Use your pressure cooker to make quick work of this classic side dish – then upgrade it with one of my 3 favorite simple seasonings. Whether your family gets hooked on lemon pepper, garlic herb or maple mustard – Instant Pot Potatoes and Carrots will become a staple veggie dish in your healthy meal prep rotation.
Continue reading “[Instant Pot] Potatoes and Carrots, Upgraded!”Tag: carrots
[Instant Pot] Double Decker Korean Sesame Beef + Zoodles
Double Decker Dinner is a personal favorite Instant Pot recipe theme, all about finding the right combination of foods that pair together as a balanced meal and that can be stacked and cooked at the same time in the same pressure cooker. It’s one-pot wonderful!Β
Using your Instant Pot to cook zucchini noodles is handy. It’s even handier when you can cook everything you need to round out a balanced meal all at the same time!
These zoodles resemble classic Korean japchae noodles, dressed up with a spicy-sweet sauce, ground beef, extra veggies and a flourish of toasty sesame seeds.
Continue reading “[Instant Pot] Double Decker Korean Sesame Beef + Zoodles”[Instant Pot] Insta-Spaghetti!
This recipe is one of my go-to lazy-cook dinners – especially helpful right now while I’ve been learning how to manage dinnertime with a newborn baby in the house! My back-pocket beef & veggie bolognese is lovingly known as “insta-spaghetti”, and while it’s not the same as your all-day ‘Sunday Sauce’ fancy bolognese affair, it is a filling, nourishing, very easy comfort food dish. The recipe combines grass-fed ground beef, lots of chopped mixed vegetables, canned tomatoes and whole-wheat pasta – all in one pressure cooker.
Continue reading “[Instant Pot] Insta-Spaghetti!”[Instant Pot] Broccoli Cheddar Soup
Cozy comfort food – it’s what I need right now! This creamy soup is made from roasted broccoli, real sharp cheddar cheese, and an earthy-sweet foundation of onions, carrots and celery. It’s also enriched (in both the culinary and nutritional sense) with a healthy dose of hemp seeds, which blend into a creamy texture without any need to add actual cream.
Reflecting on my favorite soup recipes, it’s hard not to notice a pattern: there are a lot of creamy soups made with roasted vegetables. Why? First, because roasting makes vegetables delicious! Second, because it reflects an efficiency in my food-prep workflow. If it’s the weekend and I’m heating up my oven to cook dinner or bake anything, I always try to double-down and bake or roast several foods in that single session. It saves time and energy, and it’s always handy to have extra roasted veggies on hand.
Continue reading “[Instant Pot] Broccoli Cheddar Soup”[Instant Pot] Carrot Cake Steel-Cut Oats
This winter, I found a new favorite cheerful make-ahead weekday breakfast. This golden bowl features whole-grain steel cut oats with no refined sugars, instead sweetened and enriched with lots of carrot (2/3 cup freshly grated root per serving), fresh ginger, warm spices, raisins, juicy pineapple tidbits, and flakes of toasted coconut.
Top as you please with even more nuts and fruits, and a swirl of your favorite creamy dairy or nut milk. Then revel in the moment of cozy glory you achieved. Then tomorrow morning, reheat and repeat.
Continue reading “[Instant Pot] Carrot Cake Steel-Cut Oats”[Instant Pot] Double Decker Coq Au Vin + Garlic Mashed Potatoes
Bonjour, my friends. To begin this month’s pressure-cooking extravaganza (Insta-Pot-tober??), let’s kick off with something special: it’s French, it’s fancy, and it’s a double-decker one-pot wonder:
Layer 1 is the classic French braise featuring chicken, bacon, wine, vegetables & mushrooms: coq au vin. (ooh la la!)
Layer 2 is a basket full of quartered potatoes and whole garlic cloves, which happen to steam to mashable perfection in the same pressure-cooking time as your main course. (sacre bleu!!)
See category: Double Decker Dinners!
Continue reading “[Instant Pot] Double Decker Coq Au Vin + Garlic Mashed Potatoes”[Instant Pot] Chicken Mushroom & Wild Rice Soup
“#1. Make a Lot of Soup”
This was the first directive scribbled to myself on a note titled “Foodprep Strategy,” a deliberate attempt at eating well and staying sane in this time of post-moving–new-life-upheaval. New year, new city, new kitchen, new climate, new grocery stores, new work-from-home transition, all around brand new routine.
In my disoriented state, emerging from a maze of cardboard boxes to hit the ground running as Dinner Captain once again, I turned to soup. Nourishing, crowd-pleasing, inexpensive, efficient to cook in large batches, quick to reheat, and warming for cold bellies… soup has been serving me well.
Continue reading “[Instant Pot] Chicken Mushroom & Wild Rice Soup”[Instant Pot] Greek Vegetable Soup
A funny thing happened on the way to writing this post. We’re only here talking about this soup today because two months ago on RD Day, I took the opportunity to scope out a list of fellow RD bloggers. On one of the many links I clicked, I came across a giveaway raffle and entered on a whim. And out of the zillion entries, I actually won! That day I gained an awesome new Mediterranean cookbook, and my first glimpse into what has become one of my new favorite RD blogs, Zen and Spice by the talented Emily Hein. This girl inspires me to live right! If you’re like me and love cooking/eating beautiful whole foods, growing some of them yourself, and generally taking a mindful and appreciative approach to it all, you should definitely check it out!
The book that I won in the giveaway is Eating the Greek Way, by Dr. Fedon Alexander Lindberg. Emily mentioned that this is one of her favorite cookbooks, and I can totally see why. The book features gorgeous photos and recipes featuring the kind of simple but perfect food I can imagine being served up in Mediterranean kitchens on real life weeknights. And now in my kitchen too! On my weeknights! Life is grand.