INSTANT POT 101: SWEET POTATOES

 Wayne and I love sweet potatoes! I don't know of a way we won't eat them. His favorite way (and maybe mine, too) is using a recipe (Sweet Potato Souffle)we were given from friends in CA, Joyce and Stephen. They served it to us when we shared a Thanksgiving dinner with them and a few other friends. Since then it has been included in our Thanksgiving menu 90% of the time. We also just love them plain, baked, with butter. 

The last couple of years we have enjoyed Thanksgiving with our younger son Patrick and his family. I usually bring the cornbread dressing, sweet potatoes, and a pecan pie. Since I am a recent owner of an Instant Pot, I wanted to cook the sweet potatoes in it.

I belong to a group on Facebook for Instant Pot Beginners. Fortunately there are members who are not newbies who help to give good advice when questions are asked. I read a number of ways that people were suggesting how to cook them, but chose one person and "talked" back and forth to her to know specially what to do. Saying that, you may have your own way of cooking sweet potatoes in the IP. I am sharing what I did and know that it worked.

Sorry I don't remember her name so I will call her Jane. Jane cooked her potatoes for 50 minutes but she was making a sweet potato pie and wanted to make sure they were soft. I told her I was going to "candy" mine so she suggested I cook them for 25 minutes. Personally, they were soft enough after 25 minutes plus release time to make a pie, so depending on what you plan to do with the sweet potatoes after they cook, you might try 20 minutes. They did hold up even though they were totally done for me to quarter them and cook them with a glaze. 

I also cooked 3 lbs of sweet potatoes and you might not want to cook that many. According to my information for my IP, you don't cook them a longer or shorter cooking time due to the amount of potatoes you are using.

COOKING SWEET POTATOES IN THE IP

    

Sweet potatoes (I had 3 lbs - about 6 or 7 sweet potatoes. but for any amount)

1-1/2     cups chicken broth 

Wash the sweet potatoes. Pour the broth in the inner pot. Using the metal rack that comes with the IP, place potatoes on it, and place down in the inner pot.

Cover with lid.

Press the Pressure Cooker button (some pots it is the manual button).

Add minutes to timer to show 25 minutes.

Timer will reset to ON. It will take about 10 minutes for the pressure to build.

Then the timer will show 25 minutes again and potatoes will start cooking.

Add the end of the 25 minutes (timer will show 0:00 and then start counting up a minute at a time).

Allow the IP to Natural Release for 10 minutes. (In other words, do nothing - I got busy and didn't check it for 11 minutes.) Then do a Quick Release, (press vent lever/button on top of lid).

It took about 3 minutes for all of the steam to vent. (The Float Valve - the silver button will be down.) Press Cancel (to stop the timer).

Open lid,

place lid in handle opening,

and remove potatoes in rack. 

I then placed the cooked potatoes on a cookie sheet to

pull the pealing off. You can do whatever you wish with the cooked potato now. If you were just serving them as baked sweet potatoes, you could just put them on a platter or individual plates peeling and all.

If you would like to see the recipe I used to make Candied Sweet Potatoes, check it out HERE. Here is a picture of what the dish looked like. Oh My Gosh! They were so good!

BREAKFAST CASSEROLE/BITES

Wayne always says I don't eat enough for breakfast (just my Greek yogurt usually), when I saw this, I thought, "Why not? But I'll put my twist on it and make it in my muffin pan instead of an 8 - inch square baking pan. The casserole will keep better and I can enjoy a smaller amount if I like. I can even freeze them."

When I went to Aldi for some last minute Thanksgiving grocery shopping, I noticed they had rolls of Italian sausage included with the regular and hot sausage. You already know what I'm going to say, don't you? Yep, I bought it to give the little "casseroles bites" a kick. And it does. You could use any seasoned sausage you prefer. You could also make it in the square pan if you are needing that amount for your family. I also used cinnamon raisin bread for an extra sweetness. The last change I made (I promise) was using shredded mozzarella cheese since Wayne prefers it over cheddar.

What? You don't like sausage. Substitute chopped ham or bacon. If you make the "bites", you can please everyone in your family and use whatever meat they prefer and they can have their personal Breakfast Bite. (See what you can come up with if you just let your imagination take over. 😉)

Since I made 12 little "bites", I used almost four slices of the bread so that I could place 5 squares in each muffin cup. The amount of bread you will need will depend on the size of the bread slices you are using.

BREAKFAST CASSEROLE/BITES

2+     slices bread

1/2    pound bulk port sausage (could use diced ham, ground beef, ground turkey, or bacon)

1/2    cup shredded cheese 

3       eggs

1       cup milk

1/2    teaspoon ground mustard

1/4    teaspoon salt

1/8    teaspoon pepper

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease or spray an 8 - inch square baking dish or a 12 - cup muffin tin with non-stick cooking spray. Set aside.

Cut the crust/edge from the bread slices and cut into 1 - inch cubes. (You won't be using the edges.)

Place bread cubes in the bottom of the baking dish. I placed 5 cubes in each muffin cup.

In a skillet, brown the sausage over medium heat until no longer pink, drain if necessary.

Sprinkle the sausage and

the cheese over the bread cubes.

In a bowl, whisk the eggs, milk, mustard, salt, and pepper.

Pour over the sausage and cheese. (Divide evenly if making the little casseroles. It didn't cover the ingredients, but filled the cup about 3/4ths full.)

Bake for 30 minutes for 8 - inch squares until puffed and golden. 15 - 20 minutes for the muffin size. 

To heat up, I place one or two bites on a plate and cook for 30 seconds in the microwave. 

ISABELLAS

We had been living in CA two years when I saved this recipe from the Los Angeles Times newspaper. The recipe from Lu Carlos from Temecula was in a section called My Best Recipe. Lu noted "These oatmeal crispies have been renamed, first to honor the donor in La Grange, Illinois, and secondly, because nobody will believe that they are made with oatmeal. They are so simple to make, healthful and appropriate for any occasion. Compliments are guaranteed."

I don't think I ever made them, but I had folded the half page from the newspaper and put it in my folder of recipe to try. I made them while Jay and Justin were doing the remodeling projects and they helped us eat them up. The recipe made almost 3 dozen melt in your mouth cookies.

Since I was making these for us, I cut back on the sugar by using the stevia blend which only uses 1/2 of the amount of sugar called for in the recipe by pyure. I could have easily just used the 1/2 cup of sugar since it wasn't that much. The cookies might have spread a little bit more like the ones in the newspaper did, but we enjoyed the treat without feeling guilty.

ISABELLAS

1        cup butter, at room temperature (2 sticks)

1/2     cup sugar (I used 1/4 cup pyure all-purpose stevia blend)

1        teaspoon vanilla

1-1/4  cups flour

1-1/2  cups oats (I used quick oats)

Dash of salt, optional

Powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Cream butter and sugar until light. Don't forget to scrape the sides of the bowl.

Mix in vanilla, then flour, oats, and salt. Chill thoroughly. (about 30 minutes)

Shape into small balls (use a small cookie scoop) and place 3 inches apart on ungreased baking sheet. Flatten using crisscross indentations with fork.

Bake 12 to 15 minutes.

Remove from sheet to cool on wire rack.

Sprinkle with powdered sugar, if desired.

 

PAULA DEEN'S RICE PUDDING

 Earlier this week I shared my experiences and recipe for cooking brown rice in my new Instant Pot. Missed it? You can check it out here. In that post I said I had made some rice pudding with the leftover brown rice and used one of only three recipes I could find for rice pudding in a number of my cookbooks. True. I didn't look through all of them that might have had a recipe in them, but that would take a day or two since I have so - o - o many cookbooks. (Since then I was looking for another recipe through my recipe box and guess what I found. Yep! A recipe for rice pudding. Isn't that always the way it is. You look forever for something and then find it when you are looking for something else. Well, that recipe will have to wait for another day and another post.)

I was really surprised that I couldn't find many recipes for rice pudding, especially in the "collection" type cookbooks. Wayne, who is not very fond of rice pudding says it's a Southern dish. Well, he's also from the south. Guess his mother didn't like it. My daddy who lived most of his life in the south was born in Wyoming and he always ate rice in a bowl with milk and sugar. No one else in the family did. Love memories!

But back to the post at hand ... Paula Deen's Rice Pudding. The interesting thing to me was that Paula used brown rice in this recipe when she baked it. She said the nutty flavor of the brown rice was a perfect combination with the dried cherries, cinnamon, and nutmeg which surprised her.

Since Wayne is not fond of rice pudding as I said earlier, I got to enjoy a "square" of it every morning for breakfast until it was eaten up. Yummy! (He did eat one or two squares but that's about all. I cried! 😢)

PAULA DEEN'S RICE PUDDING

2-1/2     cups milk

3           large eggs, lightly beaten

1           cup cooked brown or white rice

1/2        cup sugar

1/2        cup dried cherries, coarsely chopped

1           teaspoon vanilla

1/4        teaspoon salt

1/2        teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4        teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/2        teaspoon freshly grated orange zest (I used dried orange peel)

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Grease an 8 - inch square baking dish with cooking spray. (Make sure the dish will fit inside a larger 9 x 13 - inch pan. It wouldn't fit in one of my pans with space all around. Might not be a lot on the narrow sides but there will be some.)

In a large bowl, whisk together the milk and eggs until combined.

Stir in the rice, sugar, cherries, vanilla, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and orange zest.

 

Spoon the mixture into the prepared baking dish. (Use a large spoon to do this. You don't want to pour the mixture in or you will be trying to spread the rice out evenly in the dish. You also want to evenly cover the top with the spices.)

Place the baking dish inside a 9 x 13 - inch pan and carefully pour water into the pan to a depth of 1 inch.

Bake for about 1-1/2 hours, or until the rice pudding is lightly browned and set. Remove pudding from the 9 x 13 - inch pan.

Cool slightly and place in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

Cut into squares

to serve.

Here is my brown rice I cooked in my Instant Pot.

BLACKBERRY COBBLER (AMISH)

Cobblers are one of my favorite desserts, but one thing I have learned in my many years of cooking and also traveling and eating them in restaurants, cobblers are not the same to everyone. I grew up in the south and cobblers to me were abundant with liquid. Wayne also grew up in the south but he likes his cobblers what I call "dry"/with more dough. That has caused some problems for us when I want to make one. Who will I make the cobbler for today?

We have also grown accustom to eating desserts that are less sweet. Don't get me wrong; I still like a good rich chocolate cake thick with icing. I have taken only a bite of a really sweet dessert and then pushed the dish away.

This recipe for Blackberry Cobbler comes from Miriam Miller's Authentic Amish Cooking cookbook called The Wooden Spoon Cookbook. It is so good, but not real sweet. It only has half a cup of sugar in it, but then you get to enjoy the tartness of the blackberries. I made this cobbler twice in several weeks. The instruction given in the recipe as to the size of baking dish to use was a 1-1/2 quart size pan. I didn't have one that size. The first time I made it in a 1 quart square baking dish. That was definitely too small. There wasn't that much dough but I thought the dough might bake over the top, but it didn't. I wanted to make it again in a different dish but it took me a couple of weeks to get around to it. This time was much better and even looked prettier, if that is important to you.

BLACKBERRY COBBLER

1/4    cup butter, softened or at room temperature

1/2    cup sugar

1       cup flour

2       teaspoons baking powder

1/2    cup milk

2       cups blackberries (or enough to give a complete single layer of berries on batter)

3/4    cup raspberry or apple juice

ice cream or whipped cream (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease or spray a 1-1/2 quart baking pan. (I used a rectangular pan that is a little more than 8 x 10.5 - inches)

In a mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar til well blended.

Combine the flour and baking powder and add to creamed mixture alternately with the milk beginning and ending with the flour.

Stir just until moistened.

Spread in pan.

Arrange blackberries in a single layer over batter.

Carefully pour apple juice over all.

Bake for 45 - 50 minutes or until golden brown.

Serve warm; top with ice cream or whipped cream, if desired. Store in the refrigerator.

Here is what it looked like in the smaller dish. (😉)