Chicago Style Falafel Dogs

 

One of my Crockpot recipes that I decided to give a go with my InstantPot was the bratwurst, which turned out fairly well, so I wound up making them a few times.  One of the times I decided to have them in the style of a Chicago dog.  This, unsurprisingly, worked well, however it left me with a dilemma.  Namely that I now had a ton of sport peppers that I had no idea what to do with.  So I decided to start branching out with alternatives to sausages.  Namely, falafel.

Ingredients:

Trader Joe's Falafel mix
Tomato

Pickle Spears

Pickle Relish

Sport Peppers

Onion

Mustard

Hot Dog Buns

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 375

Mix the falafel mix as per directions

Form the falafel into tubes

Bake for 10-15 minutes

Serve on the buns with the toppings

This... wasn't great.  The flavors probably would have worked well together, but the texture of the falafel wasn't what I associate with falafel.  It was really dry and kinda hard.  I might have cooked it for too long, or the thinner profile wasn't a good match for falafel, or maybe a little bit of both.

An Experiment in Cheap Fake Italian

 

Continuing on with both the rice and the beans, it's time for trying the mains with a new set of regional spices.

Ingredients:

2 cups of kidney beans

6 cups of water

1 cup of rice

1 cup of water

1 jar of pasta sauce

1 onion

Some garlic and herb spice mix

Instructions:

Instant pot the beans, half of the spices and 6 cups of water for 50 minutes

As it's venting, dice the onion

Add a bit of the bean water to the bowl

Strain the beans

Add the beans to the bowl

Instant pot the rice with the rice option

Pan fry the onions and spices

Stir in the rice, beans, and pasta sauce

Cook for several minutes

Garnish with shredded mozzarella and serve with badly freezer burned garlic bread

This was ok.  Not sure I'd recommend it normally, but adding variety in the midst of spending as little on food as possible was worth the experimentation.

An Experiment in Cheap Tacos

 

Still continuing on the theme of rice and beans, but looking for a bit of variety, I opted for giving tacos a shot.  The price is inherently upped, on account of adding meat, but it's a welcome change after the straight rice and beans.

Ingredients:

2 cups of beans

6 cups of water

1 cup of rice

1 cup of water

1 onion

1 package of ground beef

4 tbsp of chili powder

2 tbsp of cayenne pepper

2 tsp of cumin

Instructions:

Instant pot the beans, half of the spices and 6 cups of water for 50 minutes

As it's venting, dice the onion

Add a bit of the bean water to the bowl

Strain the beans

Add the beans to the bowl

Instant pot the rice with the rice option

Pan fry the beef, onions, and remaining spices

Stir the rice and beef into the bowl

Serve on tortillas with salsa

This turned out extremely well.  Cutting down on the rice from the previous recipe and adding the meat and spices made the base mixture far more flavorful.  Plus tacos are always fun to eat.

An Experiment In Cheapness

After spending far too long on r/EatCheapAndHealthy I decided that I would like to take a look into how long I could go while spending as little as possible.  To do this I decided to opt for rice and beans, which is frequently recommended to people who need to get by on as little as possible.  Luckily, before starting this I came across a post that adding a grilled onion to the mix goes a long way in improving the dish.

Ingredients:

2 cups of Dried Kidney Beans

2 cups of Rice

8 cups of water

1 onion

Instructions:

Add rice and 2 cups of water to the InstantPot

Cook on Rice setting and fast release

Add rice to a bowl

Add beans and 6 cups of water

Cook on Manual for 50 minutes

Chop the onion

When the beans are done, allow to natural release

Strain the beans and fry the onions in a large pan

Stir in the rice and beans and cook a bit longer

This... is about as good as a low budget meal can be.  It's not great, but it's filling, and the onion adds quite a bit of flavor to it.  The main issue, is that there is far too much rice for the other ingredients.

Pork Ring

One of the great aspects of getting new cooking apparati is going grocery shopping, seeing something you've cooked before and wondering 'I wonder how that will cook with my new stuff'.  This was the case when I noticed pork loins in the store.  Unfortunately, when I went to add them to the Instant Pot, I realized that they were simultaneously too long to fit in the pot, and two short to wrap around the entire pot.

Ingredients:

1 Garlic & Herb Pork Loin Filet

1 Onion

Garlic and Herb spices

Instructions:

Slice the pork loin in half longways

Put it into the bottom of the Instant Pot, making a ring around the sides

Chop the onion and put it into the center of the ring

Add the spices, and add water until the contents are covered

Cook on manual for 8 minutes

Eat as Sandwiches

This turned out extremely well.  It's extremely easy to do, and also quite tasty.  Also it makes for great leftover sandwiches.

Buffalo Joes

 

After making the buffalo chicken pizzas, I still had a bunch of buffalo sauce and bleu cheese dressing with nothing to do with it.  Figuring that since these are two great tastes that taste great together, I figured I'd try to incorporate them together into something else chicken wingish.  Since chicken is more or less turkey, and ground turkey is more or less ground beef, and ground beef is the core of sloppy joes I figured that sloppy joes are basically buffalo wings.

Ingredients:

1 package of ground turkey

1 onion

buffalo sauce

ketchup

Instructions:

Chop the onion

Brown the meat with the onion

Mix the ketchup and the buffalo sauce

Add the meat and the sauce to a crockpot

Cook on low for (at least) 3 hours

Serve on a bun (or bread {or a bowl?}) with bleu cheese and a side of celery

This turned out really well.  It's basically sloppy joes with a slight kick.  It was a great way to use up some extra sauces, but probably not worth going out of your way to get the ingredients for, unless you're really into both wings and sloppy joes.

Canned Bonanza

Weenies and Beans is a fairly classic staple, bringing forth the mental image of cowboys and miners.  But what can be done if you're willing to up the number of cans going into such a dish?

Ingredients:

1 package of hot dogs

1 can of baked beans

1 can of diced tomatoes

1 can of corn

Instructions:

Cut up hot dogs

Add everything to the InstantPot

Cook on manual for 8 minutes, allowing for natural release

Serve alongside a salad

This was alright.  I had been hoping that added ingredients would elevate the dish more than they did in the end.  In the end this would up being slightly differently textured weenies and beans, and not something I''d go out of my way to make again in the future.