“Had a mother-in-law with a wonderful story about making applesauce in a pressure cooker and blowing the safety valve. Textured ceiling in an instant.”
When I was a child, my mother was making homemade applesauce in a pressure cooker and the hot “lava” blew up in her face. She ran out of the kitchen screaming. She had severe burns that needed emergency room treatment. I’ve heard that today’s pressure cookers are safer. No way I’m trying one.
She over filled it. Anything that bubbles, never over half full. Things that don’t, you can go higher but I don’t. Because she over filled it the apples mixture bubbled up to where it was able to clog the primary escape valve, and because she had an old style cooker, the secondary popped out (rubber plug) and the 15 psi behind it painted the ceiling and in your mothers face in her case. Todays cookers don’t do that. Secondary blows controlled and releases pressure, does not pop out leaving a spray nozzle.
New pressure cookers really are safe. You can thank... curse... (A good one is $100) the trail lawyers for that.
The 1950s PC my mother-in-law had was the same as the one I grew up around. It had a hard rubber plug in the upper lid with a metal dumbbell valve plug in the middle of that rubber disc. That metal valve would bleed a little pressure when the cooker was a the desired pressure but if the pressure was way over the top, the rubber plub could blow out and pressure was relieved straight up. In the case of my story, to the ceiling.