Quick and healthy Instant Pot meal.
I made this yesterday. It’s a recipe I dreamed up and it came out great!
Ingredients:
I listed them in the title, but here are the details:
- 1-2 tablespoons oil. I used light olive oil because I only buy olive oil. I use regular when I want the olive oil taste and light when I just need some oil.
- Pork loin or tenderloin. I’ve said before that pressure cooking pork tenderloin is a waste of a good cut of meat — it’s much better grilled — but that’s what I had and that’s what I used. I used one of the two tenderloins in the package because I also used my smaller Instant Pot and, let’s face it, I’m feeding a party of one. If I wanted to make more, I could have used both tenderloins.
- Salt and pepper. I use coarsely fresh ground sea salt and pepper.
- Onion. I used one large one, cut into narrow wedges. If you cut it too small, it “melts” while pressure cooking.
- Cabbage. I used half a cabbage because (again) I was cooking for one in a small Instant Pot. I cut it in half, removed the core, and cut that half in half. If you’re cooking for more in a regular sized Instant Pot, use the whole thing, cored and quartered.
- Apples. I used 2 gala apples. I’d bought them and they were terrible for snacking. Kind of soft and mealy. Not crisp like you’d want an apple. I had two choices: cook with them or give them to my chickens. I peeled and cored these (saving peels and cores for my chickens) and cut them into 1/8 wedges.
Instructions:
- Heat the oil in the Instant Pot on Sauté.
- Generously salt and pepper all sides of the pork.
- Brown all sides of the pork. (Because I used a small Instant Pot, I cut the pork tenderloin in half so it would fit better.) This should take 5-10 minutes.
- Remove pork from the Instant Pot and turn it off.
- Add onions, apples, pork, and cabbage in that order. (In my case, I could barely get the lid on when it was done.) Do not add any liquid.
- Seal the lid and set the Instant Pot on Manual (or Pressure, depending on the model) for 30 minutes. Make sure the steam vent is closed.
- Clean up the kitchen. You shouldn’t have much of a mess. Cutting board? Knife? Don’t forget to wash your hands!
- When the 30 minutes is up, wait 10 minutes and then carefully release the steam and open the pot.
- Remove the pork and slice into 1 to 1-1/2 inch slices. Serve with vegetables and the juice created in the pot by cooking them.
You’re welcome.
This made enough for me for at least 2 meals. I suppose I could eat it with rice, but I’m really trying to minimize carbs and there’s quite enough in the apples and onions.
Oh, you want a photo? I didn’t take one. But if you make this and send me a photo of it on Twitter (@mlanger), I’ll put it in this blog post.
