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.

Lentil "Chili"

We decided to give a new recipe a try today: Lentil Chili. We mostly followed this recipe, but we used a large can of diced tomatoes, rather than cutting up whole tomatoes. We added three cups of broth and the juice from the tomatoes and it was definitely not enough.

We cooked it in the Instant Pot for at least three hours and the lentils were very slightly undercooked, I believe because there was not enough moisture remaining in the pot. It did taste reasonably good and was filling, but it was not the most attractive meal. I think we'll actually use the rest of it as burrito fillings.

If we make this again, I would definitely add at least four cups of broth, perhaps more.

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.

Instant Pot Broccoli Chowder

Today, we made Instant Pot Broccoli Chowder. I had originally planned to make the Instant Pot Corn Chowder recipe from Taste of Home but I discovered we didn't have any frozen corn. But we did have quite a lot of frozen broccoli, so Jeff suggested we substitute broccoli for the corn and that's what we did. 

We had to defrost the broccoli so we could cut the florets into smaller pieces and we also didn't have any fresh onions, so we substituted dried minced onions. Otherwise, we simply followed the recipe as it was written.

The light isn't good in the dining room so it looks rather unappealing in the picture, but it tasted delicious. I sprinkled a little salt on mine, but Jeff liked it as is.

If we make it again, we would run a portion of the chowder through the blender after the pressure cooking to eliminate some of the chunks and make the chowder a little more creamy. This recipe is another keeper.

Instant Pot Lemon Chicken Orzo Soup

Jeff has gotten a job at Intel so I (Sharon) need to start doing some of the cooking. It's been at least ten years since I've done any cooking and I'm not terribly good at it but I can usually manage to follow recipes, so I just need to find recipes I like. 

This post is the start of my effort to document my attempts at cooking recipes I find on the internet and how they turned out and what we would change next time, assuming we like the recipe enough to try it again. This information is mostly for me as the blog is a pretty easy way to keep track of past efforts.

Anyway, today I made my first pot of Lemon Chicken Orzo Soup. The original recipe was published on allrecipes, but I also archived a copy at Google docs, in case it gets pulled down. It calls for the soup to be made on the stove, but I wanted to cook it in the Instant Pot so we did our best to translate the recipe.

It doesn't feel right to plagiarize the original recipe; just click on one of the links above to see all the details. We had to make a few changes by necessity: 

• We didn't have orzo pasta so we used elbow macaroni. 
• We also didn't have any bay leaves, so we omitted them. 
• We used a blend of homemade chicken and homemade vegetable broth.
• And we had to use frozen spinach.

We heated the oil in the Instant Pot on the Sauté setting and then added the onion. After a couple of minutes, we added the carrots and celery and let it saute for a few minutes. Then we added the garlic and other spices and let it cook briefly before adding about three quarts of homemade chicken and vegetable broths. (We used a blend of them because that's what we had in our refrigerator.) 

We stirred in the dry pasta and then pressure cooked it for 5 minutes before adding the chicken and lemon and then we set it on Slow Cook until lunchtime. Shortly before lunch, we took off the lid and stirred in defrosted frozen spinach. It had a few minutes to come up to temperature before we actually served it up for the meal.

Overall, we really enjoyed the soup; the pasta seemed a little overcooked, but we can remedy that problem in the next pot. The recipe made 8 servings so we'll be having it a few more times in the next week. 

We served it with Asiago bread that Jeff made. Also amazing.

Next time, I'll try making these changes:

• Try skipping the pressure cooking entirely and go straight from sautéing to slow cooking.
• Substitute Herbes de Provence for the thyme and oregano.
• Add the dry pasta at the same time as the chicken. 

I expect I'll probably make it once a month from now on, whenever we have leftover chicken.