cooking them on the stove. Andrea Chesman has great stove top directions that don't take any longer than the pressure cooker did. They did seem less squishy though. Definitely more beans from scratch around here.