Adventures In Instant Pot Cooking

You may remember that on Wednesday I prepare staff luncheon for a church. Today's menu was chicken stew served over polenta, green salad, and bread. One of the staff was celebrating their birthday, so dessert was a store-bought chocolate cake with chocolate icing and chocolate sprinkles.

On my way there I stopped at the grocery store to purchase ingredients. I had just started arranging those ingredients on the kitchen island when the associate priest walked in.

He asked what was on the menu. I told him.

He asked how I was preparing the stew.

It sounded like the question had an ulterior motive, so I asked if he had any suggestions. As a matter of fact he did, saying that his Instant Pot would do a great job.

I had never thought about preparing stew that way, but was intrigued with the concept. I received an Instant Pot five years ago. Since that time I've used it on a regular basis, but predominantly for cooking rice, lentils, and dried beans. My stew 'recipe' was more like an idea floating around in my head than an actual recipe, but I suspected the priest would be disappointed if I didn't use his toy, and I'm nothing if not flexible so I told him I would give it a try.

He beamed, pulled out his phone and searched, then started giving me cooking suggestions. The information was coming much too fast, so I told him I would figure it out and see him in a couple of hours when it was time to eat.

After he left I did my own Google search and I decided my inspiration recipe would be the one that had "Best" in it's title. I used the inspiration recipe more for cooking times than for actual ingredients. My dish had boneless chicken thighs, onion/garlic, carrots, and celery. (And at the end, when the ratio of liquid to solids was off I threw in some leftover oven fried potato chunks from Sunday's breakfast.) The liquid was a combination of cream of chicken soup, a partial jar of pizza sauce from the refrigerator, white wine, and chicken broth.

This Instant Pot had a different pressure release regulator valve than mine, but I found the priest and he showed me how it worked. After I sauteed the vegetables, put the rest of the ingredients in, and sealed the lid on, it took 25 minutes for the pot to come to pressure and cook, with another 15 minutes for steam release. At the end I mixed in a corn starch slurry that added an additional five minutes.

After the meal was over there wasn't much stew left over so I'm considering that a success.

Five years ago today: A Wrong Remark