Are you one of those people who wander around the kitchen at mealtime, hungry, with no plans for moving forward? Worry no more! With the digital pressure cooker, meals are minutes away!
Planning To Not Plan
Keep a few staple items on hand that you like to use.
- rice & pasta
- boxed soups and broth
- pasta sauce
- dried beans
- canned vegetables
Add items to your freezer, like meats and vegetables.
On a regular basis, shop for fresh items, like vegetables and eggs.
Here’s A Tip
Buy extra onions, carrots and celery, chop them and put variety packs into quart freezer bags. Whenever you make soup or any kind of an everything-pot you have Miripoix. Whenever I mention throwing in vegetables, you can reach into the freezer for a quart of Miripoix, and you’re set.
Disclaimer
I’m a throw-cooker. I might look at a recipe, or I might not. I might pay attention to the teaspoons or cups in a recipe, or I might not. More often than not, I decide what I want and throw something into the pot.
If you want recipes, you can do a web search specifically for digital pressure cooker recipes. If you prefer a cookbook, those can be found on-line as well. Most pressure cookers – if purchased new – come with a few recipes to get you started.
It’s Time To Cook!
Now you’ve hit your day. It’s time for breakfast or lunch or dinner and you have Nothing. To. Eat. Here are some suggestions.
Breakfast
Using your amazing digital pressure cooker, boil eggs (five to eight minutes, depending on your desired “done”), and make it breakfast.
- Do several boiled eggs ahead of time, and whenever you want, you can have instant egg salad or deviled eggs.
Scramble eggs and add whatever you like: cheese, mushrooms, spinach, etc., put it into a bake-proof dish – small, so it can fit into your pressure cooker – and make a crustless quiche.
Lunch or Dinner
Grab a box of soup, add rice, fresh vegetables, frozen meat and spices. Hit the “rice” button, and in ten minutes you have a one-pot dish.
- Curried dishes made with rice are perfect with the pressure cooker.
- Try your favorite oriental recipes.
Grab your favorite kind of pasta, sauce, frozen meat and spices. Put it into the pot and hit the “rice” button. In ten minutes you will have al dente pasta from your digital pressure cooker.
- Tip: my sister taught me to put a little clove into marinara sauce. It zings!
Three Of My Successes
The first thing I made in the amazing pot is one I talk about often: Sausage-Lentil Soup. From the time I opened the freezer to find sausage until I dished out the soup, I spent 30 minutes: 10 wandering around the kitchen finding dried lentils, vegetables, broth and spices to throw in, five to figure out the pot for the first time, and 15 to cook.
I found a corned beef that had been in the freezer for several years. Literally. From late 2010 until St. Patrick’s Day 2015. I put the frozen corned beef into the pressure cooker with fresh cabbage wedges, fresh carrots, fresh onions, fresh new potatoes, beef broth and spices. I cooked it for 20 minutes. The corned beef was tender. Potatoes, done. Cabbage, done and crisp. Carrots, done and crisp. It was perfect.
For Groundnut Stew I start with a box of roasted red pepper tomato soup, add chopped firm tofu, peanut butter, chopped (or canned) tomatoes, onions, spices that typically include hot sauce, garlic, soy sauce and basil, and sometimes vegetables like cauliflower and broccoli.
In Closing
You can use almost any recipe that would typically be made on the stovetop or in the oven. The cooker has a browning option, so you can start your one-pot meals by browning meats or by cooking onions and garlic. For some dishes, this is preferred. For most, I take the lazy way out and just toss things in.