My mother suddenly decided to buy us an Instant Pot.  It may or may not be related to Rogue Two (closing in on 5 years old) smelling like a McDonalds chicken nugget most days.

These new fancier pressure cookers have become all the rage, letting you whip up gourmet meals from frozen in 13 seconds with no prep and no mess.  Or something like that.

I’ve chronicled already my own desire to eat healthier and lower my cholesterol and improve my overall fitness/wellness (read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3).  I have not really discussed our family.

My wife overall has a healthier diet than everyone else in the family.  While she has her cravings and food weaknesses (hello Taco Bell nachos!), she’s less prone to snacking (kids and me), eating seconds/thirds/fourths (me), or constantly eating sweets (me).

She’s the one that introduced me to asparagus, which is now my second favorite vegetable after cheese pizza.

She also does most of our meal planning and is the one most likely to prepare and cook a high-quality meal.  I’m the one most likely to order a high-quality meal from the restaurant or pick up a $5 Aldi’s pizza on the way home.

Meal planning is exhausting.  When you have 3 kids, 2 of whom any given night will refuse to eat, it becomes a thankless and painful task.  When both spouses work and the kids have “activities” and “needs” it can be hard to consistently prepare a good meal.

When you do, half of it may be spent threatening kids of the dire consequences they will face if they run off one-more-time.

So we jumped into the Instant Pot craze this week to see what would happen.

The Wife’s Turn

My wife knows how to cook and makes many tasty meals.  She doesn’t really trust me in the kitchen so much as she tolerates me helping, and turfs meal prep to me when she doesn’t have time or is tired of it.

Roasted Chicken

Her first meal, roasted chicken legs/breasts with the bones still in, was a learning experience.  All we had heard was about how fast the Instant Pot cooks.

No one heavily advertises it can take awhile to warm up to the right temp/pressure.  With a soft/liquid meal it can reach the right pressure in a few minutes.  With a lot in the pot and high density food, it can take up to 40 minutes.

Also, while it’s heating, you can’t really TELL what is going on — it’s silent.

So my wife started this pressure cooker chicken recipe, and we waited and waited and at one point and nothing was happening so at one point opened the damn thing and lost all the pressure because didn’t realize it was working.  It was just taking a long time to build up to the right pressure/temp.

It ended up taking ~1.5 hours to cook the entire meal.  It would have taken far less had we had an idea how the thing worked.

It tasted excellent, and all of us except Rogue Three (almost 2 years old) fully enjoyed it.

Mac and Cheese

Easy Mac is the definition of processed food — there is nothing natural about the neon yellow/orange color, and microwaving stuff in a plastic container is so bad that the American Academy of Pediatrics is telling people to avoid doing it because it may harm your kids.

My wife found a Mac and Cheese pressure cooker recipe and tried it out the next day.  It was both an easier recipe than the chicken meal and cooked faster.

Despite the lack of neon coloring, the children enjoyed it (as did I).  Except for Rogue Three, who was not interested.  Perhaps having less glowing colors in their food will help them behave better.

Reaching Valhalla — Cook from Frozen

My main interest in this device was to see if it could really make it “easy” to cook for someone like me — I don’t enjoy cooking and I generally do best when the only step required is to turn on a device and walk away for awhile.

I enjoy eating and I’m great at doing dishes.  I have a grill I dust off about once a month.  That’s about it.

Could I whip up some chicken from frozen and have it taste good and not poison us?

If so, I can store frozen chicken breasts, throw them in this thing, and have dinner in 15 minutes.  Then we would have a winner.

I found several sites online that said it was both possible and easy to cook chicken breasts from frozen with minimal effort and at high speed.

So I bought some frozen chicken tenderloins (I meant to buy chicken breasts and bought the wrong product) and used this recipe:

• ~2 cups chicken broth — we had an unused container in the cupboard due to expire next week; if I hadn’t found this I would’ve used water
• 1/2 stick butter
• 1 packet of magical caribbean seasoning from the grocery store (~$1); future recipies will just use the Montreal Chicken seasoning we already own
• 8 chicken tenderloins (each about 1/2 to 1/3 the size of a chicken breast); future recipes will use 4-5 regular size chicken breasts

Throw it all in the pot, stir it around to coat things, close the lid, and make sure the vent is closed/sealed.

Set it to pressure cook with a 10-minute timer, and wait to see what happens.

It took ~3-4 minutes for it to warm up.  Once it did the 10-minute countdown started. At the end it began venting some team (the “natural pressure release,” NPR in the Instant Pot vernacular).   After 5 minutes of NPR I flipped the vent so it would quickly vent the remaining steam.

I opened it up and a nice smell emanated.  The chicken looked fully cooked. I picked up a piece and it was so tender/juicy the tenderloin fell apart as I picked it up.

The taste?  Fantastic.

When I make chicken on my Weber gas grill it isn’t as good as what came out of the Instant Pot.  That’s partially because I’ve never developed a great sense of when things are overcooked, but even so, it was really good.

Even my wife was impressed.  She was as impressed with me not burning the food/poisoning us as she was with the taste, but overall everyone loved the chicken (except for Rogue Three, whose daily dinner hunger strikes continue.  I swear he eats at other times and places).

Conclusion

I’ll be heading to Costco this weekend to buy 50 pounds of chicken breasts for our deep freezer, and dinner in the Rogue household will never be the same.  Or rather, it will be the same every night because I’m going to make a lot of chicken.