Category Archives: instant pot

Bones To Broth

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I did a freezer restock this past week and had to shuffle around some items. This led to the discovery of some frozen turkey bones. I really needed the freezer space so what better time to use this up. Plus soup season is upon us!!

Into my instant pot went the bones, two kinds onions (they needed used up), chopped garlic, baby carrots, salt/pepper, and a little chicken bouillon to boost the flavor. I pressure cooked this for 90 minutes and then ran everything through fine cheese cloth.

I intend to freeze this so I cleaned and sanitized canning jars for the broth. I made sure to leave lots of room for expansion and popped into the freezer. I think some of this will come out for this Thanksgiving for gravy and the rest will find its way into soups and stews this winter.

Yum!!

Cheesecake Experiment

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Quarantine life is really starting to have an effect on me. I got a wild hair at 7 pm on a weeknight that I wanted to see if I could actually make cheesecake in my instant pot like I keep seeing on social media. I just so happened to have all the ingredients, so in the midst of bedtime preparation for the littles I pulled a recipe off the internet and got to work. It mixed up well and was super easy to get in the cooker.

What I didn’t expect was how “poofy” the cake was when I pulled it out of the cooker. I thought for sure I ruined it. The filling had over spilled and made a cheesy volcano. But I set it out to cool and walked away.

When I came back an hour later I noticed it had receded into something more resembling an actual cheesecake. We let it rest overnight in the fridge and then the family promptly DEVOURED the entire thing. The flavor was very good. I think I need to work on my filling texture and how much to fill the pan. We all voted that this was something we would do again.

PB didn’t much care for the filling and just liked the crust. But Jellybean had a ball experimenting with different toppings. He settled on caramel sauce as the best option. I can’t blame him!

What would you put on top of cheesecake?

Planning Makes My Brain Happy

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I have my planner and my go to crock pot cookbook….I’m ready to take on this busy week. I am really liking the meal planner insert and I’m using the pages to keep of what I accomplish instead of what I have to get done. It’s been empowering in a time of high stress. I am really enjoying my planner and color coding so far in 2020.

Tonight’s recipe is meatloaf and mashed potatoes magically all cooked in my instant pot and waiting for me when the family gets home tonight. It takes some prep time the night before but really the Instant Pot does all the heavy lifting. And bonus, if I call it “Meatloaf Cake” then my kids gobble it up.

Now I need to plan out the rest of the week! Happy Cooking!!

What’s Cooking: Beef Ragu

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I decided to use up some stew beef that had been kicking around my fridge this weekend.

I googled a simple Beef Ragu recipe from the web that was designed to work in my instant pot. I didn’t have all the ingredients exactly so I winged it. It was pretty tasty looking going in…Then upon arrival home I found a steamy pot of deliciousness waiting for me. ~ Side note…A LOT of beef fat had floated to the top. I skimmed it off before shredding the meat you see below~
We didn’t have the right shape of pasta but penne seemed to do nicely.

All in all, it was tasty. The beef was rich, soft and shredded nicely. My toddler turned up his nose but the hubby liked it just fine. I found that it would have been spectacular with something salty to balance the sweet carrots and beef. Maybe some nice shaved parm?? Next time….

Happy Cooking!

Best of Intentions

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I decided to pull out a recipe from my new cookbook for the Instant Pot. I picked the breakfast casserole because I had all the ingredients and it sounded yummy. Basically it’s a steamed egg casserole with spinach, bacon, sausage, cheese, hash browns and seasonings. This is what it looked like before:

I ended up having to cook it for an extra 6 minutes to get the eggs to set and then despite liberal lubrication this is how it came out of the bowl….

I dumped it onto a cookie sheet, added some extra cheese and broiled for several minutes to finish it off. Now it was extremely tasty and loved by toddler and adult alike. Just not very pretty….

The bacon helped to soothe my cooking wounds. Happy Cooking!!