[Instant Pot] 50 Clove Garlic & White Bean Soup

Garlic lovers only! Fifty whole cloves – half roasted until deeply caramelized, half left sharply raw before pressure-cooking – make this soup very powerful.

Because this recipe is made with hardy produce that stays available through the cold season, it is an excellent candidate to accompany your winter grilled cheese sandwiches after your freezer supply of Roasted Tomato Soup runs out. Instant Pot makes it easy to pressure-cook garlic, onion, herbs, broth, and soaked dry white beans into a creamy, fiery, satisfying soup.

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[Instant Pot] Double Decker Linguine + Clams

Friends, I’m here to report a new discovery in the field of Instant Pot Double-Decker Dinners. This idea felt ridiculous – but it added up on paper, I couldn’t let it go, and it turned out to be true: we can cook linguine and clams at the same time in the same pressure cooker. It’s an Instant Pot Miracle. ✨

Layer 1 is dry pasta immersed in a buttery white wine sauce. Layer 2 is a basket of fresh clams, steamed over top, at once being flavored by the sauce below and also adding their own briny goods to the mix. After pressure-cooking together for just 4 minutes, we finish with fresh herbs and lemon juice and astonishment that a one-pot meal can seriously look like this.

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[Instant Pot] Roasted Tomato Soup

Ever think about using your Instant Pot to transform fresh tomatoes into soup? Think about it! I gave it a shot for the first time this Summer, and the results blew me away: rich, velvety, and intensely flavorful.

Ever wonder why so many recipes tell you to remove the seeds and skins from tomatoes? I avoid that step whenever I can, and not just because it’s annoying…

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[Instant Pot] Sundubu Jjigae: Korean Spicy Soft Tofu Stew

When I start cooking Korean food, I have a hard time stopping. Mostly because when I bring home a bucket of kimchi, I want it on EVERYTHING.

The last recipe I posted (Korean BBQ Beef Roast) is an old favorite in my house. After writing that up, I decided to finally tackle a new dish that I’ve been scheming to cook ever since first trying it in a restaurant a few months ago: sundubu jjigae!

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[Instant Pot] Korean BBQ Beef Roast + Ssam

I was never really exposed to Korean food growing up in Florida, but I learned to LOVE it after moving to San Diego. I lived and worked near the Convoy district, the city’s great wonderland of pan-Asian cuisine, and that’s where Korean barbecue stole my heart. Sweet, salty, garlicky, fragrant with toasted sesame oil, utterly addictive – especially when devoured ssam-style, in lettuce wraps piled with rice and lots of kimchi.

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[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!

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[Instant Pot] Chipotle Chocolate Chili

I’ve never competed in a chili cook-off, but if I did, this is the contender I would bring to the ring.

Since spying the recipe in an issue of Cooking Light years ago, it’s been a go-to for me and for Grant. I have to give him credit, as he’s taken the recipe on as his specialty – he really makes a mean pot of chili! And as much as I love to cook, there’s something extra-tasty about a home-cooked meal where somebody else does the home-cooking, you know?

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[Instant Pot] Everyday Lentil & Spinach Dal

These days I do most of my recipe-clipping on Pinterest, but I still have a recipe folder on my browser’s bookmarks bar dating back from the days before ‘pinning’ was a household term (shocking, I know). The heart of the collection is a sub-folder marked “Tried and True,” which holds those special recipes that I’ve come back to again and again… the keepers! Along with the formula behind killer pumpkin garlic knots, this folder is also home to an unassuming yellow dal bookmarked from Smitten Kitchen. I made this recipe for the first time in college, just starting to dip my toes into Indian cooking, and I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve served it up since then!

This dish has been a dinner staple in my house for a lot of reasons. For one, the recipe is really straightforward, easy enough to commit to memory. It’s also super inexpensive. I do my best to cook with economy and grace, and these tasty lentils make it easy: all of the budget-friendly benefits of dried beans, but with no soaking needed. It’s a hearty vegetarian (easily vegan) source of protein – about 14 grams per serving, before the yogurt garnish. And those healthy legumes are filled out with plenty of vegetables and nutritious spices. I’ve been putting more focus on anti-inflammatory foods in my diet lately, and the turmeric, cumin, coriander, cayenne and garlic in this recipe all offer functional health benefits to reduce inflammation in the body. This is definitely an example of getting your flavor from real food, and this enticing combination is so nutritious that it’s practically medicinal!

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[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.

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[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.

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