Finger on the Shutter

By: Jill Finger

Feb 23 2017

Category: Uncategorized

1 Comment

Everyone knows I am a sucker for kitchen gadgets. When I told Wes about the Instant Pot  I had seen on Amazon, he rolled his eyes.  I managed to convince him by telling him all the things it could do. It’s a pressure cooker, yogurt maker, slow cooker, and rice cooker.

I read through the manual when it was delivered on Tuesday  and was instantly confused with all the complex instructions, but by taking it one step at a time, we did the initial test run which was basically boiling water. The test run familiarized us with locking the lid on and some of the settings.

After managing to boil water without burning it, I moved on to making dinner while Wes turned on the Syracuse basketball game. I chopped onion, celery, carrot, and garlic and sautéed them for three minutes in the Instant Pot. After adding lentils, broth, and spices,  I locked the lid on and set the pressure cooker for 20 minutes. When it finished ,mi let it sit for 10 minutes to let it cool a bit, then vented the steam.  I took the lid off and added shrimp and fresh spinach setting the Pot back on sauté. The shrimp cooked in couple minutes. To finish the Shrimp/Lentil stew off, I added fresh lemon juice and called Wes to dinner.

We ate the stew with sourdough bread, but it would be equally good over brown rice.  We were both impressed by how good the stew was and we’re glad there was some leftover for tomorrow.

I have a new cookbook to cook my way through and I’ve found a Facebook group that shares Instant Pot recipes and tips.

This is going to be fun!