5
votes
What have you been eating, drinking, and cooking?
What food and drinks have you been enjoying (or not enjoying) recently? Have you cooked or created anything interesting? Tell us about it!
What food and drinks have you been enjoying (or not enjoying) recently? Have you cooked or created anything interesting? Tell us about it!
I finally have something to share here! I've recently been utilizing my instant pot to be a bit more adventurous with my cooking. And by adventurous, I mean still making the same basic chicken stew I've been making but with new flavors and ingredients.
When I first posted months ago of what I cooked, I was simply making "Chicken Chile Verde" where I just threw chicken and jarred salsa verde and pressure cooked for ~10-12 minutes. That wasn't the most nutritionally complete however so I modified it a bit. I added zucchini and carrots and then a layer of rice as well with some chicken broth. This resulted in a weird chicken chile verde pulao/biryani that was pretty nice to eat actually. If you would like to recreate this, I would caution against adding too much liquid, the rice can quickly become mush. I used 1lb of chicken, 2 large zucchinis, a handful of baby carrots (since I already had them), and then ~1/2 cup of rice and 1 cup of chicken broth in my first attempt and the rice was just slightly too mushy for my taste.
I recently brought my car into my city so I can now easily access the big Korean grocery store on the other side of the city. This week during my weekly grocery run, I bought gochujang (Korean fermented chili paste), soy sauce, and sesame oil. I also included my usual groceries like bell peppers, onion, zucchini and chicken thighs. One thing that caught me off guard was how the thighs I bought were butchered. The best comparison for how this chicken was butchered was like how I learned to make simple paper Chinese lanterns in elementary school (example linked as [1]). This was a bit of an experiment and a bit of a fail. The gochujang/sesame oil/soy flavor was great but I had overcooked the veggies, making them mush again. Still decent though!
[1]
So many questions! Do you add the broth last? Does the chicken ever stick to the bottom? You said 1 cup of broth to 1/2 cup of rice was too much liquid, would you cut the liquid in half?
I added the broth at the same time as everything else actually! I put the chicken on the bottom, then the veggies, seasonings, and then my washed rice and the broth. I've never had the chicken stick to the bottom in any of my recipes but I also always put a tiny film of oil just to prevent any stickage. I think in the future yeah I'd cut the broth to be a 1-1 ratio with the rice. The chicken and veggies put out a ton of moisture which also steams the rice.
Thank you! I’m super interested in trying it because it sounds good and easy :)
Of course! That was my goal with the dish to be honest, I'm a fairly lazy cook so I love instant pot recipes since I can usually just set and forget them for ~20-30 minutes and have plenty of meals. Here's the final recipe:
Wow. I feel liked a kid! That looks so easy. I’m wondering how that would scale up. Next time I go to the store, I’m going to give this a go. I’ll report back (might take a few weeks).
Look forward to hearing your results!
I’ve been on a chicken soup thing for the last couple of months with the Costco rotisserie chickens. I buy three of them, strip off most of the meat, throw the carcasses in the instant pot, cover with water (somewhere between 3-4 quarts) and cook for 45 minutes with a natural release. When it’s done, I strain it into a big pot, add any remaining water, if any, to get the liquid to 4 quarts, plus 1.5 pounds of carrots, and 2 cups of barley. When the barley and carrots are done, about 20 minutes, I add 1.5 pounds of the rotisserie chicken and a pound of kale, turn off the heat, stir, cover, and let sit for about 5 minutes. Without adding any seasoning it tastes good enough for us to eat on until it’s all gone, (I’m a lazy cook and often make large batches of things that we eat for all meals until all gone) but I wouldn’t call it delicious. The few times I’ve had MSG on hand has made it much yummier. The one thing I don’t like about it is the barley keeps expanding till it loses its texture. I could make the barley separately, but that would take up another pot, and I can’t be bothered.
The instant pot is a newish addition and, I really like it for my style of cooking, budget friendly and low effort. If anyone has any recipes for the instant pot that fit bill, I’d love to hear them. So far, besides the chicken soup, I’ve cooked beans for chili and soup and have made broth. We eat both vegetarian and non vegetarian meals. I hate chopping.