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Hi,

Just to say that I made a similar discovery about the pressure in the Kuhn-Rikon cookers, and contacted Kuhn-Rikon to find out what was going on - the full story is revealed below!

I did a lot of research before buying a pressure-cooker (and I found Miss Vickie's site extremely helpful! So thanks for that...) and Miss Vickie and all the books recommend a pressure cooker that can cook at 15 psi.

If you go Kuhn-Rikon's US website (www.kuhnrikon.com), everything there suggests that the pressure at the second red ring is 15 psi; and if you download the cookbook, that too specifically states that the pressure at the second red ring is 15 psi.

However, when my cooker arrived, the UK manual and cookbook (I live in the UK) stated that the pressure at the second ring was about 12psi, which I found puzzling and a bit worrying.

I phoned Kuhn-Rikon to find out about this discrepancy, and this is what they said:

i] the pressure at the second red ring is actually about 12.5 psi

ii] the reason the American website says that it is 15 psi is because (according to the woman I spoke to) the old Prestige cookers which had a nominal maximum pressure of 15psi were so variable and inaccurate that they were actually cooking at about 12.5 psi. However, this figure of 15psi has lodged in the popular consciousness (I am rephrasing here), and 15 psi is the figure everyone is looking for when they buy a cooker; so Kuhn-Rikon give the pressure as 15psi on the American website, rather than give it as 12.5psi and then explain that this is equivalent to 15psi in an older cooker, or in a cooker which is not as efficient.

All a bit complicated and a little bit strange.

However, I suppose the most important issue is how well the Kuhn-Rikon cooks - and in my experience (and it seems in the experience of just about everybody else including Miss Vickie!) it cooks recipes that specify 15psi to perfection. Maybe it is just better designed than many of the cookers that claim a 15psi pressure, or maybe those manufacturers are also being a little bit flexible with their figures.

Anyway, I am *very* happy with my Kuhn-Rikon and have been recommending it to everyone I can interest in the subject of pressure cooking (it's not very common here in the UK), and whatever the actual pressure inside, it cooks like at 15psi pressure cooker should!