[Instant Pot] Chicken Spaghetti

Instant Pot Chicken Spaghetti! This recipe is flat-out the quickest way to whip up a weeknight dinner version of the familiar favorite southern casserole dish.

This one-pot meal for your pressure cooker is creamy, cheesy, comfort food – and made from simple, wholesome ingredients too!

Continue reading “[Instant Pot] Chicken 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] Double Decker Saag Paneer + Cauliflower Rice

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 

I love paneer – it’s a fresh non-melting cheese common in Indian cuisine, uniquely made without salt or rennet. To make it, milk is simply cooked with an acidic ingredient like lemon juice; when the curds precipitate from the whey, they are gathered and pressed into a firm block.

This recipe is my favorite way to eat paneer: the rich, chewy, cheesy cubes are seasoned, crisped, and tucked into this classic curry of creamed greens. I like to serve it with a bed of steamed cauliflower rice – this extra helping of veggies pairs well with the rich curry sauce, and leaves room for a side of bread if desired (I am still working on perfecting my homemade sourdough naan… If you’re interested in that recipe, speak up in the comments to move it up a notch on my priority list!)

Continue reading “[Instant Pot] Double Decker Saag Paneer + Cauliflower Rice”

[Instant Pot] Double Decker Cheesy Taco-Stuffed Peppers + Quinoa

It’s Double Decker Dinner Time! My favorite kind of one-pot wonderful balanced meal – there’s just something so satisfying about stacking and cooking two foods in one Instant Pot.

This easy recipe begins by using Instant Pot to saute a mix of seasoned grass-fed ground beef taco meat with chopped veggies. We stuff as much as we can into split bell peppers, arranged on a steamer basket – and whatever doesn’t fit is left in the pot and joined by a cup of quinoa. Both layers cook together in just one minute pressure-cooking time!

Continue reading “[Instant Pot] Double Decker Cheesy Taco-Stuffed Peppers + Quinoa”

[Instant Pot] Loaded Potato & Cauliflower Soup

This is what I felt compelled to cook this week when, for the first time in my life, I got SNOWED IN. The three feet of snow that fell on my yard last Saturday came as a bit of a surprise – the forecasts predicted only a fraction of what arrived that day, and they also didn’t tell me it was going to keep dumping more all week. Can’t say I ever expected to see that happen this first winter in our new home on the Olympic Peninsula, famously one of the sunniest places in the Pacific Northwest which historically averages only 2 inches of snow annually. Out of my element, I set up camp in the kitchen.

Continue reading “[Instant Pot] Loaded Potato & Cauliflower Soup”

[Instant Pot] Double Decker Chicken Marsala + Parmesan Polenta

Today, we make a long overdue return to Double-Decker Dinners! This pressure-cooker recipe theme is all about finding the right combination of foods that compliment each other to round out a satisfying meal, and also happen to harmoniously take the same amount of time to cook together in my Instant Pot. This challenge never fails to pique my culinary imagination, so stay tuned – more experiments are in the works.

Continue reading “[Instant Pot] Double Decker Chicken Marsala + Parmesan Polenta”

[Instant Pot] Julia Child’s French Onion Soup

Onion soup! A mid-winter wonder in which humble beginnings are conjured into something magically nourishing. Like many cooks, I cannot bear for my onion soup to stray too far from the classic… but I did want to involve my pressure cooker, so I’m sharing my methods for anyone else interested in another Julia-fueled Instant Pot adventure.

Continue reading “[Instant Pot] Julia Child’s French Onion Soup”

[Instant Pot] Balsamic Basil Wheatberry Salad

When most people think about pressure cooker recipes, they tend to conjure up images of stews, braises, and other sorts of steamy, stick-to-your-ribs one-pot meals that enjoy the spotlight in the colder months. But don’t forget that an electric pressure cooker is also a valuable tool for summer cooking: because everything is self-contained, cooking under pressure doesn’t heat up the kitchen. So don’t neglect your Instant Pot just because even the thought of your favorite soup recipe is making you sweat… think outside the box! It may sound crazy, but this week I used my pressure cooker to make salad. I only wish I had tried it sooner, because you’re looking at an instant summer staple.

Continue reading “[Instant Pot] Balsamic Basil Wheatberry Salad”

[Instant Pot] Goat Cheese Mashed Potatoes

How much tradition do you like on your Thanksgiving table? Is it just not the same without your family heirloom recipes for turkey, stuffing and green bean casserole? Or do you prefer to flex your creative muscles and trick out your menu with fancy stuff like cranberry coulis or pumpkin panna cotta? Personally, I fall somewhere in the middle. Traditional flavors, but with enough twist to keep things interesting. Right at home on my holiday table? These dreamy Goat Cheese Mashed Potatoes.

Continue reading “[Instant Pot] Goat Cheese Mashed Potatoes”

[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.

Continue reading “[Instant Pot] Greek Vegetable Soup”

[Instant Pot] Chicken Tortilla Soup

Today I’m pulling through on my promise to share my successes with Instant Pot, my new electric pressure cooker (you can read more about my pressure-cooking obsession here). It’s been a revolutionary addition to my kitchen, but unfortunately for my readers its major role has been to constantly churn out oatmeal, rice, beans, and other essential staples too boring to blog about. But my favorite appliance is so much more than that! So I’m glad I finally got my act together to write up a recipe that puts Instant Pot in the spotlight.

But if you’re not into pressure-cooking, that’s no reason to pass over this recipe. I’ve been making this soup for years before I got wacky about pressurizing my foods. The flavors develop just as well after a simmer on the stovetop, and the process is still totally easy for a weeknight.

Continue reading “[Instant Pot] Chicken Tortilla Soup”