OK….. WHO ELSE LOVES THE INSTANTPOT? I’m talking like, this thing has changed lives and continues to change lives every second of every day. I hopped on the IP train shortly after they got released and I haven’t looked back. I didn’t have much experience with pressure cooking before this, but I loved to meal prep and this is honestly the best meal prepping tool to date. You can use it to saute, as a slow cooker, as a rice cooker, as a soup cooker, or even as a yogurt maker (which I’m sure I’ll have an opinion on once I try it). Heck, you can even cook FROZEN chicken breasts in 30 min. I think that I love the Instantpot 10000x more because it means I just have one dish to clean up instead of a dozen for certain recipes. If you haven’t tried it yet, I highly suggest getting one to see for yourself.
Meal prep at our house includes a lot of experimenting, and this Thai beef stew was a product of an ambitious Costco run (because who honestly only buys what you absolutely need at Costco?!). Here’s what you’ll need.
Ingredients:
- about 2 lbs (more or less depending on how much you want to prep) of stewing beef
- 3 stalks of chopped green onion
- 1 tbsp garlic (minced)
- 1 tsp ginger (the squeezable tube kind is magical, but you can use grated ginger as well)
- 2 cups of chopped mushrooms
- 1 cup butternut squash (cubed)
- 1 head of broccolini
- 1 1/2-2 cups carrot (sliced)
- 1 1/2 tbsp Thai curry paste (like this one)
- 1 tbsp chili sauce (warning: if you don’t like it spicy- then don’t add this!)
- 2 cans of coconut milk
- salt & pepper
*note: feel free to substitute any of the veggies! This recipe could benefit from the addition of sweet potatoes, regular russets, or really any kind of root vegetable!
Instructions:
1. First, get the Instantpot going on the Saute function. Place your green onions, minced garlic, and mushrooms in the bottom of the pot with a bit of oil (I like to use avocado oil, but you can use whatever cooking oil you prefer). I find that the avocado oil is good because it has a higher smoke point so high heat cooking like this will work perfectly.
2. Next, brown up the meat. Place all your meat in the bottom of the instant pot so that it gets a nice brown/seared exterior. Add a pinch of salt & pepper to the meat. Keep moving things around so you can get all your pieces to cook evenly.
3. Add the ginger, thai curry paste, and chili sauce in with your meat mixture and spread it around generously.
4. Next, let all your ingredients cook down together (about 4-5 minutes). Add the coconut milk, carrots, broccolini, salt, and pepper. You can add more chili sauce here if you want to feel the burn!
5. Finally, mix it up very well. You want to make sure you’ve got yourself an even stew.
6. Put the top on your Instantpot, and place it in the Sealing position for pressure cooking, then place your Instantpot on the Meat/Stew function. Adjust the cook time to 30 minutes. When the timer is up, you can manually vent the stew (no need to wait for natural pressure release).
7. ENJOY!!!!!!! If you’d like, you can top with fresh avocado & a soft boiled egg. I added some red pepper flakes to the top for additional heat.
After we finished a few bowls of this goodness, we decided to try to add some gluten free rice ramen noodles to soak up more of the liquid. All the credit goes to Jordan for that one, because he nailed it and it was the perfect consistency. We just added 2 noodle packs and let it heat on the Saute function for about 10 minutes.
Normally, I’d stay away from stews and soups as it seems like it should finally be getting nice outside, but since we got absolutely dumped on with snow yesterday, this seemed like the perfect feel-good soul-warming recipe to stick it to the man. Just kidding. But, at least it was the perfect recipe to warm the soul for a few days while Minnesota gets its ish back together. You can modify this recipe in any way to eliminate the meat for a vegan version, or adjust spices for an AIP friendly version.
Here’s to hoping the snow doesn’t stick around too much longer! Let me know how this one goes for you + TREAT YO-SELF TO AN INSTANT POT IF YOU HAVEN’T ALREADY.
sustaining sloan 