Loaded Baked Potato Soup - Instant Pot

Who doesn't love loaded bake potato soup?  All hot and creamy, topped with a dollop of sour cream, shredded cheese and bacon. Serve it with a crusty loaf of bread and you've got yourself a really hearty meal.  I have made this soup in a crock pot several times and wondered if it could be done in the instant pot.  After checking out a couple of recipes, and a few trial runs, this one turned out to be not only the easiest, but the best.

Delicious, yummy loaded bake potato soup!

 Note: I got this recipe from www.belleofthekitchen.com
 She also has a video play by play on her site which is super helpful.

Ingredients:
2 Tablespoon butter
1 medium onion diced (or half bag of frozen chopped onions)
3 cloves of garlic minced (or a spoon full of diced jarred minced garlic)
3 cups of chicken broth
1 small can cream of chicken soup
4 large russet potatoes or 7-8 smaller russet potatoes chopped into 1 in cubes
1 1/2 teaspoons of seasoned salt 
   black pepper to taste
1 Tablespoon of flour
1 cup of milk
2 cups of shredded cheese (i used mild cheddar and a jack/cheddar mix)

Garnish:
Cooked bacon chopped up, or real bacon bits
Sour cream
Shredded cheddar cheese


Put 2 Tablespoon of butter into the Instant Pot and turn on "Saute" function.  Add in chopped onions and cook until soft (3-4 minutes). 

You gotta love the saute function!

Add in garlic and cook for an additional minute, making sure the garlic doesn't burn

Steamy garlic vision

Add in 3 cups of chicken broth, the small can of cream of chicken soup, stir

It's smelling pretty good right about now

Add in cubed potatoes, salt, pepper, to the pot.  Stir until well combined. 

Hey potatoes, are you really going to be fork-soft in 10 short minutes? Let's find out.

Place lid on the Instant Pot, turn the vent valve to "sealing" and cook on manual high pressure for 10 minutes.  

My instant pot with it's new pretty cover

Quick release the pressure.

What it looks like when you open the lid

Meanwhile, stir together the 1 tablespoon of flour and the 1 cup of milk with a whisk until it creates a slurry and set aside.  

I think it's easier to add the milk to the flour than the other way around

Once the steam is completely released and the pin has dropped, open the lid and add in the slurry.  Turn to pot to saute and cook the soup for 4-5 minutes, until thickened. 

Hey we're getting somewhere! I also used my Pampered Chef meat utensil to help mush up some of the poatoes.

Stir in the two cups of shredded cheese and stir until melted.

Everything is better with cheese.

 Cook until thickened. Taste and season at the end.

Seasoning is the key to non-bland soups.

Serve garnished with a dollop of sour cream, bacon chunks, and some extra cheddar cheese.  

Yummy loaded baked potato soup

Also a nice buttery crusty loaf of french break goes nicely as a "dipper" for the soup.

Activate smell-o-vision now.

Also toppings are key here, don't skimp!

The more the merrier!

My children are weird, well 2/3 of them are.  They don't like mashed potatoes, but they love french fries.  When my youngest said "What's for dinner" I told her it was "french fry soup with bacon"... and guess what? She bought it!  She had a whole bowl and proclaimed it "yummy"!  The middle child wasn't so fooled but I will still count this as a victory.  

The bread fell in, so sad we had to scoop it out - and devour it.

This was a very delicious and hearty week night dinner that the whole family enjoyed (minus one - there's always the one). I am always surprised how the instant pot cooks old school crock pot dishes in a flash.  You don't need all day to get all day flavor these days!  Hooray for science, and Instant Pots.

 Enjoy!!

Intant Pot - Chicken for Tacos

Will the wonders of the Instant Pot never cease? So here's a scenario: You've been busy all day, and suddenly it's 5 o'clock! Did you plan something for dinner? Well of course you didn't, it's been a crazy day! Is there going to be other humans depending on you to whip something up regardless?  Why yes, yes there is.  Enter the Instant Pot. It will take FROZEN Costco chicken breasts and turn them into a meal in 15+minutes. That's right, you heard me.  Once again defying the laws of cooking physics, the Instant Pot will save the day.

The Instant pot: Cooking frozen chicken and saving one dinner at a time.

This is what you will need:

4-5 frozen Costco chicken breasts
1 cup of your favorite salsa
1 cup of water
1/2 cup taco seasoning (also from Costco)
Salt and pepper to taste.

It's super easy. Plunk down the frozen breasts into the bottom of the pot.

The "clang" the frozen chicken hits the pot is somewhat unsettling, but oh the payoff in a few short minutes!

Dump over the salsa, water, taco seasoning, and salt and pepper.

Chicken Taco meat, it's almost too easy

Seal the lid and plug in the machine. Hit the "Poultry" setting which will give you a default time of 15 min on high pressure.  Let the pot do it's thang.

While the chicken is coming up to temperature, you can run around and chop some lettuce (for taco salads), grab some sides like chips, shredded cheese, olives, chips, and salsa, or taco shells for the kids.

After the 15 minute timer goes off, let it sit for about 5 more minutes (wait time optional, if you're in a rush) then release the steam valve and pop that baby open as soon as you are ready.

What you will see when you open the pot.  The little globs of fat is what I remove before shredding

Take the chicken out of the pot and shred on a plate with two forks or a knife and a fork, depending on how you like your chicken chunks. I make sure at this time to also remove any fat or veins, or anything unappetizing so it's just chicken.  I also take a peek a the liquid back in the pot and skim off any unmentionables.  

Shredded chicken from frozen - We're living in the future people

Place the shredded chicken back in the sauce and stir. See if it needs anymore seasoning and then you are good to go!  

Mmm good for tacos, taco salads, burritos, nachos....

I use a slotted spoon to scoop the meat out of the liquid and serve.

You can also drain off most of the liquid while you are shredding if you want less moisture

After that, just scoop some into a taco shell, plop on some shredded lettuce for a taco salad, and stack your favorite toppings on top.

An easy meal and a tasty one too.

My kids used to only eat ground beef tacos, now we've expanded their horizons.

Yummy!

It's great the next day with left overs too, or bring some to work for lunch with a "taco salad kit" and make your co-workers jealous. My hubby loves doing that.

He'll send me pics profusely thanking me for "Taco Salad 2.0"

My daughter made chicken and cheese nachos for lunch the next day on her own, so that worked out well.  It's the gift that keeps on giving.

Chicken and cheese nachos by my 14- year-old

This quick journey from completely unplanned, sad, and frozen, to fast, tasty, and fabulous makes the whole family happy! While at the same time making YOU feel like a hero because you literally pulled this dinner out of thin air (making you seem far more reliable than you actually are and pretty much all around awesome). Thanks Instant Pot!

Instant Pot Creme Brulee

One of my favorite desserts to order in a restaurant is creme brulee.  What's not to love about creamy cool vanilla custard topped with a crunchy candy sugar shell that you have to tap with your spoon to break open to reveal that creamy goodness center? So delicious and fancy! Have I ever, pray tell, made this delectable creme brulee for myself you ask? Well no. I have this irrational fear of tempering eggs. Don't ask my why, I blog about food, I love cooking, I'm addicted to the Food Network, but for some reason the fear of unintentionally scrambling eggs into my desserts have kept me away from my attempting to make my absolute favorite.  Enter the Instant Pot. I found a recipe on their community Facebook page that eliminates that pesky "tempering of the egg" fear and makes it stupid easy.

My absolute favorite!  Creme Brulee!

You will need:
(Recipe posted by a gal named Heidi Miller on the Instant Pot Facebook page)

5 egg yokes
1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 cups of heavy cream 

You will also need six 6 oz ramekins, and Instant Pot, the inner trivet, and water.  Upon advice from the Facebook page, I purchase my ramekins in a set of eight at amazon here.  I was extra stoked they came in a beautiful light teal color that matched my new kitchen. They have other colors as well.

Add 5 egg yokes to a bowl.  

Add 1/2 cup of sugar

Whisk together

Add 2 cups of heavy cream and 1 Tablespoon of vanilla

And mix together until smooth.

Pour into six 6 oz ramekins a little above mid way

This recipe will do exactly 6 ramekins, the most that will fit in the 6 qt pot

Cover ramekins tightly with foil.  I cut out squares that just fit over the round surface and sealed each one as tightly as I could

Make sure these are sealed around the edges as much as possible

Pour 2 cups of water into the bottom of the Instant Pot and cover with the trivet.  Stack the first three ramekins on the bottom.

A perfect fit

And then stack the next three ramekins balancing them on top of the first row.

All snug as a bug in a rug

Set the Instant Pot for manual for 13 minutes.  The most important part is to let the pot do a natural release.  That means, DON'T touch it until it depressurizes by itself and the tab on the top pops down by itself.  I made these twice, the first time I let it naturally release and they turned out great.  The second time I was impatient and released a little early. What it made was a big mess as the brulee inside the ramekins came up under the foil and made a sticky mess.  They were much uglier and very sticky.  

We still ate them of course, (for science) 

 

But all in all, the first batch following the rules turned out much better!

Cool at room temperature for 30 minutes then chill for 4 hours minimum.  

These are great if you want to make them ahead the day before and chill overnight

Pull them out of the fridge and remove the foil.

Hey that's lookin' pretty good!

Dust the top of each ramekin with a coating of sugar.  We used regular table sugar.

Looks like it snowed

Use a mini cooking blow torch to brulee the tops, which will turn brown and form a hard candy-type shell.  

If you don't have a torch, you can broil these in the over for a few minutes until they turn golden

My hubby gave me this blow torch almost 10 years ago in the hopes I would one day make creme brulee. I'm so glad his wishes have come true. I'm not gonna lie, firing this bad boy up was quite the thrill.

Burn baby, burn!

 Give each brulee it's final coat.

Man that was fun

 The only thing left after that is to admire your work... and EAT it.

Holy yum, Batman.

 Tap the outer shell and scoop up some of that vanilla custard inside

It makes a satisfying crunch sound as your break through to the creamy goodness below

I will say, that without tempering the eggs, the texture might not be as super-de-duper smooth as you would get in a fancy-dancy restaurant, however the flavor is still awesome. Very creamy and super tasty.  I'd consider this a "rustic" brulee.

Yummy!

I will SO make this again...and it's nice I can do it now WHENEVER I want from the comforts of home!  

Instant Pot Creme Brule

Enjoy. 











 

Artichokes in a pressure cooker (Instant-Pot)

Did you know you can make artichokes in a pressure cooker?

So I went and did it.  I went and bought myself an electric pressure cooker. An Instant Pot.  I had heard fanciful (and almost unbelievable) tales from my Sister-in-Law that you could cook chicken breasts from frozen to done in 15 minutes, hot wings in 9 minutes, spaghetti in 6 minutes, baked potatoes in 12 minutes, and I even saw on Pinterest you could make homemade yogurt in a pressure cooker!  

What is the magical pot that breaks all known cooking and food safety rules?!

Say what?? How on earth is that even humanly possible? How does this thing actually work (barring wizardry and unicorn wishes), and what about all those scary explosion stories from the days of yore back in Grandma's kitchen in 1964??

Kaaaa-booooom!

Well the beauty of modern technology, is that they have removed (for the most part) the more dangerous aspects out of using a pressure cooker.  I took mine out of the box (very gingerly, as if I was handling a nuclear bomb) and managed to brave the boiled water test recommended in the instructions. I will confess, I was standing literally 12 feet away and hiding behind an open pantry door, just to make sure my kitchen wouldn't implode. After we safely depressurized, I wanted to take this baby for a test spin on something a bit more tangible... and way more tasty.

I had heard that pressure cookers are fabulous for steaming things, and my thoughts turned to my favorite veggie, artichokes. Normally, it takes about 40 minutes to an hour to steam those big ol' globe artichokes. 

Before learning how to cook these on my own, we had to go to Black Angus to get a plate of artichokes

We've always done the regular stream in a pot method in the past around here (click here for steaming artichokes the regular way), and it has worked just fine, though sometimes it's a crap shoot to get them just right, as in, not too mushy and at the same time tender enough to pull the leaves off for dippin'. Well I've cooked artichokes twice now in my new Instant Pot, and I'm here to tell you that you can have three perfectly cooked globe artichokes in 20 minutes!  No joke!

The first part of prepping the artichokes is the same as if you were going to steam them in a big pot.  Scrub the outsides with some water and a vegetable scrubber to remove any dirt or debris, and trim the stem to one inch.

Next, flip them around and cut off about one inch off the front of the choke. 

Take kitchen scissors and blunt cut across all the tops of all the leaves, to remove the tiny thorn that will for surely impale you skin if you are not careful.

Rub down each artichoke with a half of lemon (and set the squished half of the lemon aside for later). Next, in the bottom of your pressure cooker put:

Two cups of water
The squished lemon halves (sliced up thin)
2 teaspoons of minced garlic (or more to taste)
2 bay leaves

It's not that pretty, but it will add flavor to the steam, and thus the artichokes

Place the metal steam rack on the bottom of the pot, over your water, lemons, garlic and bay leaves.

Hard to believe you can steam something with only an inch or so of water

Place your three globe artichokes stem side up (facing down) - or sideways if they all don't fit along the bottom.  

You can fit three globe artichokes in a 6 quart Instant Pot

Seal the lid of the pot (I love the happy little chimes letting you know you are locked in place).  Make sure the nozzle on the top is set to "Sealing" and not "Venting" and you are ready to go.

Set the Instant Pot to "manual" and select 20 minutes.
That's it.  Just set it and walk away.  I chose to take this time and make some melted garlic butter (our favorite artichoke dipping medium) buy slowly melting a stick of butter in a small pan on the stove top with a spoonful of minced garlic in it. 

It will take a few minutes for the pot to come up to pressure, then a timer will count down the 20 minutes until ready. Once the cooking process is finished, you can quick release the nozzle using an oven mitt (steam will come screaming out in a loud and slightly terrifying way), or you can let it sit in there and naturally de-pressurize on it's own for a few minutes.  After that, carefully open the lid and peek inside.  

Perfectly steamed artichokes in the pressure cooker

You'll have yourself a dandy little set of globe artichokes, ready for devouring. I always take a knife and stick it down the center stem to check for doneness.  If it glides in with little resistance, you are cooked all the way through.

All that is left to do now is to cut the artichokes in half, clean out the choke (purple thistle-y parts with a spoon) and bring on the warm garlic butter! 

While they are still warm bring them to a cutting board face down, and with tongs, cut down the middle of the stem, slicing them completely in half.

In the center you will find a purple section of leaves (what would have become the flower) that you will need to scoop out.  Because everything is so soft, it comes out pretty easily. Just take a big spoon and gently cut out the center part and remove so they look like the two on the left.

Picture from Cooking's Good blog - The one on the far right still needs the center purple and thistle part removed

Preparing them this way is genius I tell you, because now you have an edible bowl where you can pour in a slathering spoonful of garlic butter and as you pull the leaves off, each bite will have a bit of butter on it.  If you have never eaten an artichoke before, simply pull off the leaves and scrape the lower half of the leaf in your mouth, pulling off all the "meat". It is DIVINE!

Don't forget to add on a couple of turns of sea salt over the finished chokes

They are great as an appetizer, on their own as a meal, or a side to steak, chicken, etc.

Also after you have pulled off all the leaves you are left with the very best part, the heart of the artichoke.  Be sure to saver these. I tend to cut them up like a cherished steak and pour over the remaining garlic butter and quietly savor each bite. I could almost go vegetarian if I could have these every night.  They are so satisfying! These have GOT to be my all time favorite green vegetable.  So don't be afraid to try this alien-esque type orb, as it could easily turn out to be your go to veggie - and DON'T be afraid to try a pressure cooker, they can shave tons of time off your crazy busy schedule while giving you quicker, easier, meal options. Stay tune for more experiments with my new Instant Pot. Enjoy!