Instant Pot Goulash

For lunch today, I made the Instant Pot Goulash from the Allrecipes website. We mostly followed the recipe, but I don't like mushrooms so I substituted sausage. Also, Jeff substituted Herbs de Provence for the Italian Seasoning. 

I didn't bother to do the high-pressure cooking step; I just set it on Slow Cook and let it cook for a couple hours. I did stir it once just to take a look at how the raw pasta was cooking.

It tasted quite good but Jeff's first comment was "it needs more vegetables."  Since the recipe made plenty of leftovers we'll probably add cooked vegetables when we reheat those.

Instant Pot Vegetable Beef Soup

We made a large pot of vegetable beef soup mostly following the crockpot recipe at Wellplated.  We used butternut squash, red potatoes and carrots; but we were out of celery. We also didn't put in peas. Otherwise, we mostly followed the ingredient list.

Jeff actually cooked the beef overnight in the Instant Pot on the sous vide setting. We cooked the onions, garlic and carrots on the Saute setting until the onions were soft. Then we added the broth, carrots and red potatoes and set them to Pressure Cook for 5 minutes before adding the rest of the ingredients. 

We added the canned tomatoes and roasted butternut squash and set the Instant Pot to Slow Cook for a couple of hours. It turned out quite tasty. 

When we make this one again, I don't know that we'd change anything.

Cottage Pie

Snowy day, ground beef in the fridge, and half a bag of potatoes -- what a nice day for a shepherds cottage pie! Based loosely on a recipe Sharon found for me. [Update: Evidently a "Shepherds pie" is made with lamb or mutton, as the name implies. If made with beef, it is a cottage pie.]

I browned ground beef, minced garlic, two slices of bacon (diced) and some random stuff from the freezer (roasted beets, squash) until well browned in some bacon drippings and olive oil in a dutch oven over medium-high heat.

Meanwhile, in the instant pot, I made mashed potatoes by scrubbing and chunking half a bag of russet potatoes and adding a cup of beef broth and a dollop of minced garlic. Cooked on "manual" (pressure cooking) for 6 minutes, releasing the steam when complete.

I had several breaks to take in the beautiful day.

Please brown

When the beef mixture was browned I admixed a can of cream of something (in this case, chicken) soup, a tablespoon of BBQ sauce, a generous pinch of salt, and some ground pepper, long pepper, and grains of paradise.

This was poured into a pyrex pie pan.

The potatoes and stock were mashed with some butter and half-and-half. Maybe a little too much liquid (see later).

I used half the potatoes for the pie topping.

Finally browned

Baked at 400 degrees for 16 minutes.

This was not long enough (see picture). Didn't have any browning to speak of.
I kept checking the oven, then wandering off to check the snow, and twitter, and facebook, then back to the oven. Eventually, it browned.

Sliced up well and tasted delicious and comforting.

Next time: A little more peaking on the topping would make for nicer browning.
I also wonder about a little grated hard cheese either on top or mixed in with the last half cup of potatoes to form the top-most layer.

Pot Roast -- What's up Chuck

Browned chuck after salt and peppered

Had a nice piece of chuck roast that I decided to use to make a pot roast based on this recipe.
This was almost the last piece of meat from our first of two shares from our meat CSA.

Stir Fry in Seattle

Pork dish in the wok

I spent the weekend with a friend in Seattle and we had a number of culinary adventures. I brought some lovely tomatoes and peppers from home that we were drowning in. So our goal was to come up with some simple dinners that would make good use of them. On the final night, we picked up some lovely pork at the farmers market and made a stir fry in a wok.

This worked well on all counts. Easy to prepare, quick to cook, looked and tasted great.

We made a dredged the pork in seasoned flour. And added a sauce of corn starch, soy sauce, and sesame oil.

Low carb burger

We've been experimenting with low-carb stuff.
So I wanted to make burgers, but decided to skip the bun.
Mixed into the ground beef some wheat germ, almond meal and grated Romano cheese.
While I was grilling the patties I grilled some onion slices on the side.

After flipping the burger I put on a little BBQ sauce and a slice of cheese.
When the burger was done I put a little water in the pan and put a lid on to melt the cheese.
Garnished with a slice of tomato and some slices of avocado.

Had to eat with a knife and fork, but other than that it seemed to fill the burger need.

Signing up for a Meat CSA

I'm defrosting the freezer right now so we can stock up on the summer harvest. And so we can get some more meat.

We are soon going to get our first box from Deck Family Farms with:

• 10lbs of Grass fed beef; 50% ground, 12% steaks, 38% everything else; ribs, roasts, stir-fry, & stew
• 5lbs of Pasture Raised Pork; bacon, sausages, shoulder, chops, ham.
• 2lbs of Pasture Raised Spring Lamb
• 8lbs of Pasture Raised No Soy! Roasters
• 1 dozen eggs

Looking forward to the variety.
Need to figure out what to do with lamb...