I got an Instant Pot for Christmas and I wanted to share some of the first recipes I made it in with you all. I made all of these within the first week of owning the pot (yes, I was that excited!). It was exactly what I’d asked for. :)

The first thing I tried to make with it was rice. I thought it would be easy, I mean there is a ‘rice’ button on the machine. BUT, I probably should have read a little bit more because that first batch of rice came out slightly under-cooked and a little crunchy. But it was going in gumbo so we rolled with it. The gumbo softened it up enough.

The next time I tried to make rice, I’d read about ‘natural pressure release’ and using manual pressure cooking. So I made another batch of rice and it came out perfect! I was so happy!!

This gave me a little too much confidence the next time I went to make rice. I started a batch and went to do something else. Then my phone got a notification that my instant pot detected a burn (yes it’s a WiFi instant pot!!). So I went back to the kitchen and realized I’d forgot to put the valve in the ‘sealing’ position. Therefore it was constantly releasing and never retained the steam to pressure cook properly. I opened the pot and definitely had crunchy rice. But I hate waste so I threw it in a skillet with some roast, veggies, and a bit of the leftover beef broth. It was great (check out the more extensive blog post here).

Also, sorry I didn’t take any pics of my rice, I didn’t think about doing a blog post about it until after we’d already consumed it all.

The next meal I made in the instant pot was bleu and white cheddar mac and cheese with roast. I definitely need to figure out the pasta to water ratio but it was still rich and decadent (check out the more extensive blog post here).

After the success of the Mac and cheese, I wanted to try for another meal. So I tried making roast chicken in my instant pot. This was a huge success, what used to take me 2 hours, I accomplished in 40 minutes. I simply stuffed the turkey with a head of garlic cut in half, a lemon cut in half, a half an onion cut in quarters. I then rubbed it down with salt, pepper, and olive oil. Then I seared it on both sides in the instant pot on sauté mode. I then coated it in a Cajun seasoning blend, put the steam tray in the instant pot, and pressure cooked it until done. It was so delicious. I even oven roasted some potatoes with zataar seasoning and microwave steamed some green beans with it.

As a bonus, I was able to use the leftover roast chicken to make a delicious chicken rice in the instant pot. It’s a great one pot meal (check out the extensive blog post here).

The last thing I made this week in my instant pot was a chicken tikka marsala. It was done in under an hour which is awesome, but I stumbled a little on the seasoning. I may have added a tad too much cayenne because it was SPICY. Good thing I like spicy able I’m bringing it to work for the rest of the week for lunch. The main dish though had me marinate chicken bits in yogurt and spicy before adding it to the instant pot on saute. I sauteed them a little bit before pressure cooking 25 minutes in a sauce. I put it back on saute to add cream and that was that. I also made perfect rice in the instant pot to put it over (yay! I’ve finally figured it out)! Overall it was delicious. I also made it into an adorable “cat in a bath” bento. Check out the blog post here.

Well that’s all the meals I made this week. Hope you enjoyed my adventure in instant potting!