Susan Jung turns to the pressure cooker for quick and easy short ribs

I resisted buying a pressure cooker for a long time, thinking I could continue to make slow-cooked dishes by putting a pot over a low flame.

Once I had a cooker, I used it for a few dishes - most notably to make hummus; the dried chickpeas were ready in 30 minutes, without any need to soak them or add baking soda to the cooking liquid. I wasn't enamoured with the pressure cooker, though. Using it meant there was none of the casual but calculated process of improvising with a dish: stirring in a bit of this and that as the food cooked for hours, until the meat was tender and the flavours were just right.

I only really started to love the pressure cooker, and appreciate its speed, when I made the dish for this photo shoot. Nellie Ming Lee, my food stylist, and I were behind schedule: Jonathan Wong, the photographer, was shooting the first dish, but the next three recipes we planned to make were hours away from being ready. I made an executive decision: we'll cook the short ribs in the pressure cooker. Twenty-five minutes after bringing them to pressure, they were tender. We took the meat out of the pot, simmered the sauce over a high flame to reduce it, adding in other ingredients that didn't need to be cooked for as long and adjusting the seasoning, and the dish was ready in less than 90 minutes.

If you don't have a pressure cooker, prepare this dish in a heavy pan over a low flame - but bear in mind, it will take at least three hours to cook, and you'll need to use more liquid. The presentation will probably be nicer, though, especially if you use an enamelled cast-iron pot (such as those by Le Creuset or Staub). A pressure cooker is not attractive enough to use as a serving dish.