Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Home made, fast pressure cooker chicken vegetable broth

Looks good!!

Simple testing here. I love homemade broth bases over cans or boxes purchased at the store. But normally it's a lot of simmering and boiling to get a good flavored one pulled from the carcass.  Gunna try and short cut it in the pressure cooker.  Will it work?  Let's find out!

Ok, starting with
Chicken carcass. (this case a large 8lbs chicken, eck that's big!!) pull all the good meat off but throw all the other stuff in the pot, skin, bones, pretty much everything left over. Break it up a bit and toss it in there.

All the GOOD meat NOT going in there!

Vegetables, not really gunna gives spacific list here as the best  broths are ones when you take leftover, end of the bag scraps, and just toss them in there. But there is celery, tad of a left over onion, small amount of both yellow and orange peppers and a few left over baby carrots.  Rough chop them all up and throw in the pot.
left over skin, carcass, bits and some veggies.. 

Sprinkle some salt and pepper, and I often add a teaspoon or so of Italian mix herbs.  What ever floats your boat, just remember not to go over boat with anything as this is just a base for something else.
Add water to just cover everything.. This was a big chicken and my pressure cooker is a biggie so I got 10 cups in and probably could have added more.
Add water to just over the top of everything

Set  on "soup" and set timer on 30 minutes.

OK, took it all out .. poured through a strainer. Some people might want to use a finer filter like a cheese cloth  but I like the tiny bits for flavor. It's very much a success!!!


stuff is awesome. Great flavor, great smelling! just really good broth.

Friday, January 15, 2016

Shrimp n' Pasta in "Cheater" Sauce

Pasta and Shrimp with Cheater Sauce

MMMmmmmm.. Shrimp and Pasta cooked in a nice vegetable sauce... soon yummy!!
It's actually really tasty, and the cheaters sauce makes it rather easy. What is "Cheaters Sauce"? Well, it's simple, it's a 1/2 home made, 1/2 jar spaghetti or I like to use store bought pizza sauce. The taste of home made, super thick, but isn't all that hard or time consuming to make. I often make kind of a Red Pepper Sauce this way, just use 2/3rds red peppers and 1/3 onions and little else in the veggies. but this one is a mix of vegetables I had in the frig.

Simple Ingredients -
1 Stick celery
1/2 carrot (or 3-4 babies)
1/2 medium onion
1/4 - 1/2 red onion
a *leaf of yellow pepper
a *leaf of orange pepper
a *leaf or red pepper
1 tablespoon butter (can just add extra oil if you prefer)
2 tablespoons or so olive oil

1/2 jar or so of spaghetti or pizza sauce
About 1/3rd bag or Pasta (curly or bow tie work best)
1 dozen to 18 or so medium uncooked shrimp

(* a leaf of pepper is about 1/6 to 1/8th the pepper, you just slide the knife down through the pepper avoiding the center and seeds, the makes kinda a leaf looking chunk)

Chop up all the vegetables and throw with oil and butter in a hot, tall sided pan, the whole meal ends up in this pan. Medium to high heat. cook while stirring till the edges start to turn brown and onions get translucent.
Cook vegetables till lightly browned

 pour in jar sauce to just cover the chopped veggies and turn down heat to low or medium low, keep cooking and stirring till sauce just starts to simmer and bubble. 
simmer veggies and jar sauce


Take off stove and throw it in heat resistant bowl or in a blender and using a stick blender (or the regular blender) chop up all the veggies into a super thick sauce. Toss it all back in the pan, cover (it will make a mess bubbling and splattering everywhere otherwise) and simmer for 5-10 minutes more on low heat.

Blend mixture to make thick sauce

While simmering sauce cook the pasta normally in water.
Take shrimp, devain, rinse, clean and butterfly slice them. You want large, but thin slices to allow them to cook through but not over cook. Take shrimp and toss in pan with sauce, stirring occasionally  and let cook for 5 minutes making sure they are cooked through and turn a nice solid white color. (you may need to turn up the temp on an electric stove a tad to get them to cook through) 
Toss in raw shrimp and cook till they turn white

Now, toss in pasta, stir and let cook a few minutes more. Keep stirring now and then to keep from sticking on the bottom of the pan.

Serve...Oh soo delicious!!

Tuesday, January 12, 2016

Pressure Cooker Frozen Chicken Soup.

Gunna use frozen thighs to make some chicken soup in the pressure cooker.  Will even make broth from them in the pressure cooker. (but will still need to add more broth)

Ingredients: 
4 frozen chicken thighs
3-4 cups water

Chopped- 
1/2 a medium - large red onion
1/2 a medium - large regular onion
2 celery sticks
1 carrot ( I used 1/2 dozen baby carrots)
1 *leaf of red pepper
1 *leaf of yellow pepper
1 *leaf of orange pepper
(*a leaf is about an 1/8 to a 1/6 of the pepper, I call it a leaf because, well it looks like one when you cut it off the pepper)

1/2 tablespoon of butter (more or less to you personal taste)
1 1/2 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 to 1 teaspoon herbs of choice (I use dried Italian Medley mix )
16 oz or so of vegetable or chicken broth


Easy start, throwing 4 whole frozen thighs in the pressure cooker and add water to a little over covering the thighs. In this case around 3-4 cups.  Fire up pressure cooker and cook for 15 minutes. Once done release pressure and remove chicken. Let cool enough to easily handle and remove skin and fats, breaking upend chop chicken, put aside.  Now take the bones and throw them back into the cooker with the water still inside, cook again for 15 minutes to finish making a nice chicken broth.  Relieve pressure and strain liquids. Throw always bones and bits.

Chop up, onion halves, celery, carrot and pepper leaves. You can add or subtract veggies for your preferred taste. I do caution from using any more peppers as they will over power the taste of the chicken easily.

chopping veggies 
Notice pepper *leaf

 Wipe out pressure cooker pot, add butter and olive oil then the chopped veggies and heat, stir till they all soften. Mix in herbs, then add chopped chicken, and the broth you made, add the extra 16 oz of vegetable broth or so. Stir and close lid, let cook for 10 minutes, then shut off and let sit. (can just jump in and add noodles and be done but I like to make it early and let it marinade if possible)


made broth pouring over chicken and veggies

After sitting A added a bit more broth and a tad of water just so the noodles had something to absorb, and threw in noodles, about 1/2-3/4 a bag of curly noodles and cooked it all again for 15 minutes under pressure...  It was gooooooddddd!!!  Gunna say most people will want to add some salt and pepper..

Soup with Honey White Bread

Monday, January 11, 2016

Honey White Bread


Yummy Honey White Bread

I use both a bread machine and the oven.  Reason? I hate the paddles baking into the loaf and making a weird spot in the middle. So I mix, knead and rise in the machine then switch to regular bread pan let rise again and cook in the oven. The good thing here is the cheap $50 machines work just as well as the high priced units.

Ingredients
4 cups flour (bread flour preferably)
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons fast rise bread yeast
3/4 cup hot water
2 tablespoons honey
1/2 cup milk
1 egg
2 tablespoons olive oil (or butter if preferred)

Take 3/4 cup hot water and tablespoon honey and mix, the hot water dissolves the honey off the spoon, once basically clean, take the spoon and do a second honey full.
Take olive oil and put in bread machine bowl/pan. Swish it around and add water-honey mix, egg, and milk. Pour flour on top and and sprinkle salt, then yeast over. Put in bread machine and set to "dough" this should take about an hour to hour and one half and be kneaded well and first rise.
Dough in machine before 1st rise and then in pans to for 2nd rise

Remove after machine is done and put in regular lightly grease bread pan. Place in warm spot and let rise.  I put it in an oven that I get up to 120 degrees then shut off and let sit.. For a few minutes.  Let cool a bit before putting bread in to rise. Throw in a small glass or other container of steamy water with the bread dough. Let rise for approximately 20 mins or until properly risen. Remove and preheat oven to 350.
Bread risen and oven preheated to 350ยบ ready to cook

Cook the bread for 20-25 minutes until golden brown on top.  Remove From oven and let cool. If you like a softer crust then brush the loaf lightly with milk, this will keep the crust from getting too thick and hard. Let cool and Eat, Oh so yummy!

brushing with milk to keep crust softer

Sunday, January 10, 2016

Pressure cooked ribs

Found these frozen ribs in, well,.. obviously, the freezer. They were honestly badly frost bitten and I have NO clue how long they have been in there. But, they just are too big and, well,  they are ribs, so I can't waste them. Thinking the pressure cooker can make anything good right?


Defrosted ribs

So I defrosted them on a big plate, thinking what to do with them during the day.
Here's what I came up with outa my head....

decided on a kinda sweet BBQ sauce type flavor. Took approximately these ingredients...
Making a thin sauce to use in the pressure cooker. 
1 cup Ketchup
1 cup Apple Cider
2-3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
1/2 tablespoon worchester sauce
1/2 to maybe 3/4 cup vegetable broth
1/2 cup lightly packed brown sugar
Mix together and bring to a quick boil while stirring.. once boiled remove from heat and let sit.

Now I chopped up 
1 medium onion 
1 stick of celery

added 2-3 tablespoon of oil to the pressure cooker and started up to get hot.(I'm using a electric pressure cooker, not a stove top unit) Sprinkle salt and pepper on ribs and throwing 2 at a time into the pot I quick browned all edges.
Removing ribs I threw in a table spoon or so more oil and toss in the veggies. Stirring with a wooden spoon and knocking up any meaty bits off the bottom. cooked veggies till onions started to get translucent.
Now I stacked up the meat in layers, dribbling a bit of the BBQ style sauce on faces between as I went. Set pressure cooker for 40 minute (which may actually be too long..? ) and throwing the rest of the sauce in sealed her up...

After throwing it all together, I peeled and chopped some potatoes for some mashed taters and waiting for the meat to cook...

Tick, tock...

Oh MY GOD.. 10 minutes left and it just smells awesome!!
More tick, tock....

OK, done... what it looks like in the cooker...


And on the plate, with some mashed taters, green beans and some chedder cheese broiled toast.. totally yum.  Ribs were wicked tender, and very flavorful. Really surprised how good they taste!



I will say they were a slight bit dry, and honestly, that's not even the right word as they were freaking awesome, but maybe a bit over cooked. I think 20-30 minutes might have been better. May just be that they were old and frozen for ever  ;) 

Think I'm going for 2nds!!  they are that good!!