Tag Archives: Instant Pot

Instant Pot Mac and Cheese with Chicken and Peas

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A one-pot dinner in 15 minutes.

Macaroni and Cheese
This looks a lot better than that orange stuff I used to eat.

Everyone loves macaroni and cheese, the ultimate comfort food. What’s better than home made?

I’ll admit it: for most of my life I’ve been hooked on Kraft Deluxe Macaroni and Cheese dinner. For years, it was almost a special treat to whip up a box of this unnaturally orange stuff at home. But with the rise of good mac and cheese and its popularity in restaurants, I started looking outside that blue box. And, after making this dish, I can’t see going back — ever.

This recipe is based on one I found in the Pressure Cooker Perfection cookbook by the folks at America’s Test Kitchens. It’s a great cookbook with nice color finished food photos — I’m a sucker for that in cookbooks — but it predates the Instant Pot I and so many of my friends have. Since I modified the recipe a bit for my own version, I figured I’d rewrite my version of it with Instant Pot-specific instructions. Here it is.

Ingredients

  • 8 ounces (2 cups) elbow macaroni. I used large elbows but I suspect you could use small ones or any other similarly sized/shaped pasta.
  • 2 cups water. I used cold water because the recipe didn’t specify otherwise.
  • 1 teaspoon salt.
  • 1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper. You can omit this is you prefer not to have the spice.
  • 1 teaspoon dry mustard. I used the full teaspoon and could really smell it when it was first cooking and wondered whether I should have cut back. But I couldn’t taste it in the finished product.
  • 1 12-ounce can evaporated milk. I used whole milk, although the original recipe says 2% is okay. Use fat free at your own risk. Please remember that evaporated milk is not the same as sweetened condensed milk, although they’re usually together on supermarket shelves.
  • 1 cup cooked chicken, chopped. I occasionally buy roasted chickens at the supermarket and, because I usually can’t eat a whole one by myself in two days, cut up the breast meat and freeze it in a vacuum-sealed packet. It’s perfect for recipes like this.
  • 1/2 to 1 cup frozen peas. I love peas and aways have a bag in my freezer. I didn’t measure; I probably used a whole cup!
  • 4 ounces (1 cup) sharp cheddar cheese, shredded. I bought it pre-shredded.
  • 4 ounces (1 cup) Monterey Jack cheese, shredded. I couldn’t find it pre-shredded so I had to shred it myself. In hindsight, I realize I could have bought a pre-shredded mild cheddar/Monterey Jack mix the supermarket offered in 8-ounce packages.

Instructions

  1. Mix macaroni, water, salt, pepper, and mustard in Instant Pot (or other pressure cooker).

  2. Cover and seal pot for pressure cooking.
  3. On Instant Pot, press Manual and set for 5 minutes. (On another pressure cooker, heat and cook at high pressure for five minutes.)
  4. When cooking is finished turn pressure cooker off, do a fast pressure release, and carefully remove lid.
  5. Stir pasta thoroughly. It should be mostly cooked with some water left in the pot.
  6. On Instant Pot, press Saute. (On another pressure cooker, heat to medium high.)
  7. Stir in milk, chicken, and peas.
  8. Cook until liquid is mostly gone and pasta is tender.
  9. Turn pressure cooker off and remove from heat.
  10. Stir in cheeses and serve.

This makes four good-sized servings, perfect for dinner.

Pressure Cooker Mongolian Beef

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Another recipe for my Instant Pot.

Back in December I took delivery of 1/4 cow: about 100 pounds of local grass-fed beef. The meat was butchered and packaged and frozen and most of it is still in the freezer I bought primarily to store it.

Mongolian Beef
Here’s what my first try looked like. I cut the green onions too long. (Not sure what I was thinking there.) And yes, I know I can benefit from a course on food photography.

Among the cuts of meat I got in my package was a lot of stew meat. I’ve been using it to make a variety of things, including beef barley soup, in my Instant Pot pressure cooker. The other day, while looking for something different to make with an Asian flair, I found this recipe for Mongolian Beef.

I made it today, tweaked to the beef I had on hand. I wasn’t thrilled with the results. In general, it was too sweet and not flavorful enough. I made some minor changes to the recipe that I think make it better — at least for me. Here’s my version.

Ingredients

  • 2 pounds beef stew meat, cut into 1-1/2-inch cubes. The original recipe called for sliced flank steak.
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon pepper
  • 1/2 teaspoon Chinese five spice. This was not in the original recipe, but I think it adds flavor.
  • 1 tablespoon sesame oil. Vegetable oil may be substituted.
  • 6 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
  • 1/2 cup soy sauce. Low sodium would probably be best, since this recipe can be quite salty. I might even consider cutting the soy sauce in half the next time I make it.
  • 1/2 cup water
  • 1/3 cup brown sugar. The original recipe called for 2/3 cup dark brown sugar, but I think it comes out way too sweet so I cut it in half. I use light brown sugar.
  • 1 teaspoon minced fresh ginger. The original recipe called for 1/2 teaspoon.
  • 2 tablespoons cornstarch
  • 3 tablespoons cold water
  • 4 green onions, sliced into 1-inch pieces. The original recipe called for only 3 green onions.

Instructions

These instructions assume you’re using an Instant Pot or a similar electric pressure cooker.

  1. Mix salt, pepper, and five spice in a medium bowl. Add beef and toss to coat as evenly as possible.
  2. Add oil to the pot and press Saute.
  3. When oil begins to sizzle, add meat and brown on all sides. You may have to do this in multiple batches so as not to crowd the meat. When browned, transfer meat back to the bowl.
  4. Add the garlic to the pot and sauté for one minute.
  5. Add the soy sauce, 1/2 cup water, brown sugar, and ginger. Stir to combine.
  6. Add browned beef and any accumulated juices.
  7. Press Keep Warm and then press Manual. Set the timer for 20 minutes. Make sure High pressure is selected.
  8. When pressure cooking cycle is done and beep sounds, press Keep Warm. Then release the pressure (carefully) by turning the release knob. When all the pressure has been released, carefully remove the lid.
  9. Combine the cornstarch and 3 tablespoons water, stirring until smooth.
  10. Stir the cornstarch mixture into the beef mixture in the pot.
  11. Press Saute and bring to a boil, stirring constantly until sauce thickens.
  12. Stir in the green onions.

Serve with rice and steamed vegetables or a salad with a ginger dressing.

This is not spicy at all, although I think it could use some heat. If anyone has any suggestions on what kind of chili or pepper I should add, please leave your suggestion in the comments for this post.

Beef Barley Soup

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Skip the mushrooms!

Freezer full of meat
Here’s what 100 pounds of beef looks like in a mid-sized upright freezer. The other meat I’ve been storing is on upper shelves. The doors are filled with plastic containers of homemade heat-and-eat meals.

Yesterday, I took delivery of 100 pounds of grass fed, locally raised beef. This “1/4 cow” came butchered, wrapped, and frozen solid. Although I already had a chest freezer I’d brought with me from my Arizona home, I bought another freezer primarily to store this meat. It just about filled the bottom two shelves.

(I should mention here that our local supermarkets often put “expiring” meat on sale for 30% to 50% off. I can’t tell you how many amazing deals I’ve gotten on normally very pricey meats just because their last date of sale is that day or the next. One day I scooped up four racks of lamb for about $7 each and a large boneless leg of lamb — which was great in a Moroccan lamb dish — for about $10. Last week, Safeway had a sale on baby back ribs that were still frozen: $2.99/pound instead of the normal $4.99. I bought four racks for smoking on my Traeger. Having a big freezer makes it possible to take advantage of these deals as they come up. And when you consider how much I’ve been using my new Instant Pot lately, I don’t expect to have any trouble keeping that freezer full of meat or homemade heat-and-eat meals.)

I had some control over what I’d get in my beef package — basically a menu where I could choose a certain number of cuts in certain categories. In addition to a bunch of steaks cut from all over the place and a lot of ground beef, I also got short ribs, roasts, a very large brisket, and stew meat.

With a winter storm coming, I figured that some comfort food was in order. So when I went down into town to run errands and pick up the beef, I stopped at the supermarket for the few ingredients I needed to make beef barley soup.

I found the recipe on MyRecipes.com. I chose it over other recipes I found online primarily because it looked so hearty in the photo and wasn’t tomato-based. Although I made the recipe pretty much as it was written, I wasn’t satisfied with the results. The reason: mushrooms. In my opinion, mushrooms ruin the flavor of this soup.

So here’s my new take on this recipe.

Ingredients:

  • 1 tablespoon olive oil. The original recipe called for cooking spray. But why not use a little olive oil instead?
  • 1 to 1-1/2 pounds stew meat, trimmed and cut into 1/2- to 1-inch pieces. You can make it with less meat, but if you have more, use it. It’ll make a heartier soup. The beef I got was amazingly lean and didn’t need a bit of trimming.
  • 3-4 large carrots, sliced. Carrots are a must-have in any meat-based soup.
  • 2-3 stalks of celery, sliced. The original recipe called for 1-1/2 cups of celery. Seriously? That’s way too much.
  • 1 large onion, chopped. The third member of the aromatic trilogy, I put onions in most soups and stews. The original recipe called for 2/3 cup, but more is better.
  • 1 large parsnip, sliced. If you can’t find parsnips, add another carrot or two.
  • 1 medium turnip, cut into 1/2-inch cubes. This will really round out the root vegetable flavor.
  • 4 cups fat-free, low-sodium beef broth. I could not find real beef broth (vs. “beef flavored” broth) in my supermarket that was both fat free and low sodium. So I bought what I found.
  • 1 bay leaf.
  • 2/3 cup uncooked pearl barley. This was the first time I’d ever bought or cooked barley, despite the fact that I really like beef barley soup. Go figure, huh?
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt. You can probably omit the salt if you don’t use low-sodium beef broth. I did, but then again, I’m trying to keep my salt intake down. Remember you can always add salt; you can’t remove it.
  • 1/2 teaspoon black pepper. Pepper is always good with beef.

Instructions:

These instructions assume you’re making this on the stovetop. I’ll update this blog post when I have pressure cooker instructions. I need to experiment.

  1. Heat oil in a heavy-bottomed pot over medium-high heat.
  2. Add beef to pot; cook 4-6 minutes or until browned, stirring frequently.
  3. Remove beef from pot with a slotted spoon and set aside.
  4. Add vegetables to pot; cook 6-8 minutes or until liquid almost evaporates.
  5. Return beef to pot with beef broth and bay leaf; bring to a simmer over medium-high heat.
  6. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 1 1/2 hours or until beef is tender, stirring occasionally.
  7. Stir in pearl barley; cover and simmer 45 minutes or until pearl barley is tender.
  8. Stir in salt and pepper.
  9. Discard bay leaf before serving.

Keep in mind that the longer you cook the pearl barley or let it sit in the hot soup, the more liquid it will absorb. The net result could be more of a stew than a soup. If you want a soupier soup, either reduce the amount of barley or increase the amount of broth.

This yields about six-eight servings, depending on serving size. I think it would be excellent with some crusty bread on a cold winter day.

Want a printable version of this recipe? Download it as a PDF.

Pressure Cooker Carnitas

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Another pressure cooker recipe.

I’m hooked on this damn pressure cooker. I still can’t believe how tender and juicy meat comes out after cooking for less than an hour.

After Tweeting about the first time I used it, one of my Twitter friends, Laura suggested carnitas. When I asked for a recipe — fully expecting a link — she gave me basic instructions. Very basic. Too basic for me.

So I Googled it and found a recipe on Allrecipes.com. I modified it for my own tastes and pressure cooker. Here’s how I made it. And yes, it came out amazingly good.

Ingredients:

  • 2-1/2 pounds boneless pork shoulder, cut into 1-1/2-inch cubes. I used the country style spareribs and trimmed much of the fat off.
  • 3 tablespoons canola oil. I used olive oil because that’s what I have in the pantry.
  • 2 poblano peppers, roughly chopped. I used 3.
  • 3 jalapeño peppers, roughly chopped. I used 1.
  • 1 serrano pepper, roughly chopped
  • 1 large onion, roughly chopped
  • 4 cloves garlic, roughly chopped. I used garlic from my garden, which was a real pain in the butt to peel.
  • 2 teaspoons ground coriander
  • 1 tablespoon ground cumin
  • 1 1/2 cups beef broth. I used about a cup, which I made with water and powered bouillion. Next time, I’ll use 1/2 cup.

Instructions:

  1. Heat oil and brown pork cubes on all sides.
  2. Stir in remaining ingredients.
  3. Lock down the pressure cooker and cook for 45 minutes. (The recipe stated 60 minutes on medium pressure, but my pressure cooker does low or high — not medium. So I took a wild guess and reduced the time. It worked fine.)
  4. At the end of the cooking period, vent the steam, open the cooker, and serve.

While it cooked, I made guacamole with onions and tomatoes from my garden. I served it with corn tortillas I happened to buy yesterday. It needed salt and pepper to taste. The finished product wasn’t very spicy; I probably could have used more jalapeño peppers. But the meat was, once again, fork tender. And so juicy!

Moroccan Lamb Tajine

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I discover pressure cooking — and love the results.

Yesterday, experimented with a cooking technique that rocked my culinary world: pressure cooking.

The Instant Pot

For years, I thought the only way to get a nice, rich stew with fork-tender pieces of meat was to slow cook it for five or more hours, often in a crock pot. With cool autumn weather coming on, I started thinking about new recipes for hearty stews — comfort food after a long day outdoors hiking or doing yard work. Trouble was, I’d sacrificed my old crock pot — which had to be at least 25 years old — to beeswax processing duties and it was no longer fit to make a meal. I’d done this on purpose to force me to buy a new one with modern features and the time had arrived.

Of course, I’d also been thinking about something to make it easier for me to make yogurt. And I’d been told over and over by friends that I needed a rice cooker. I’d already gotten an ice cream maker. With my mixer, toaster, food processor, and similarly sized appliances, the pantry shelf I’d dedicated to countertop appliance storage was quickly filling up. The ice cream maker and bread machine were already stored in the garage because I didn’t expect to use them very often. I didn’t want any more appliances than I needed. (And, as usual, I use the word “need” very loosely here.)

Instant Pot
The Instant Pot IP-DUO60 7-in-1 Programmable Pressure Cooker.

So I was pretty interested in the Instant Pot I found on Amazon.com. This single device offered seven functions:

  • pressure cooker
  • slow cooker
  • rice cooker
  • sauté/browning
  • yogurt maker
  • steamer
  • warmer

My experience with the computer world taught me one thing: if any piece of software or device claims to do multiple, only slightly related things, it won’t do any of them well. Think about integrated software like Microsoft Works. Word processor, spreadsheet, database all in one package. But none of those pieces were powerful enough for a serious user.

I figured how good could this be? I kept looking.

But I kept coming back to the Instant Pot. With a 4+ rating from 3,960 customer reviews, it had to be good. I started reading reviews.

And I was sold. I bought one last week.

The Recipes

I won’t go into details about the Instant Pot — after all, this is not a product review. I’ll just say that it seems to be well designed and easy to use. I like the stainless steel pot. It’s a good size that fits nicely on my kitchen island when in use and on the shelf in my pantry when not in use.

The Instant Pot comes with two books: an instruction manual in multiple languages and a recipe book in English and what looks like Chinese. Why Chinese? Well, not only is this made in China (like the rest of the merchandise sold in this country), but many of the recipes have an Asian flair. Apparently, devices like this are popular in Asia.

I needed a recipe for its inaugural use, so it made sense to take a recipe from the recipe booklet. These were written specifically for this device and instructions tell you exactly which buttons to push. For example, you start by sautéing onions and browning meat using the sauté feature. Then you seal it up and switch to pressure cooking with that feature. The instructions tell you which buttons to push, thus giving you a use tutorial. It was great to be able to cook the entire meal in one dishwasher-safe pot.

Anyway, here’s the recipe without the Instant Pot-specific instructions; if you have a pressure cooker, you can probably make this at home in yours.

Ingredients:

  • 2-1/2 to 3 pounds of lamb shoulder, cut into pieces. Lamb is not a big seller here in Washington state and I was fortunate enough to be at the supermarket when several packages of lamb were marked 50% off for quick sale. I bought 3 racks of lamb and a boneless leg of lamb that day, saving about $30, and popped them all in my chest freezer. Yesterday, I pulled out that leg of lamb, defrosted it, and cut it into pieces for this recipe.
  • 1 tsp cinnamon powder
  • 1 tsp ginger powder
  • 1 tsp turmeric powder
  • 1 tsp cumin powder
  • 4 tbsp olive oil, divided
  • 2 garlic cloves, crushed. I got lazy and used about a teaspoon of garlic powder.
  • 2 onions, roughly sliced
  • 10 oz prunes, or a mix of dry apricots and raisins. I used the prunes. I actually like prunes.
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 1 cup vegetable stock. I used water plus 1-1/2 tablespoons of Better than Bouillion. (Next time, I’ll reduce this to 1/2 cup total liquid.)
  • 1 cinnamon stick
  • 3 tbsp honey. I used honey from my own bees, of course.
  • Salt and pepper, to taste
  • 3 1/2 oz almonds, toasted
  • sesame seeds

Instructions:

  1. Mix the cinnamon, turmeric, ginger, and garlic with 2 tablespoons of olive oil to make a paste. Spread the paste over the meat and set aside.
  2. Put the prunes in a bowl and add enough boiling water to cover. Cover and set aside.
  3. Heat a pan and add 2 tablespoons of olive oil and the onions. Cook until softened, about 3 minutes.
  4. Remove the onions and set aside.
  5. Add meat to pan and brown on all sides, about 10 minutes.
  6. Add the vegetable broth and deglaze the pan, scraping all browned bits into the sauce.
  7. Put the meat, broth, onions, bay leaf, and cinnamon stick into a pressure cooker. Seal and cook for 35 minutes.
  8. At the end of the cooking cycle, allow pressure to release on its own. That could take up to 20 minutes. Open the cooker when safe.
  9. Add drained, rinsed prunes and honey.
  10. Reduce the liquid by simmering, uncovered, for about 5 minutes.
  11. Sprinkle with toasted almonds and sesame seeds and serve.

The best part about the Instant Pot is that all of the cooking steps can be done in the same pot. No moving ingredients from one cooking vessel to another when switching from sauté to pressure cook to sauté. So at the end of all this, there’s just one pot to clean and the countertop stays remarkably neat.

The Big Surprise

I have to admit that I wasn’t expecting anything special. After all, I’d only cooked the meat for a total of 45 minutes. How tender could it possibly be?

The answer: very tender. The meat was moist but tender enough to break up with a fork. And it was absolutely delicious. I served it over a mixture of rice and quinoa.

So, as you can imagine, I’m thrilled with pressure cooking as an alternative to the all-day crock pot routine. Look at the facts: the pressure cooker enabled me to cook a good, hearty stew that was both tender and tasty, in less than an hour. Who wouldn’t be thrilled?

Got a pressure-cooker recipe to share? Leave a comment on this post so we can all see and try it.