Instant Pot Orange Chicken (Pot-in-Pot)

Instant Pot Orange Chicken 

Intended to be cooked PIP (pot-in-pot).

Ingredients:
1 pound chicken, diced (3 - 4 breasts, or 4 - 5 thighs)
1 medium onion, quartered
2 - 4 cups chopped fresh vegetables
1 tsp salt & pepper
Rice
Sauce ingredients: 
1/2 cup orange juice
1 tablespoon orange zest
2 large cloves garlic
2 tablespoon rice vinegar
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon minced ginger
3 tablespoons corn starch + water (for thickening later as needed)
Sugar/honey/agave to sweeten (optional)
Items Needed:
6-quart or 8-quart Instant Pot
Oven safe (stainless steel) bowl or PIP pan large enough to hold all the ingredients, but small enough to fit in side your instant pot with room to spare around the edges for steam to escape.
Trivet
A sling (my trivet has a built in sling)
Rice cooker (not required, it just makes this busy momma's life easier)

Instructions:

• Mix sauce ingredients together in an oven safe bowl that fits inside your instant pot.  Make sure it's big enough to hold all the ingredients.  This is your cooking pot. Taste test prior to adding the raw chicken to the sauce to ensure that it is to your liking.  Add sweetener as needed.
• Dice the chicken up and roll around in the sauce till all pieces are covered
• Place quartered onion on top of the raw chicken that's been rolled in the orange sauce in the (Pot-in-Pot) PIP bowl. 
  **  You could add the "heat resistant" vegetables (water chestnuts, bamboo, onions, bell pepper, sugar snap peas, mushrooms, carrots, celery) to the top of the bowl at this point if you wanted
  
• You can cook your rice at the same time as the chicken mixture if you choose, as long as you have a size appropriate PIP pan to do it in. The ratio of water to rice is 1:1, and rice doubles, so 1 cup of uncooked rice = 2 cups cooked rice.
  
• Cook on high pressure for 10 minutes using the trivet & 1 cup of water (if using 6qt) or 2 cups of water (if using 8qt or just want to be sure you have enough steam).
  
• If you have chosen to not cook it all in one pot, start your rice elsewhere.  I use a rice cooker because it simplifies my life and I can cook twice as much chicken mixture. 
  
• Natural Pressure Release (NPR) for 10 minutes to allow the juice to settle into the meat and to prevent the meat from being "shocked". 
  ** Shocked meat causes a tough, rubbery consistency.
  
• Stir the contents of the bowl to ensure even sauce distribution, pour the fresh veggies on top and either reseal on low pressure for 2 minutes (for frozen), or allow the residual heat from the meat mixture to cook the fresh broccoli.
  
• Once the time has completed, give it 2 minutes of NPR then enjoy by putting it over rice.

Notes:

Rice: 

• Remember when cooking rice that the cooked quantity will be double the dry quantity. (1 cup dry = 2 cups cooked)
• When using a rice cooker, or the stove top, or any method that allows water to evaporate as it cooks, the rice to water ratio is 1 cup rice to 1.5 cups water (1:1.5)
• When using a pressure cooker to cook your rice, or any method that does NOT allow for water evaporation, the ratio is 1 cup rice to 1 cup water (1:1)

Vegetable suggestions:  Water chestnuts, bamboo, carrots, celery, mushrooms, sugar snap peas, bell pepper, broccoli.  All of these will stand up to heat well except the broccoli.

• Broccoli is tricky at times. I usually cook it 1 of 3 ways.
  1) Use a steamer tray, or a tall legged trivet with instant pot steamer basket in my rice cooker while the rice is cooking.
  2) Microwave it
  3) Steam it on low pressure using the steamer basket in the Instant Pot. Low pressure 2 minutes, or 0 minutes under high pressure.   
• Bamboo will absorb any flavors that are around it, as well as adding to the flavors, so if you want super orange bamboo, put it in the sauce.  If you simply want that bamboo flavor, don't mix it in till afterward.
• Bell peppers, celery and mushrooms will produce liquid when cooked

The photo is not mine.  I have used it to illustrate what the dish SHOULD look like, but I have not had the chance to take photos of my actual food.  Photo belongs to:  Siam Orchid Thai Restaurant

Meatballs with Instant Pot or Oven directions

Meatballs

Ingredients: 
1 & 1/2 pounds lean hamburger, ground pork or ground chicken
1/2 tsp salt & pepper
2 eggs
1/2 cup oatmeal
1 tsp minced garlic & onion
1/2 tsp sage
1 tablespoon brown sugar

Instructions:

• Shape into palm sized balls.  
• Bake in oven until browned, using a drip pan at 350*F for approximately 15-minutes
• Or in an Instant Pot using a trivet (or multiple stacked trivets) cooking at high pressure for 10 minutes.
• Enjoy. 
• Can be used multiple ways. 

Optional uses are:  Sweet & sour anything, spaghetti & meatballs, mini meatloafs (adding barbeque sauce or something similar to the top)...

Instant Pot Sweet & Sour Anything

Instant Pot Sweet & Sour Anything

Makes approximately 12 servings.
Owned by my mother and rewritten with permission.

Recipe can be make either PIP (Pot-in-pot) or directly in the liner.  It's your personal preference. 

Ingredients:

• 1 can Chicken broth + 2 table spoons chicken base (like bouillon or better than bouillon)
• 3-5 cups meat, diced
• 1 green pepper (optional)
• 1 onion, chopped (or approximately 1 tablespoon dried minced or granulated onion) 
• 1 can chunked pineapple, juice reserved to be measured out and added later
• 2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon minced garlic or 2 teaspoons dried granulated garlic
• 3/4 cup white vinegar or rice vinegar
• 3/4 cup pineapple juice (drained from can; add water to reach quantity of liquid)
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 medium tomatoes, chunked, or 1 package of grape tomatoes
• 2 tablespoons corn starch + water for thickening later

Instructions:

1. Layer the ingredients, in order, except the corn starch & tomatoes.  Do not stir.
   
   (PIP it doesn't matter if you stir or not, or what order you put the food in, just make sure you have a large enough bowl to hold everything, but is still small enough to fit into your Instant Pot liner with space to allow the steam to circulate, a trivet in the bottom of the liner, and a minimum of 1 cup of water in the bottom of the liner).
2. Place lid on pot and lock into place.  Set for 10 (ten) minutes high pressure.   Allow 10 minutes natural pressure release to allow the juices to settle into the meat then do a quick pressure release.  While the chicken etc. is cooking, make your corn starch slurry for thickening.
3. After opening the pot, place the tomatoes in, place the lid on the pot, lock it & set it to "saute" for a few minutes till tomatoes have warmed.
      
4. Thicken by turning on the saute' function, get it boiling and slowly pouring in the corn starch & water while stirring. Be careful, if you get it too thick it might splatter up.  If you pour too fast it will create lumps. 
5. Once it's thickened to your liking, serve over rice & enjoy.

Optional additions:  

• 1 tablespoon ginger (I use dried, fresh will give you a much stronger hit of spices)
• 1 tablespoon hoisin sauce 
• 1 tablespoon fish sauce 

*  This recipe works with multiple types of meat.  Choices include:  Chicken, Pork, Meatballs, Shrimp, Beef.

**  Recipe was originally for the stovetop and was rewritten for the IP by me

*** Meat can be rolled in flour & fried on the stove prior to pressure cooking, and the drippings and crunchy bits added into the gravy mix prior to pressure cooking but be aware the breading tends to thicken the juice a bit & you have to add more liquid, so I have chosen to omit this step because I don't care for how it changes the consistency of the gravy and the extra step involved. 

****  Photo gotten from google to demonstrate what it should look like when completed.  Will ETA when I have a recent photo of my own food. 

My kombucha adventure to date

Good morning all!

As I am stuck in a chair holding a sick, clingy toddler, I've chosen to do an update for you all on my latest adventures with "kombucha".  Strange stuff that...

I was first introduced to it in my mid-teen years by my cousin. I didn't care for it at her ferment level.  Too bitter/tart for my liking, and as a teenager my mindset was still that of invincibility, so I just wrote it off in my mind as to whether I would ever get into it or give it a chance as far as health benefits go.

Fast forward about 15-years, and here we are.  Everyone is older and wiser (we hope), some of us are showing signs of health issues, and I have begun to feel the lower levels of my own mortality.  Funny how having children, and wanting to be there for them, then having several close calls when you KNOW that God was watching over you will do that to a person...

I've not hidden the fact that I am not in the utmost health and have had some close calls from our close friends & family, so in an effort to help, one such friend offered to split down her SCOBY and give me a starter for my own batch.  At first I refused, continuing to hold to my initial judgement of this fermented tea, but after thinking on it, and reading about the benefits of this strange concoction, I told her I would give it a try.  That was 3-months ago, and we've had some adventures along the way!  😁

Since then, I've brewed a new batch every day.  My sons, mother & father are drinking it regularly, my sister has given it a try but is less than impressed.  (I believe she would also drink it if I found the right flavor combination for her taste preferences.)
**  My husband has also tried it, but he did not really give it a genuine taste since he seemed to have made up his mind prior to the taste test as to whether he would like it or not so I do not really think too hard on his opinion of my fermentation adventures.  👀

When I first embarked upon this adventure, I still didn't EXACTLY care for the taste, but I thought "this isn't so bad, I can just power though this".  What I did NOT know, was that there are so many different variables involved! 

• You can drink at first ferment, between days 7-10.  [My preference is day 7]
• You can brew that first ferment with either black or green teas [Didn't know that until I started experimenting]
• You canNOT do the second ferment under an airlock (like the type used to make wine).  [It will fizz & fizzle itself right into a frenzy & dribble out the top of the airlock].
• You can do the second ferment with pretty much ANY type of fruit, including home canned, dried, fresh etc.
• You can do that second ferment in either a wire top bottle or an open air container with a coffee filter over it.  [Did not realize this through online research, instead found this out through trial and error on my own].  The ONLY notable difference between tightly sealed vs. open air, was:

1. It formed its own SCOBY, encompassing the fruit, which you just throw away.
2. It was less fizzy [which didn't break my heart really].  Which is not to say the fizz was non-existent.  That isn't true.  There was fizz.  It was just LESS intense.  
3. It was not such a high risk during the fermentation process.  AKA I didn't have to worry about it EXPLODING in my kitchen and creating a BOMB with glass shards in it! 
4. I didn't have to "burp" the bottle once per day to prevent that bomb effect. 

**  You don't HAVE to burp it every day, but one of the first weeks that I was experimenting with the second ferment process, I didn't touch it for all 7 of the 2nd ferment days, and when I finally did open it, the wired down cork had so much pressure behind it that it literally shot off the bottle, put a dent in the ceiling, and I had to later locate it and repair the wire so that it could be reused again.
**  Not only all of that, but the kombucha itself (which happened to be the 4-berry brew), and all of the fruit in it that was being used to flavor the concoction, went shooting out of the bottle and all over the wall.  I had red kombucha, with fruit, running down the wall behind the stove, all over the stove, down the sink... it was incredible how big of a mess this stuff became in less than 5 seconds.

The multiberry brew, freshly frosted from the night before. 👇

So far the flavors I have experimented with have been:

• 4-berry/multiberry (red & black raspberries, blueberries & strawberries)
• Pineapple ginger
• Apple pie
• Pina Colada
• Cherry; which we didn't get to try because I did not use fresh, frozen or dried fruit.  Instead I used a "pie filling", and it was a major flop.  It had artificial sweeteners in it that I wasn't aware of and it tainted the entire thing. 
• Blueberry ginger
• Blueberry pineapple

So far, the multiberry is the family favorite.  I can LITERALLY not make enough of this stuff.  The last batch I made resulted in 3 full size wine bottles, and they were gone within 24-hours.

On all of my fermentations, I never let the ferment go past 10-days.  If it does, I add more sweet tea in to balance out the "tart", with the exemption being to one batch that I did not realize had gone too long, got my days mixed up, and ended up bottling for second ferment on day 14. However, since it was being bottled for second ferment, it did not make a big difference in the grand scheme of things and actually turned out to be a pretty solid brew with good flavor interactions.

The jar on the left is my "first ferment" jar.
The jar in the middle, is a half gallon pickle jar, second ferment, doing a pina colada brew.  Haven't tried that one yet, just started it yesterday.
The one on the right, is the apple pie.

Obviously these are all quite happy where I've plopped them.  👍

Multi-cooker Ranch Chicken Chili with cream cheese

Cooks notes: Can be eaten as a soup, served over steamed rice, or in tortillas/taco shells.  With optional toppings: sour cream, freshly grated cheddar cheese, avocado, fresh lime, and fresh cilantro

Needed items:

2 chicken breasts, cubed

2 cans chicken broth, low sodium

1 medium purple onion, diced
1 can Rotel diced tomatoes, with chilis
1 can corn kernels

1 can baja corn

1 can jalapeno corn
1 can mixed chili beans, mild sauce

1 can red chili beans (mild)

1 can white chili beans (mild)

1 can black chili beans (optional)

1 pkg. Ranch dressing mix
1 8-oz pkg. cream cheese, cut into smaller bits

Corn starch & water to thicken as needed

1 Multi-cooker, capable of at least 8 functions

Directions:

•    Put the cubed chicken & diced onion into the multi-cooker under the "sauté & simmer" setting. Sauté until chicken is white & the natural juices have come forward.
•  Wisk the ranch dressing into the chicken broth till its smooth then pour over the chicken and onions.
•  Add the tomatoes, corn, & beans, stirring to combine, then top with the cream cheese.
•  Continue to let it simmer, stirring occasionally until the cheese has melted/blended into the broth.  Allow the soup to simmer until the simmer setting flips into the last 10-minutes of cooking.
• In the last 1 - 2 minutes, thicken soup with a corn starch & water slurry.  Let the cooker flip into "keep warm", let sit for a few minutes to let the flavors meld, then serve. 

Heidi's Cabbage Stew

Chop:

• 1lb potatoes, small dice
• 2 onions
• 4 large carrots
• 2 celery stalks
• 1 head cabbage

Meat:

• 1 pound fresh ground pork, or Jimmy Dean sausage
  - OR -
• 1 to 1-1/4lb kielbasa, smoked sausage, bratwurst, polish sausage etc.

Seasonings: To taste.  

• 4-6 garlic cloves or 1 tbsp granulated garlic
• 2 tsp chicken bouillon
• 1/2 tsp Salt
• 1/4 tsp Pepper
• 3 tbsp Basil*
• 3 tbsp Oregano*
• 3 tbsp Parsley*
• 1/4 tsp Cumin*
• 1/4 tsp Coriander* 
• 1/4 tsp Paprika* 
• 1/2 tsp Sage*
• 1 tsp Thyme*
• 1 tsp Rosemary*
• 1/4 tsp Tumeric
• 1 large bay leaf

Liquid: 

• 4 cups of water or chicken broth

1. Brown the sausage in the Instant Pot using the saute function.  Deglaze thoroughly. using the chicken broth or water.   
2. Throw all the remaining items in the Instant Pot starting with the root vegetables (carrots, potatoes, onions) and ending with the celery and cabbage. Cook at High pressure for 4 minutes.
   
   
   Note:  

• Items with a star can be replaced with 1/4-1/2tsp Italian seasoning mix
• The cabbage will give off a good amount of water (close to two cups I'd wager), so if you don't want "soup" you could cut the liquid back as far as to 1 cup if needed, but then it would stop being "stew" or "soup" and would instead just be a bunch of steamed vegetables with sausage. 

Rice cooker fried rice to die for

Rice cookers with multiple functions are my friend... also... I am an instinctive cook. I will "follow" a recipe, but... Not usually to the letter. I'm like a pirate following the pirate code... "The code is more like guidelines really"...😛

That being said my kids (2 & 3) LOVE the recipe I concocted for "fried rice" in the rice cooker. That way I can dump it all together, push a button & forget about it till the beep. So I can get the table set & any "extras" prepared.

Recipe is:
2 cups white rice, rinsed
Water added according to rice cooker directions
Chicken bouillon, oyster sauce, hoisin, soy & butter to taste. I usually start with 1 tsp each then work up from there depending on the crowd I'm feeding & how they like it.
Set it to the "white rice" setting & walk away. It'll be done in 20 min give or take.

While that's cooking, if you like extra gravy like my kids do, it's 2 cups water, soy, hoisin, oyster to taste (yes you need to taste as you go; I'm a firm believer in tasting along the way.) 1 tbsp Sugar or molasses or sorgum depending on your taste preference. 1 tsp of ginger. 4 garlic cloves minced, or garlic powder to taste. Start with ½ tsp & go up from there. & for those who like a bit of a nip... ½ a smidge of rooster sauce. Kids & I don't, but hubby does.

After I've set the gravy to simmer, I start in on veggies. Usually frozen, but that's just for convenience, nothing says you have to use frozen, or that you're stuck with "peas & carrots & cabbage". Other things can include mushrooms, zucchini, yellow squash, broccoli... Pretty much anything that tickles your fancy. These veggies can either be added to the raw rice & cooked all the way through the process, placed in the streaming tray and streamed all the way through, or held back till the last 10 minutes. The scrambled egg can either be cooked separately, chopped up & added last, or cooked in the steamer tray using the egg poacher gadget. Just make sure you're whipping the eggs & not ACTUALLY poaching them just like they come it if the shell... That TASTES ok, but does not look as nice...

Once your gravy is beginning to boil, taste it. Make adjustments as needed to suit your preference. Then thicken. I prefer a slurry of corn starch... But others might prefer flour and water. It really doesn't matter how you get it thick... Just go with it. Then eat! My kids DEVOUR this.