Weekly Meal Prep: Instant Pot Basic Ingredients

These last few months, many of us have been spending more time in our homes than usual due to the coronavirus disease (COVID 19).  The requirement to "stay at home" has brought with it many challenges, but also opportunities to improve the quality of our lives. For me, I decided to take this extra time "at home" in my RV to improve my eating habits. Using the Instant Pot for meal prep has just made that goal easier.

Meal Prep Makes Healthy Eating Easier
I want to eat healthier, really I do, but it takes a lot of time to prepare healthy meals. Normally, in our everyday lives, we don't have time to cook a big healthy recipe every night. I discovered, a few years ago, that it is easier for me to eat healthy when I meal prep.  I'm not talking about the kind of meal prep where you eat the same meals all week. How boring!  Luckily, I found a better way to meal prep on Mel Joulwan's blog, “The Clothes Make the Girl”, now called “Well Fed”. https://meljoulwan.com/ 

Prep Ingredients Not Meals
Instead of meal prepping recipes, Mel suggests that, for the most part, you meal prepare ingredients for your meals. It is so much easier to cook when you are busy if all of the ingredients are ready. During the week you can mix these prepared ingredients with different sauces to create meals. Mel calls these meals made with prepared ingredients "hot plates". She compared this way of cooking to the preparations a sous chef does at a restaurant. Wow! Now, I can eat healthily and still have the variety I want. 

The Instant Pot Makes Meal Prep Faster
When I got my Instant Pot, I realized that this wonderful appliance makes meal prep even easier for me! The prepping, cooking, and cleaning that used to take a full day now take only a few hours. This is because the Instant Pot uses pressure to cook the food. This pressure can reduce the cooking time of some foods significantly. Even when the Instant Pot takes the same amount of time as a stovetop method, The hands-off cooking of the Instant Pot lets me use that time to meal prep other ingredients, like cutting up fresh vegetables. 

So what foods cook faster or easier in the Instant Pot? Here is a list of  “ingredients” that I cook almost every week: steamed hard-cooked eggs, steel-cut oatmeal, rice, poached chicken, and steamed potatoes. I also love to make a big pot of chili in the Instant Pot at the end of my meal prep day. That way I have a quick and easy meal ready to eat that night after all my "not so hard" work.

Below are the quick and easy steps for how to cook each of these ingredients in the Instant Pot. I also included a list of ideas on how I use these ingredients to make quick and easy meals, snacks, and side dishes.

Ingredients I Meal Prep Each Week

Steamed Hard-Cooked Eggs
Ingredients:
4-6 eggs
1 cup of water

Directions:

• Put the water in the bottom of the pot that came with your Instant Pot. 
• Place the trivet or a metal steamer basket in the pot. 
• Place eggs on the trivet. 
• Close the lid. Push knob to sealing. 
• Press the manual or pressure button depending on your model. 
• Set the time for 5 minutes. 
• When the timer stops, let the Instant Pot sit on warm for a few minutes, then vent (carefully). 
• Place eggs in a bowl of ice water. 
• Once cooled, store in the refrigerator until you want to use them.  I don’t remove the shells until I am ready to use them. You can eat them plain with a little salt and pepper or use as an ingredient in recipes.

Note: While you can make steamed eggs in the Instant Pot, I still prefer to boil mine on the stovetop.

How to use hard-boiled eggs:

1. Deviled Eggs: cut eggs in half, lengthwise. Scoop out yokes and place them in a small bowl. Add mayonnaise, salt, pepper, a little mustard, and/or other seasonings. Mash to make a creamy paste. With a spoon or piping bag, put this yoke paste into the empty space in the egg white. Enjoy.
2. Egg Salad or Sliced Egg Sandwiches
3. Potato Salad, Nicoise salad, Cobb Salad

Steel Cut Oatmeal

Ingredients for 3 servings of cooked oats:
3/4 cup of steel-cut oats, I prefer Bob Mills
2 1/4 cups water (if you want thicker oatmeal, use 1/4 cup less water)
a pinch of salt

Directions:

• Add all of the ingredients to the pot in the Instant Pot. Stir.
• Place the lid on the Instant Pot, set valve to sealing.
• Press the Manual button. Set the timer for 5 minutes. 
• Let the pressure naturally release, about 15 minutes. 
• When the pressure is gone, turn the valve to venting just to be sure, and open the lid. 
• Stir oats to mix any moisture in with the grains. Then, I let it sit for another 5 minutes on warm so it thickens a bit.
• You can serve immediately, or store portions in containers in the refrigerator. I suggest eating the cooked oatmeal within 4 days.

Note: The full cooking time is about 30 minutes (5 minutes to get to pressure, 5 minutes to cook, about 15 minutes for pressure to naturally subside, and another 5 minutes at the warm setting to thicken up a bit). While this isn't that much quicker than cooking on the stove, it does prevent the boil over that usually happens to me.

How to use steel-cut oatmeal in meals and snacks:

1. Reheat with a little cream, diced apple, maple syrup, and chopped pecans. Love this!
2. Leftover Oatmeal Muffins Baked in an RV Microwave Convection Oven. Really. (I'll share teh recipe in a future post.)

Rice
Ingredients:
1 cup of rice
1 1/4 cups of water or broth
salt

Directions:

• Rinse the rice in a sieve to remove the starchy layer.
• Place rinsed rice in the Instant Pot.
• Add the liquid to the Instant Pot.
• Place the lid on the Instant Pot, set valve to sealing.
• Press the Manual button. 
• Set the timer for 5-6 minutes, depending on how sticky you want your rice.
• When the timer ends, let the pressure naturally release. Once the indicator shows the pressure is down, turn the valve to venting and remove the lid.
• Fluff rice with a fork. 
• Leftover rice can get dry, so add a little broth or water when you want to reheat it.

How to use rice in meals and snacks:

1. Mixed with meal-prepped poached chicken, steamed vegetables, and a homemade paleo hoisin sauce. Yummy!
2. Serve with a quick stir-fry using meal-prepped vegetables and sliced marinated beef with a homemade Paleo teriyaki sauce.
3. Rice pudding made with creamy custard, raisins, and a little rum.

Poached Chicken Breasts
Ingredients:
1 cup of chicken broth or water
flavorings to add to the liquid (won't be eaten, but will the flavor will steam into the meat) Ideas: ends of carrots, celery, rosemary, thyme
1 pound chicken breast tenders, (frozen)

Directions:

• Add 1 cup of liquid to the pot.  
• Add any flavorings to the liquid. 
• Place the wire trivet that came with your Instant Pot into the bottom of the pot.
• Place the chicken on the trivet.
• Put the lid on the Instant Pot.
• Set the valve to sealing.
• Press the manual button.
• Set the timer for 25 minutes for frozen chicken. (If your chicken is thawed, cook it for 20 minutes)
• When the cooking time ends, carefully vent the Instant Pot. (I cover the valve with a towel and use the end of a wooden spoon to turn my valve so I don't get burned.)

How-to use poached chicken in meals and snacks:

1. Asian Chicken Salad: poached chicken, sliced cabbage, thinly sliced onions, shredded carrots, julienned snow peas, mandarin oranges, sliced almonds, toasted sesame seeds, and homemade paleo hoisin sauce.
2. Chicken salad sandwiches: poached chicken, sliced grapes, diced celery, diced onions, poppy seeds, chopped pecans, mayonnaise, salt, and pepper to taste. Serve with lettuce between two slices of whole-wheat bread.
3. Cobb Salad
4. Chicken Enchiladas
5. Shredded Chicken BBQ Sandwich with coleslaw

Steamed Potatoes (White or Sweet)
Ingredients:
1-4 Potatoes, depending on what will fit as a single layer in your steamer basket or trivet.
1 cup of water

Directions:

• Add water to the Instant Pot. 
• Place the trivet or a metal steamer basket into the pot. 
• Place potatoes on the trivet. 
• Poke a few times to ensure the potatoes don’t explode. 
• Close the lid. 
• Push knob to sealing. 
• Press the manual or pressure button depending on your model. 
• Set the time for 15 minutes. 
• When the timer stops, let the Instant Pot naturally release the pressure. 
• When the pressure indicator is completely down, carefully open the lid. 
• Let the potatoes cool before using them in recipes. Otherwise, they are ready to eat with a little butter or ghee, salt, and pepper to taste. 
• (If you want crispy skins, the Instant Pot is not a good cooking choice. Instead, bake them in your convection microwave or oven.)

How to use potatoes in meals and snacks:

1. Potato Salad: chopped potato, chopped hard-boiled egg, diced celery, diced onions, mayonnaise, prepared mustard, salt and pepper to taste
2. Mashed Potatoes: remove potato skins; add cream, ghee, and chives (Mash!)
3. Potato Pancakes: slice potatoes; add a beaten egg for binding, and a little flour. Form into patties, fry in ghee. Serve with sour cream, caramelized apples, or powdered sugar.
4. Potato Hash: Chop potato; add diced onion, diced peppers. Add to a frying pan with warmed ghee. Let sit till bottom is browned, and then flip. Brown the second side. Serve with fried eggs. (I like to put the eggs on top of the potatoes so that the broken yolk drips into the fried potatoes. Love it!
5. Nicoise Salad
6. Twice-baked potatoes

Just the Beginning of Meal Prepping in an Instant Pot

This post is just the beginning of what I would like to share with you about how you can use this great appliance to help you on your journey to healthier living. In future posts, I will share more about how I use these ingredients in recipes. For example, I am working on a post to share muffins made with leftover oatmeal. Another post will be on how to make the french Nicoise salad.

Comments and Questions?
I love sharing some of the things I am discovering on my journey to better health and a simpler life. If you would like to learn more about what I meal prep each week or more recipes for what I cook using the Instant Pot, please let me know in the comments.

For quick links to Instant Pot recipes in earlier blog posts, click on the RECIPES page heading at the top of this blog page.