A Beginner Under Pressure: 2016

Thursday, October 13, 2016

Thai Chicken over rice - BIG HIT!!

I've found several new recipes that I'm excited to try!! Thai Chicken, Messy Lasagna, Jamaican Oxtail with Butter Beans and Cabbage Tamales. I found all of these recipes on allrecipes.com They're all dishes that are prepared completely in the pressure cooker in a very short time when compared to other methods of cooking. I plan on making one a week. Now that Tim is home most every night I'm cooking more so I need to make use of this pressure cooker and find a way to make it helpful to me.

Tonight's new dish is Thai Chicken over rice. I love Thai peanut sauce but this also has a lot of coconut milk which I wasn't sure about. Neither Tim or I like the flavor of coconuts that much so I was worried it might be awful but it was worth a try. After all, Tim usually eats anything I make even if I hate it so it rarely goes to waste.

Turns out it was a HUGE hit!!! Absolutely fabulous!! It didn't taste of coconut at all but I think that gave it a wonderful creamy texture. The peanut flavor was there but not overpowering at all. I think it could have used a little more heat and maybe another vegetable in the sauce. One of the reviews on allrecipes.com suggested using red bell pepper and baby spinach which sounds quite good and I think I'll be adding that next time.

There is no rice in this picture because I was so excited to eat it I forgot to take a picture. By the time I finished and went to take a picture Tim had eaten all the rice. I had only made 3 cps of rice for the two of us. I'll make fresh rice when we eat the leftovers.

THAI CHICKEN OVER RICE

· 1 ¼ cup hot salsa

· ½ cup chunky peanut butter

· 1 can coconut milk – shake it before you open it

· 2 tablespoons lime juice

· 1 tablespoon soy sauce

· 1 teaspoon ginger

· 3 pounds skinless boneless chicken

· ½ cup chopped peanuts, for topping

· ½ cup chopped cilantro, for topping

· 6 cups cooked white rice

1. Combine the salsa, peanut butter, coconut milk, lime juice, soy sauce, and ginger in the pressure cooker. Set on Saute to heat the mixture just enough to warm up the peanut butter so it will blend in, then turn off Saute.

2. Trim the chicken and cut each piece into 2-3 pcs. Put the chicken in the cooker and make sure it’s all down in the sauce.

3. Place the lid on the cooker and using the Chicken setting, cook until chicken is very tender and sauce has thickened, approx. 20min.

4. To serve, spoon white rice onto your plate, place 2-3 pieces of chicken on the rice and spoon the delicious sauce over all. Garnish with peanuts and cilantro.

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/213748/franks-favorite-slow-cooker-thai-chicken/ This link shows the original recipe with slow cooker directions

Sunday, October 9, 2016

Cheesy Chicken Enchiladas - Success!

This was really my first time to try cooking chicken in the pressure cooker and it went really, really well. It was nice to find something that cooked the way I wanted it to within the pre-set amount of time for that item. None of the pre-sets have worked so far, not even the one for rice or beans so I was beginning to suspect that none of the pre-sets were worth a damn. This was perfect tho. I wanted to shred this chicken and as I pulled the pieces out of the pot it was falling into pieces. Perfect!

I've always used chicken breasts before but this time I had a big pack of chicken thighs that I picked up on the discount meat counter. They were also skinless, boneless so I figured they would be fine. It's possible that breasts would take a bit longer because they're so thick. When I use breasts i will cut them up into 3-4 pieces to make sure they cook in the pre-set time and to make them a bit easier to shred.

The only bad thing is that this wasn't something we could have for dinner when it came out of the pot. I find that a lot of pressure cooker recipes are to prepare something that is used to make something else. This isn't really what I had in mind when I got this thing. I wanted to be able to fix quick, easy meals in it. It's partly my fault for being to picky I suppose.

I totally forgot to take a picture of it which is a damn shame cause it was really good. I used the shredded chicken to make my Cheesy Chicken Enchiladas which are delicious. I tried several chicken enchilada recipes before I found one that I really like. I'm putting that recipe here too so they're both together.

Mexican Shredded Chicken

6 skinless, boneless chicken breasts or 9 skinless, boneless chicken thighs
1 packet of Taco seasoning
1 can diced tomatoes
1/2 cp of water

Trim the chicken of all fat and place the chicken in a pressure cooker. Pour the whole can of diced tomatoes over the chicken. Sprinkle with the taco seasoning. Give it a stir, seal and use the Chicken setting on the cooker. It's 20 min on mine and the chicken came out perfect.

Remove the chicken from the pressure cooker and place in a med bowl, use 2 forks to shred the chicken. Once it's completely shredded, use a slotted spoon to get the diced tomatoes out and add to the chicken along with about 1/3 cp of the liquid This will keep the chicken moist and well seasoned.

Use this shredded chicken in any Mexican dish; enchiladas, tacos, burritoes, quesadillas, etc. I usually make it to use with my Cheesy Chicken Enchiladas.

Cheesy Chicken Enchiladas

3 cps shredded or diced, see Mexican Shredded Chicken recipe
1 can Fiesta Nacho Cheese soup
1/2 cp milk
1 can enchilada sauce - divided
½ cp chunky salsa

12 corn tortillas
Shredded cheddar cheese
Diced tomatoes
Sour cream

Mix soup and milk, microwave 1 min to get it warm so the soup blends better. Add half the can of enchilada sauce, and salsa. Stir about 1 cp of this soup/enchilada sauce mixture into the chicken.

Pour the other half can of enchilada sauce into the bottom of a baking dish and spread it out evenly. Heat the tortillas in the microwave. Spoon some of the chicken mixture down the center of each tortilla then top with some shredded cheese. Roll the sides over and place it seam side down in the baking dish.

Spoon the rest of the soup/enchilada sauce mixture over each one, spreading it out to cover as much of the tortilla as possible. Bake at *350 20-30 min until heated thru. Serve with sour cream, diced tomatoes and a little extra cheese.

Cheesy Chicken Enchiladas - Success!

Sunday, August 14, 2016

Chicken Enchilada Pasta - GREAT!!

I found a great website with lots of good pressure cooker recipes that aren’t all soups and stews. Tonight I tried a new recipe that turned out really well! It’s basically a casserole sort of thing and I’m excited to see that I can do something like this in the pressure cooker!! This is what I had in mind when I got the thing. From start to finish It took less than 30 min to prepare. Only 4 min in the pressure cooker! I didn't think it would be long enough but it was. Good surprise! http://www.pressurecookingtoday.com/recipe-index/

Chicken Enchilada Pasta

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

1 cup diced onion

2 cloves garlic, diced

1 can (19 oz.) enchilada sauce

1 (10 oz.) can Rotel tomatoes – unless you like spicy use Mild Rotel or even plain diced tomatoes

1 1/4 cup water

1.25 oz package taco seasoning mix

3-4 boneless skinless chicken breasts, uncooked and chopped

3 cups dried rotini pasta

2 cups shredded Mexican cheese

Green onions, olives, diced tomatoes, and cilantro to garnish

Select Saute and add oil to the pressure cooking pot. When oil is hot, add onion and sauté until tender, about 5 minutes. Add garlic and sauté till the onions are opaque.

Add enchilada sauce, tomatoes, water, and taco seasoning mix to pressure cooking pot; stir to combine. Add diced chicken breasts and pasta.

Cover and lock lid in place. Select High Pressure and 4 minutes cook time. When timer beeps, turn off pressure cooker and use a quick pressure release.

Select sauté and cook, stirring often, until the pasta is tender about 1 minute.*

Turn off pressure cooker and pour pasta into an 8x8 baking dish. Sprinkle the cheese on top of the pasta and broil until the cheese is melted and starting to brown.**

Served topped with green onions, olives, diced tomatoes and cilantro.

* I found the pasta to be perfectly cooked at the end of the 4 minutes.

** No way am I dirtying another dish just to melt cheese on this. We just dished it up and added cheese. It melted just fine and I don’t have more dishes to clean.

This turned out really well!! Tim absolutely loved it!! I thought it was on the edge of to spicy. I think I’ll try Mild Rotel tomatoes next time. It will keep a little spice but not to much. I grabbed a handful of chips to have with mine too. I like a good crunch!

This recipe is from the Pressure Cooking Today website.

http://www.pressurecookingtoday.com/chicken-enchilada-pasta/

Saturday, May 21, 2016

Pork Ribs - Delicious!!

I got some lovely boneless pork ribs the other day and I decided to cook them in the pressure cooker. I took the lesson I learned from the roasts I did awhile back and I set it for 90 min instead of using the Pork setting. I am annoyed by these settings. Why even make a Pork or Beef setting if you aren't going to make it long enough to actually cook anything? The ribs turned out fall apart tender, moist and delicious!!

To be honest there isn't really a recipe because it's just the meat and BBQ sauce. Of course you can use whatever BBQ sauce you like.

Pork Ribs - Pressure Cooker
3 lbs pork ribs, boneless
1-18 oz bottle BBQ sauce (Sweet Baby Ray's Sweet & Spicy)
1/2 cp water

Place the meat in the pressure cooker. Add the water to the cooker. Put about 1/3 cp of the BBQ sauce in a small dish and then pour the rest of the BBQ sauce over the ribs. Seal the pot, set it for 90 min and start it.

When it's done remove the ribs from the cooker and put them in a bowl. Pour the reserved sauce over the cooked ribs and toss gently to coat with the sauce.

BBQ Pork Ribs with Fried Potatoes and Watermelon

This was the first watermelon of the summer and it was perfect. Crisp and delicious!! I love me some watermelon.

For dessert I made a Brownie Cookie or a Brownkie. We got one from Pizza Hut a few weeks ago and it was delicious so Tim was asking me to make one at home. He kept talking about how good it would be with vanilla ice cream. Obviously I didn't make it in the pressure cooker but it an experiment that turned out really well. I couldn't find a recipe online that I liked. There were only two that were even done the way I wanted. Most of the recipes were a layer of cookie and a layer of brownie but I wanted it to be more intermingled than that.

Brownie Cookie - Brownkie or Cooknie

1 Betty Crocker Milk Chocolate Brownie Mix

1 Betty Crocker Chocolate Chip Cookie Mix

1 13x9 cake pan

Set the oven to 350* and put the dry cake pan it in to warm. Prepare each mix as directed on the package. Remove the warm pan from the oven and spray it lightly with cooking spray. Pour the brownie mix in the cake pan and let it sit a couple of minutes. The warm pan will help the mix spread out evenly. You need an even layer of brownie.

Crumble the cookie mix and drop it in bits across the top of the brownie mix. It doesn't exactly crumble in the way something dry does but try to keep it in small clumps as it drops on the brownie. It won't cover the brownie completely but you don't want it to. The top will be very uneven but it will even out as you bake it.

Put it in the oven and bake 30 min or until a toothpick comes out clean. The edge should be quite soft to the touch when hot, they will firm up as it cools.

Using the mixes makes this so easy to make and they were fabboo!

Monday, March 28, 2016

Rice with Veggies - Really good

I wanted to make some rice in the pressure cooker to go with the grilled pork chops that we had for dinner tonight. It was definitely a learning experience but it turned out really good and next time it will be even better. What I'm picking up on is that what the user guide says about how long things should cook is completely unreliable. This is really frustrating to me because I don't know what I'm doing. If I can't rely on the user guide to give me a good idea of how long to set the cooker for I just have to learn by trial and error. Arrrggghh!

The recipe called for brown rice and long grain rice. The guide says that brown rice needs 17-20 min and long grain needs 7-8 min plus there are fresh veggies in it. The rice setting on the cooker is 10 min so the plan was to start it with the liquid, seasoning and brown rice for 10 min. Then add the long grain and veggies for another 10 min cycle. The problem was that the long grain wasn't done at the end of that second cycle. It was crunchy crittters! So I poured in a little more broth and ran it another 10 min cycle. At that point the rice was all nicely done but the veggies were way overcooked. Argh!

Brown Rice with veggies - Pressure cooker
1 1/4 cp brown rice
3/4 cp wild rice
2 1/2 cp chicken broth - low sodium
Garlic powder
Onion powder
2 bay leaves
Black pepper

3 Tbls butter
1 green bell pepper, chopped
1 red bell pepper, chopped
4 med carrots, sliced 1/2"

Put the chicken broth in the cooker and add the rice. Add all of the seasonings. Set for one 10 min rice cycle. Release the pressure and add the butter and the veggies. Just leave them on top and do not stir it all together. Set for another 10 min rice cycle.

This is slightly different from the way I cooked it tonight. I want to try it with the wild rice once. After that I may just go with straight brown rice. I don't see the point in mixing the brown and long grain.

EDIT - I made this again and it turned out perfect! The rice was cooked, nice and fluffy and the veggies were perfect as well. However I think I'll try switching up the veggies a bit. Leave out the green pepper, more carrots and maybe whole pea pods

Pork Roast - Success

I pulled a package of pork out of the freezer yesterday thinking it was a large package of pork chops. When I opened it I realized it was two pork roasts. Oops! So what do I do now?? I cut one of the roast up to go ahead with my plan of grilled chops. I decided to try the other roast in the pressure cooker. Because of the beef roast not turning out so well yesterday I thought I should try this one today and set the cooker for longer. I set it for the full 99 min that is the longest it will go for and it turned out AMAZING!!! Def doing this on any larger cuts of beef/pork from now on.

It was so tender and juicy and delicious!! I loved it and my husband really, really loved it. In the picture I have spooned some of the broth with the onions over it.

Pressure Cooker Pork Roast
1 2-4 lb pork roast
1 lrg onion - sliced
Garlic powder
Onion powder
Celery salt
Montreal Steak seasoning
Black pepper
2 cps chicken broth

Place two slices of onion on the bottom of the cooker and place the roast on top. Holding the meat off the bottom of the pan keeps it from making a hard to scrub off mess.

Add the chicken broth and then sprinkle the roast with the seasonings. Seal up the pressure cooker and set it for 99 min. I could have made a nice gravy out of the broth but we really liked it just the way it is spooned over the roast.

I like it with yams and you don't want gravy with that anyway.

Sunday, March 27, 2016

Roast Beef - Not Great

Again, I haven't used the pressure cooker nearly as often as I had planned. I blame a lack of recipes that aren't for soup or stew. I also have to acknowledge the fact that I'm pretty picky so there are fewer recipes that sound good to me than would sound good to Tim. He likes everything!

Today is Easter and I decided to do a small roast since it's just Tim and I. I've done my roasts in my crock pot forever. I start them one night, cook them low and slow for 20-22 hrs. They always turn out awesome!! Juicy and fall apart tender with a delicious au jus. It's great but if I don't remember to get it started the night before it isn't as good. Starting it in the morning just isn't the same.

Soooo anyway, I tried it in the pressure cooker today. The Beef setting on the cooker is supposed to be for cuts up to 3lbs and runs for 26 min. The recipe said to cook the roast for 45 min total. This is kind of annoying to me because I feel like the Beef setting should automatically set for a longer time.

Pressure Cooker Roast Beef

Ingredients

2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 (3 pound) boneless beef chuck roast, trimmed
ground black pepper to taste
1 pinch seasoned salt, or to taste
1 pinch onion powder, or to taste

1 (14.5 ounce) can beef broth
1 1/2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1 large onion, cut into 4 wedges
4 carrots, peeled and cut into bite-size pieces
4 large potatoes, peeled and cut into bite-size pieces

Directions

Heat oil in a pressure cooker over medium-high heat. Brown roast on all sides in the hot oil; season with pepper, seasoned salt, and onion powder.
Pour in beef broth and Worcestershire sauce, add the quartered onion, and seal the lid. Bring the cooker up to full pressure. Reduce heat to low, maintaining full pressure, and cook for 30 minutes.
Use the quick-release method to lower the pressure. Mix in carrots and potatoes, seal the lid again, and return the pressure cooker to the heat. Bring the cooker up to full pressure and cook for an additional 15 minutes. Use the quick-release method again and transfer the roast and vegetables to a serving dish.

The above is the recipe I used. I did not cook the potatoes and carrots with the roast. I chose to boil my potatoes for mashed potatoes. So I just set the cooker for 45 min right from the start. It didn't come out great. It was dry and somewhat tough. Not shoe leather tough but certainly not fall apart tender either. I plan on trying it one more time and setting it to run for 90 min to see how it turns out. If it's still not tender I'll go back to my crock pot.

I totally forgot to take pictures and now we've eaten most of it. Oops!

Oh btw, the gravy turned out delicious! I strained the broth, put it in a small pan with 3 Tbls of flour and heated it on the stove top. It was really good over my mashed taters.

Thursday, January 28, 2016

Charro Beans - Success

I haven't been using my pressure cooker like I had planned. I didn't use it at all in December but I got back into it tonight. I have this great recipe for these delicious Charro Beans but I've always done them in the crock pot cooking for 8 hrs. I was worried that it wouldn't be as flavorful in the pressure cooker but it turned out really, really well.

I tried a few recipes for beans with a spicy mexican flair and most of them were super bland!! I was excited to find this recipe a couple of years ago. It's better than any beans I've ever had in a restaurant.

I added everything to the pot and pushed the button for beans which sets it for 15 min. After it was over the beans weren't quite done. They were tasty but not fully cooked, not crunchy but not nearly as soft as they need to be.

This is the beans after the first time around in the pressure cooker. You can see that there is to much liquid and the beans aren't done.

So I sealed it up and ran it for another 'bean' cooking cycle. I was really worried that they would end up way overcooked but they turned out perfect! Definitely cooked through but not mushy at all.

So all in all, prep time through letting the final steam off it took about 1 hr 15 min or so. In the crock pot it took 8 hrs in cooking time only. I love that I can use dried beans and still get it done relatively quickly. I did not soak the beans at all, simply rinsed them.

This is the way the beans came out when they had completely cooked. They are so flavorful and delicious!

Charro Beans - makes about 8 cps of beans

· 1/2 pound bacon

· 1 pound dry pinto beans

· 4 cups water

· 2 cups beef broth

· 6 cloves garlic, minced

· 2 jalapeno (seeds & membranes removed), diced

· 1 tablespoon cumin

· 1 teaspoon garlic powder

· 1 teaspoon chili powder

· 1 (15-ounce) can Rotel (diced tomatoes & green chiles)

· 1 bunch fresh cilantro leaves, chopped

· Salt & freshly ground black pepper

Directions

Cut up the raw bacon and cook it until just crispy, pour into the pressure cooker.

Include the bacon grease for maximum flavor.

Place beans in a colander, rinse well, and remove any stones or shriveled beans. Pour beans into slow cooker. Cover with water and beef broth. Add garlic, jalapeño, cumin, garlic powder, and chili powder.

Stir in Rotel and 2/3 of the chopped cilantro, seal and using the Beans button on the pressure cooker bring it up to pressure and cook. My cookers Bean setting cooks for 15 min and I had to run it twice to get the beans cooked through.

When the beans are done stir in the rest of the fresh cilantro and serve.

Tips
Always use fresh dry beans, as old beans can take

much longer to become tender (and may possibly never soften!)

Dicing jalapenos can be intense!

There are fumes that I can't smell but they make me cough something fierce!

Also, be careful about touching your eyes, nose, etc after chopping any hot pepper. The oils will burn you like no other. Because of this I recommend using a food chopper to get them dice up really fine.

For a milder version reduce to one jalapeno and reduce the amount of chili powder to ½ tsp. I believe it would still be flavorful but I’ve never tried it so I can’t say for sure.