Pressure Brats

After acquiring an InstantPot, one of the first things I wanted to see was how well one of my preferred CrockPot recipes would hold up and how much less time it would take, so I decided to put my beer brat recipe under pressure.

Ingredients:

1 12 pack of brats

1 onion

Some Garlic and Herb spice mix

Several Beers

Instructions:

Slice the Onion and add to the bottom of the InstantPot

Add the grating overtop of them

Perforate the brats with a fork and add to the pot

Add spices and douse with beer

Cook on manual for 8 minutes, allowing for natural release.

This turned out really well.  The recipe translated perfectly from slow cooker to pressure cooker.  I've actually made this several times, with various alterations made to the recipe, including that I've stopped using the grating altogether, and replacing the spice mix with curry powder results in a nice currywurst.

The Whitest Meal U Know

I was browsing the sauce aisle of my local grocery store, trawling for inspiration, when I stumbled across Saz's Spicy White Barbecue Sauce, and it spoke to me.  I tried this on a couple of sandwiches, but wasn't really feeling it's flavor, so I decided to go all in on finding a way to use it.

Ingredients:

1 package of 4 chicken breasts

1 package of frozen cauliflower

1 package of instant mashed potatoes

A third to a half a bottle of Saz's Spicy White Barbecue Sauce

1 cup of water

Instructions:

Add chicken, BBQ sauce, and water to the InstantPot

Cook on Manual for 5 minutes, allowing for natural release

While that's happening, cook the cauliflower with salt and pepper on the stove over medium heat

While that's happening, cook the mashed potatoes according to it's instructions

When the pressure seal releases, shred the chicken

Serve on white bread with provolone cheese alongside the cauliflower and potatoes.

This turned out fairly well.  Despite not being a fan of how the sauce tasted cold, I feel like either the heat, or the way that it was distributed via the pressure and water, it became something I quite enjoyed.  In hindsight, I should also have attempted to use the sauce water mix as a gravy of sorts for the potatoes.

Pizza Roll sized Egg Egg Rolls

After the previous excursion with cabbage and corn, I still had a bowl full of raw cabbage in my fridge.  Outside of recipes with it in the name, there's only one type of food that I know of that utilizes cabbage is egg rolls.  However, I didn't want to make egg rolls that would only have eggs in the wraps, but actual egg egg rolls.  Sort of a breakfast egg roll if you will.  Unfortunately, things didn't quite go according to plan.

Ingredients:

7 Eggs

A bowl of chopped Cabbage

Bacon Bits

Sweet and Sour Sauce

1 package dumpling sized Wontons

Instructions:

Fry cabbage in a medium pan

Once it's mostly cooked, stir in 6 eggs 1 egg yolk, bacon, and sweet and sour sauce

After the eggs are fully scrambled remove from heat

Add a spoonful of the mixture to a wonton, wrapping in a cylinder, using egg white to seal the deal

Repeat until there is no more mixture

When the preparation is becoming tedious, or is taking long enough that your hunger is getting the better of you, eat some of the mixture to sate your hunger and lessen your workload

Bake at 425 for 15 minutes

This did not turn out at all the way I'd expected, in the best sort of way.  I'd been hoping for normal sized egg rolls, that I could freeze, then reheat for my commute to work in the morning.  That was the reasoning behind adding the sweet and sour sauce in the egg roll rather than dipping the egg roll in the sweet and sour sauce.  Unfortunately, the store I went to only had one size of wontons, which were clearly not intended for egg rolls.  This in turn greatly increased the effort of this recipe, as it takes more time to roll a dozen tiny egg rolls than a couple of normal sized ones, and each one requires more attention to boot.  Because of this, the mix should have been enough for more than 15 of these egg rolls, but I'd eaten a decent portion of the mix during the wrapping process.

Overall they turned out well though, but it's hard to recommend them given the amount of effort that they require to make.  There main thing I'd change about these, besides buying larger wontons, is to keep the sweet and sour sauce outside the egg rolls.  With as small as they are, it'd work well to have them as a snack with something to dip into.