My almost instant love affair with my instant pot!

I first heard about the instant pot about two years ago, and I didn't have any experience with pressure cooking. My mom didn't do it, I wasn't into canning and I'd never encountered one before but I was intrigued by the quick cooking times. Then my work-wife got one and kept bringing delicious instant pot leftovers for lunch and I knew I needed one too. Now, I am totally in love with it!

If you are thinking about getting on the instant pot bandwagon, here are some tips for you!

Size

We are a family of two but like leftovers, so we got a 6-quart. Since you can't fill the pot as full as say a crock pot, it's good to have some extra space, personally I wouldn't bother with a mini. If you have several children (especially teenagers!) you will probably want an 8-quart, or if you do a lot of big batch cooking. They have a 5-quart but if you are thinking about that size, you might as well get a 6. If you are on the fence about size, check out the post I wrote devoted to what size Instant Pot to buy!

Keep in mind it does take up a fair amount of space, our 6-quart is about the same size as our toaster oven and basically lives on our counter because we use it enough.

Preparation!

You definitely need to give a cursory read to the manual. I have never read a manual for a cooking appliance before that but I was really glad that my work-wife told me to do it when I got mine. Otherwise, you will not take it out of the box.

What can you make with the instant pot?

You can make the same kinds of things generally in an instant pot that you would make in a crock pot but much faster. If you generally like crock pot meals, you will probably like instant pot meals too. There are some additional things you can do in the instant pot too however.

It's great for soups, stews, pulled pork and shredded chicken that taste like they have been cooking all day but are ready in less than an hour. Often much less.

Some of the cook times you see for the instant pot are a little misleading because they only list the 5 or 10 minute cook time but you also need to wait for it to come to pressure, which can take a while if it's really full. However, for certain items I feel like it's still a huge time saver (ie baked potatoes, winter squashes).

You can speed up the amount of time it takes to build pressure by warming it up using the saute function while you are adding your ingredients. Also, keep in mind that your oven also needs to preheat. :-)

So where is the instant pot advantage?

There are 2 big areas where the instant pot kicks a crock pots ass!

1) Cook time: have you ever planned on having a crock meal for dinner but then you were too busy in the morning to get it ready or just plain forgot to do it? Well with an instant pot you can still have pulled pork in an hour and a half if you want.

2) Saute mode: You can braise or cook your meats or other items right in the same pot before you pressure cook everything else. Fewer dishes! I really love this feature also for melting cheese on things after it pressure cooks, it's really fast too because it's higher temp (there are multiple temp choices) than even a slow cooker on high.

And it kicks my oven's rear in area number 3:
3) Not watching it: In this area it's like a slow cooker. You turn it on and go about your business, then it will beep, you release the pressure and it's ready to go. This is really great for pasta for example that you'd watch on the stove to make sure it didn't cook over.

The one thing that was weird when I first got it was not only do you not have to watch it, you can't see what it's doing at all. You can't open it to check it while it's pressure cooking. Now I trust it to work but at the beginning I was like what is this? What's happening in there?

There is definitely a learning curve with the instant pot but I am really glad I got one, even though I didn't need it, I love it.

Check out my suggested recipes for new instant pot owners and which accessories are the most useful.

This post contains some affiliate links, I will receive a small commission if you buy from these links. Thank you for your support.

Mini peanut butter cheesecakes

These mini cheesecakes whip up in no time and are delicious. They bake much faster than a full sized cheesecake and since they're small, you can eat two without guilt!

Ingredients:

2 packages (8 ounces each) cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
3   eggs
1 cup sour cream
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups of creamy peanut butter
24 Oreos
cupcake liners
muffin pans

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Put cupcake liners into a muffin tin for 24 mini-cheesecakes. Put an Oreo in the bottom of each liner (for the crust). Beat all of the other ingredients in a large mixing bowl and put about a 1/4 cup of filling in each cupcake liner until it's full. Bake in the preheated oven for 18-20 minutes. Allow to cool and chill for 3 hours prior to serving.

You can also top them with whipped cream if you like!

Simple (non-authentic) pork wonton soup

Wonton packed soup!

If you haven’t visited your local Asian market, you really need to check it out! Though I sometimes find it a little overwhelming since I don’t know what 90% of the things they sell are for, let alone how to use them (packages are often not in English) if you look around a little you can find some really great stuff that is easy to use even if you don’t speak Chinese/Korean/Japanese J

My favorite aisle is the frozen dumpling aisle. In part because I know what they are and how to cook them but mostly because there are SO many different kinds of dumplings. I buy different ones every time I go there (hint: we never like the shrimp dumplings). However, I always make sure I pick up some pork wontons for making soup.

Full disclosure: my wonton soup is really, really not authentic. I have no idea how they make it in Asian restaurants but this tastes good.

This is an easy recipe and as such it’s not an exact science, I usually just throw it together and have put together the rough directions to share. If you aren’t a “throw it together” type of cook, power through, I promise you can do this one too.

Ingredients:

1lb mild Italian Sausage (I use turkey sometimes and pork sometimes)

3 stalks diced celery

Optional: additional diced veggies if you are feeling healthy! Options include onions, bell peppers, zucchini and mushrooms

1 cube bullion (chicken or veggie is fine)

1 tb garlic

1 tb onion powder (you might omit if adding onions)

Fresh ground pepper to taste

3 TB soy sauce

1 tb white vinegar

Water

A few splashes of fish sauce

Directions:

Remove sausage from casings and crumble in the bottom of a large soup pot (I use a 5 qt cast iron Dutch oven). Cook the sausage on med-high heat, crumbling it as it cooks (you might need to add a small bit of oil if the sausage is very lean). When the sausage is 50% cooked, add the diced celery and any additional veggies you’d like and all the spices. When the sausage is fully cooked, pour enough water in to fully cover the contents of the pot. Add the bouillon cube, soy sauce, vinegar and fish sauce. Boil 5-10 minutes.

Add your wontons and additional water so the contents are still covered and boil another 10-15 minutes until the wontons are fully cooked.

Makes approx. 8 bowl-sized servings of soup

Enjoy!

Pad See Ewe - the best EVER Thai dish

If you have ever eaten take out with me, you know that I have a strong preference for Asian food, both Thai and Chinese. Normally, I don't see the appeal in getting take out that I could make myself at home and my common refrain is "yeah, but that is just as sandwich."

I used to get Thai almost weekly with one of my friends. When I lived in DC, I also had the "Pad See Ewe Summer" where myself and a few other Pad See Ewe (PSE) enthusiasts went to many, many Thai restaurants in the District to see which one made the best PSE.

This delectable dish, goes by many different spellings - Pad Si Ew & Pad See Ewe being the most common. If you haven't tried it yet, RUN do not WALK to your nearest Thai restaurant. When you are totally hooked, come back here and we will try to make it at home together.

A word of warning, PSE noodles are the great white whale of ingredients. At least they have been for me, I have literally gone to 3-4 Asian groceries and had an unsuccessful Amazon search before I finally found them at a massive Asian Market called Li Ming's in Durham, NC, that I had been meaning to visit for the last year, for the express purpose of finding PSE noodles. Now that I know they have have them I will definitely be back.

Li Ming's also carries what is definitely the largest selection of soy sauce I have ever seen. I am not even nearly culturally equipped enough to shop at this store; I can only identify uses for about a 1/2 of the items they carry.

But the point is, if you cannot find the fresh flat rice noodles, you can substitute dried rice noodles. Sometimes, you gotta make it work.

My weekly Thai food eating friend, sent me a PSE recipe she made a few weeks ago which spurred on my desire to go to Li Ming's. I like to have "saucy" and "eggy" PSE, so I made a few alterations, I have put the recipe I used below with my alterations.

PSE

• 1 head broccoli, chopped
• 3 tablespoon Dark Soy Sauce
• 2 eggs
• 1 lb Fresh Flat Rice Noodles
• 2 cloves chopped garlic
• 6 tablespoons regular Soy Sauce
• 2 tablespoon sugar  
• 1/2 lb, your protein of choice, sliced thin or extra veggies
• 2 tablespoon olive or other cooking oil

If your fresh flat rice noodles are not pre-cut, cut them into strips of 1 inch wide. Chop your broccoli (Chinese or regular) into pieces. Heat a wok or large skillet to high heat and then add 2 tablespoons of oil. Drop in the chopped garlic and stir. Add your protein and saute to cook. While your protein cooks, mix your soy sauces and sugar together in a bowl on the side. When your protein is almost fully cooked, add your sliced rice noodles and pour you sauce over it, stir it together.

Push your noodles to the side, clearing a space to drop in your eggs. Put the eggs into the open space and scramble them until fully cooked, then mix them in with the noodles. Add broccoli and stir together. Let it heat in the pan for a few minutes to cook the broccoli and give yourself a little char on the noodles. PSE is not normally spicy, but if you want a little kick, add some cayenne pepper now.

The verdict:
Even with increasing the amount of sauce, I still felt it could have been saucier, so I'll need to work on that. I think this sauce isn't quite right also, it's good and it's close but it's not perfect. I might need a little fish sauce or oyster sauce, or something. I'm not quite sure yet, I'll keep trying! I also, did not include this in my recipe but I made mine vegetarian, so I added some cabbage and bean sprouts I had. Normally, I like my PSE with chicken but the veggies were good too! They soaked up the sauce nicely.

It was also surprisingly quick to make! I will definitely be making this again and keep fine tuning the sauce as I go.

Butter nut flavored whipped cream!

I have tried a new whipped cream flavor and I had to share because it is the BEST one thus far.

For my birthday I had a Harry Potter themed costume party (yes, I'm that friend) and I of course made butter beer and as a result I had some butter extract hanging around the kitchen. If you recall, I really, really like making fresh whipped cream with my whipped cream gizmo. I was mixing up some cream and the butter extract was there so I put it in. Wow is it good.

Butter whipped cream
1 pint of heavy cream
3-5 Tb of Agave syrup (or 3-5 Tb of powdered sugar)
1 tsp of butter flavor extract

The extract gives it a nice off-white color that I found made it look more delicious. Does that sound weird? Well try it and see what you think.

This was an excellent "basic" whipped cream, almost like plain vanilla and can be used with a variety of other flavors. I was mostly eating in on berries and oranges and BF was putting it in his morning coffee. I expect this to be the new standard at our house instead of vanilla.

Nutella Speckulas Cheesecake

Bf and I were supposed to go to a friend's place for dinner this week, so I made a cheesecake. Then it was cancelled, so oh well, we'll just eat the whole thing!

A few years back I was experimenting with nutella cookies, this time I wanted to make a nutella cheesecake. One of the really great things about cheesecake is you can add about a cup of anything and give it a different flavor without messing up the baking science too much. Experiment!

When I went to the grocery store, I was excited to see Speckulas cookies! If your not familiar with speckulas, they're a spiced German/Dutch cookie commonly eaten in the fall and around Christmas time. They are very thin and normally shaped like windmills.  My boyfriend has been steadily working his way through the leftover cookies for the last few days.

If you're trying to find speckulas, I found mine at Aldi but you can also try World Market or Trader Joe's, I have seen them at both. If it's not fall you might have a hard time, in which case you can use a graham cracker crust or try shortbread!

If you have a basic cheesecake recipe you like, you can use it and just mix in 1 cup of nutella. If you cannot find speckulas Or if you need a little more direction you can follow my recipe here:

Crust:
25 speckulas cookies (about 1 cup crumbs)
1/4 cup butter or margarine, melted
1 tablespoon sugar (optional - I think the cookies already have enough, you might taste one first)

Filling:
2 packages (8 ounces each) cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
3   eggs
1 heaping cup nutella
1 teaspoon vanilla or almond extract

Preheat oven to 350°F. Place speckulas cookies in a zip bag. Crush into fine crumbs using rolling pin. Combine crumbs, butter and sugar (optional); mix well. Press crumb mixture onto bottom of springform pan . Bake 10 minutes. Remove from oven to cool.

Meanwhile, place cream cheese in large mixing bowl with sugar, flour, eggs, and vanilla or almond; beat until smooth. Pour batter over slightly cooled crust. Return to oven. Bake 50-55 minutes until center is just set.

Remove from oven. Cool 20 minutes and carefully run sharp knife around edges of cheesecake. Allow to cool and refrigerate until thoroughly chilled.

Enjoy!

fried "rice" quinoa

Over the past two years, quinoa has quickly become one of my favorite grains! If you haven't tried this super food yet, you are seriously missing out! Don't let the funny name intimidate you! It has a slightly nutty flavor in my opinion but you can use it basically as a substitute for rice.

It's definitely pricier than rice, if you have a Trader Joe's nearby I have found them to have the most competitive prices for quinoa.

Quinoa made like fried rice has become a favorite meal for boyfriend and I, especially during the busy work week. It's gluten free and can be made as a vegetarian main dish or as a side dish.

Quinoa fried "rice" as a side for ginger chicken

Ingredients:

1 cup quinoa
Chicken or vegetable bouillon (use vegetable to make it vegetarian)
1 Tb of olive oil 
1 Tb of minced garlic
1/2 cup chopped celery
1/2 cup frozen or fresh peas
1/2 cup chopped carrots
1-2 large eggs

for sauce:
2 Tb of soy sauce
1 Tb of Teriyaki sauce
1 Tb of sesame oil (can substitute olive oil)

Directions:
Rinse quinoa in a mesh strainer. Cook quinoa in bouillon, refer to package directions for the amount of liquid needed to cook 1 cup of quinoa, typically 2 cups of liquid. Allow quinoa to cool, this step can be completed the day before.

Heat 1 Tb of olive oil in a a large skillet, add the garlic and cook for one minute. Add peas and celery and cook for 2-3 minutes or until they are about half of your desired tenderness. If you are using frozen peas, you might need to cook slightly longer than 3 minutes. Add in carrots, mixing them with the other vegetables.

Add cooked quinoa to the skillet and mix with vegetables for a few minutes allowing the quinoa to heat up. While the quinoa is warming, mix all of the sauce ingredients together in small bowl. When the quinoa is warm, pour the sauce over the top and stir all ingredients together.

Push the quinoa and vegetables to one side of the pan, making a small pocket of empty space. Crack eggs in the small pocket of empty space and scramble them a few minutes until cooked fully. Note this can be done in a separate pan if you don't have enough room. When the eggs are fully cooked, mix them in with the quinoa and vegetables thoroughly. Serve hot.

Servings: 2 main dish or 4-5 as a side dish