The pressure cooker may be the most misunderstood piece of cookware ever to sit on a stove.

That is, if it even makes it to the stove. Many remain in their boxes, stashed in the basement or hidden in the upper reaches of a kitchen cabinet, unused, unappreciated, even feared.

Why does a kitchen workhorse that can cut cooking time by as much as 70 percent cause even experienced cooks to back away in alarm?

Brownsburg resident Kim Cruea attributes the fear to the gadget’s bad old days, before modern locking mechanisms and automatic steam-release valves.

“Everyone seems to have a story about someone’s mom’s pressure cooker exploding and coating the ceiling with food,” she said.

Happily, Cruea, who uses her own Presto brand pressure cooker several times a month, has no such horror stories.

“My mom used her cooker a lot when I was growing up,” she said. “My grandma used hers frequently too, and neither of them ever had an explosive incident.”

In fact, she actually has fond pressure-cooker memories.

“I loved hearing the pressure weight on top of the pot rock and rattle back and forth, and I really loved running water across the top of the pot at the end of the cooking time to hear the loud hiss as the pressure was released,” she said.

Bloomington chef Daniel Orr, of FARMbloomington restaurant, also recalls his grandmother’s pressure cooker, although he thinks perhaps she had set it aside as a relic of a frugal past.

“My grandma had a pressure cooker on her farm in Southern Indiana,” says Orr in his upcoming book “Paradise Kitchen,” due out next year from Indiana University Press.

Orr calls his grandmother’s pressure cooker “a souvenir of the past that made her remember times she didn’t want to relive. I think by the time I was old enough for memories, my gram had renounced ‘those foods,’ the odd and tough cuts of meat that sustained her family and farmhands during the Depression.”

Orr notes, however, that those inexpensive cuts — and the pot to cook them in — have found a newly appreciative audience.

“The good news for the home cook is that most of these ingredients are inexpensive, and the recipes easy,” he said. “The pressure cooker cooks them up faster and intensifies flavors.”

According to market research firm NPD Group, sales of pressure cookers are up over recent years.

While much of the interest is attributed to an overall resurgence in cooking, you can’t underestimate the appeal of speed for time-crunched cooks.

Because pressure cookers, with their locking lids, allow steam to build inside the pots, food cooks at a temperature higher than liquid’s boiling point. That cuts the cooking time; foods also retain more color, moisture and nutrition.

Cruea said she especially appreciates how quickly she can cook with a pressure cooker.

“The main reason I use my cooker is speed,” Cruea said. “You can cook a half-frozen chuck roast with potatoes and carrots in a little over an hour, which is great when you get home from work at 5:30 and realize everything is frozen. You can also make chili with unsoaked, dried kidney beans in under an hour.”

But even with all that going for them, will pressure cookers ever shake their scary image?

Cookbook writer Victoria Wise, author of “The Pressure Cooker Gourmet” (Harvard Common Press, $24.95), addresses what she calls “the fear factor” in her book.

“First and foremost,” she said, “there’s no way you can blow the top off a modern pressure cooker and wind up with spinach on the ceiling and fear in your heart.”

Modern pressure cookers don’t allow that to happen, Wisesaid, noting that quality cookers have safety features that allow excess steam to escape and handles that stay locked until pressure is released.

Cruea, who bought a new cooker last year, reiterated the importance of understanding how a particular brand works.

“The newer cookers are very safe,” she said, “but as with any appliance, reading and following the instructions is key.”