Easy Pasta Dinner in Instapot

Tired of pasta dishes that you've been cooking over and over again? Hey, maybe I have something new for you! And it's an Instapot recipe! Kids approved, picky eaters approved. You will love it. I was concerned at first about cooking pasta in the pressure cooker but it turned out just fine.

You will need:
1 tbsp oil
1 1/2 cup water
1 Pound ground beef
1 medium onion (diced)
1 bell pepper (cubed)
1 can of diced tomatoes
1/2 tsp of black pepper
1 tsp of salt
8 oz of pasta (I used penne)
 1/2 cup of heavy cream
some Parmesan cheese

Directions
Put the oil in the Instapot, turn it on Saute, and add ground beef and onions. When it's half way cooked add salt, pepper and bell pepper.

Turn the Saute off.  Add tomatoes and water.  Add pasta.  Close Instapot (make sure the release valve is closed) and cook on manual for five minutes, then quick release.  Turn on Saute option and add your heavy cream and cheese.  I added 1/2 cup of cheese, but it depends on how much you like Parmesan.

Cook approximately 1-2 minutes.  Your meal is ready!

Healthy dinner in 10 minutes

Today I'm sharing a cool and super helpful Instapot hack that I absolutely love! It's cheap and saves time. With this idea you can cook 3 different things in your pressure cooker at the same time. Basically your meal can be ready in 5 minutes. In my example I had dinner to cook and it needed to be done very fast. So I figured out 2-4 potatoes (fresh, depends on size). Frozen or fresh veggies. I used frozen veggie mix and meatballs.Here is the trick:You will need 2 Ikea Stabil steamers. 

They won't fit into your Instapot from the shelf right away so you will need to make an adjustment. A little hook that you'd use to attach it to the pot needs to be removed. You can remove it with pliers or just simply moving it back and forth until it's bent enough to remove it. 

You need to do this with both of them. Now you can easily fit and use them in the Inspapot.
Back to my dinner. As you can see on the picture I put my veggies and meatballs in my steamers. The steamers are standing on the rack that is included with your Instapot. I simply placed the potatoes on the rack.

I added 1 cup of water. 5 minutes of steam. Then do a quick release and it's ready. Everything was equally cooked. The potatoes were my favorite.

Pilaf in Instapot

From Wikipedia:

Pilaf is a dish in which rice is cooked in a seasoned broth. In some cases, the rice may attain its brown or golden color by first being sautéed lightly in oil before the addition of broth. Cooked onion, other vegetables as well as a mix of spices may be added. Depending on the local cuisine, it may also contain meat, fish, vegetables, pasta, and dried fruits.

Pilaf and similar dishes are common to Balkan, Middle Eastern, Caucasian, Central and South Asian, East African, Latin American and Caribbean cuisines. It is a staple food and a national dish in Afghan, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Bangladeshi, Balochi, Bukharan Jewish, Cretan, Indian, Iranian, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Kurdish, Pakistani, Swahili (Kenyan, and Tanzanian-Zanzibari), Uyghur, Uzbek, Tajik and Turkish cuisines.

You can use chicken, beef or lamb (prefer) for this dish. I used meat for stewing this time. It's very easy to cook and fast as well.

You will need

1 pound of meat of your choice (cut to bite size pieces)

1 middium to big size onion (dices)

1 big carrot (shreded)

3-4 sweet baby peppers (optional) - cut to rings

1 cup of jasmine rice

1.5 cup water

Spices

1.5 Tbsp of Vegeta (sometimes it's hard to find at stores)

1 Tbsp of seasoning salt

1 clove of garlic

Salt and pepper

Sometimes I use a specific spice for this dish when I have it. I can't buy it at the regular grocery store. You either need to go to the European market or you can get it off here.... but it's worth it!

Directions

Put your meat (cut to bite size pieces), shredded carrots (use the large holes on the cheese grater), diced onion, cut peppers to your pressure cooker.

Add all spices except salt, pepper and garlic. Add 1 Tbsp of oil. Turn pressure cooker on and press sautée. Cook on high temperature for about 15 minutes mixing from time to time. Turn the sautée option off. Add water and rice and the rest of the spices.

Don't dice, cut or don't do anything else to the garlic - just put the whole thing in - don't worry, you breath won't smell bad. ;)

Cook on manual (high pressure) for 17 minutes, natural release.

Enjoy your dinner or lunch!

Homemade Yogurt in Instapot

When I got my Instapot, I didn't know anything about it, and particularly the yogurt option (I'm still learning, btw) - just that you have to make yogurt for 8 hours. I said I'm not crazy!!! I thought maybe it uses pressure - super low- but pressure for 8 hours! The idea of leave it running unattended didn't make me very comfortable. Later I learned how it all works. And that yogurt option keeps your ingredients on a certain temperature.
So I've decided to make yogurt today.

You will need

• 1 Gallon 2% Milk
• ¼ Cup yogurt with active cultures (I used Mountain High low fat Plain)
• ¼ - ½ cup sweetener (optional)
• Cheese cloth or milk bag

Directions

Pour your gallon of milk to the Instapot. Close the lid. It doesn't matter if you put the pressure vent into a venting position or not at this point. (Or at any point in the process, for that matter.)

Press the YOGURT button and press ADJUST right away. Screen will display BOIL. 

Leave it alone for about an hour. Then you will hear it beep. Don't miss it! Screen will display yogurt. Now you need to turn off your Instapot and cool off the milk to room temperature. Remove the pot from the Instapot. If you are in a hurry - you can fill your kitchen sink with some water and put the pot with the milk in it for some time to let it cool off faster.

Then once it's the right temperature, add 1/4 cup of yogurt. Mix with the wisk. Put it back to the Instapot. Push the yogurt button. The incubation process will start. Your Instapot will beep and it will take 8 hours. It will count up. So you should have 0:00 on your screen.

In 8 hours all you need to do is drain it using cheese cloth or milk bag, just like I showed you with the cottage cheese recipe.  I would recommend the milk bag, because it was kind of inconvenient and messy with the cheese cloth.

Let it hang in it for an hour.

The yogurt I made wasn't sweet. I like to add berries, jam or granola. 

If you want - you can add sweetener -1/4 to 1/2 cup.

Note: You need to add the yogurt to start the incubation process.  If you prefer, you can use a powdered yogurt starter as well.  You can find a starter on Amazon here.

STORAGE

I use an Ikea KORKEN glass jar. 1.9 qt. If you don't have an Ikea close by, you can order the jar from Amazon here, sold by Ikea. These jars are smaller than what I used, but you don't have to store this whole amount in one glass jar. You can see on the picture how much I made off this recipe.

If you are going to try it please leave feedback how you liked it. I also have a Pinterest board for this blog. Follow me and you will never miss a recipe!.

Homemade Cottage Cheese in Pressure Cooker

Today I managed to make cottage cheese, but some people may call it farmer's cheese. I'm still not sure what the difference is. (If you know the difference, please leave a comment below!)

Growing up I saw my mom making it all the time, and it tasted so good, but I also remember the process of making it was so complicated that I even didn't want to try to participate or ask her to teach me how. But these days we have better technology, so we have so many kitchen gadgets.  Again I used my pressure cooker and just 2 ingredients to make my home made cottage cheese. The recipe I have is from one of my favorite groups on Facebook about Instapot and recipes you can make in it. Most of them are Russian recipes, and they're fast and simple to cook.

So here we go!

You will need

1 gallon of whole milk

Approx. 1 1/2 qt of buttermilk

Yes, that's it!

Directions

The original recipe says put it on warm for 2 hours - that didn't do much for me.

Maybe it depends of what kind of milk and buttermilk you have, I don't know. Anyways, after 2 hours I turned it on yogurt (which keeps it between 96.8° and 109.4° F) for 7 hours, and then it's done. Drain it through the cheesecloth (I got mine at WinCo for $2.50, or you can always find it on Amazon).

Hang it on the faucet to drain for 1-2 hours.

After that you can enjoy your home made cottage cheese.

P.S. Keep the liquid that's left from draining the cottage cheese. I have a great recipe of something you can make with it that I will be posting in a few days. You can store it in the fridge. Also you can substitute it for milk in any recipe.

Correction 3/5/2017: I said that the "yogurt" setting was the same as the "keep it warm" setting.  Not quite.  The two settings use different temperatures.  I've corrected that mistake above.

Baby Omelettes

First pressure cooker recipe today! And it's my favorite meal of the day- breakfast! It's fast to make and you can add your favorite options: spinach, feta cheese, bacon, tomatoes, peppers, etc. It only takes a few minutes to prepare and 7 minutes in the pressure cooker. I enjoyed this recipe, and so did my daughter! Believe me, I will be making this recipe again, and now you can too!

Here is the recipe:

3 eggs
1/3 cup milk
salt and pepper to taste

Add whatever you want to this.  I added turkey bacon, baby peppers, and Monterrey Jack Cheese.

Mix the eggs and milk together until well blended. Add your spices. Pour the mixture in silicone egg poachers (you can get them here off of Amazon).

Add 1 cup of water to your pressure cooker. Place the poachers on a rack in the pressure cooker (I have an Instapot and used the included rack).

Close the lid. Cook on manual, high pressure for 7 minutes. Quick release.

I ate two of them to satisfy my morning hunger. You can eat them with strawberries, as I did, or you can substitute your own choice of sides.