Instant Pot Pressure Cooker No-Soak Chickpeas / Garbanzo Beans

Tasty tender chickpeas with no need to soak prior to pressure-cooking - great for last minute dishes!

Need to whip up a tasty dish with chickpeas and don't have time for an overnight or daytime soak?

Voila, your prayers have been answered! It's up to you whether you add the aromatics or not but the garlic and onions are fantastic for adding flavour if you're using them in curries, Middle Eastern food, or hummus, and the bay adds a nice depth of extra flavour for Asian dishes. Obviously if you want to make a cake (!) or similar, skip all the aromats, and then you've also got the aquafaba (water they were cooked in) to use as an egg white substitute if you wish.

Zigni - Spicy Eritrean Beef Stew with Instant Pot Pressure Cooker and Slow Cooker method

Love spicy food? Fancy trying something new? Then why not have a go at this delicious Eritrean beef stew.

In our house at the moment, shin of beef is currently enjoying a period of popularity, as it is one of the most delicious, tasty and tender cuts of beef to cook slowly and also relatively economical.

Aside from a handful of staples, I've always enjoyed cooking new dishes on a regular basis, and re-creating food that I've enjoyed out and about. Finding new ways to slow-cook beef is always good fun, as there are so many different ways from so many different countries.

This is not a difficult dish to cook, it's extremely tasty and it's well worth making your own berbere spice mix to make it with, as that is also a simple thing to do once you've assembled the ingredients. 

Serves 8 to 10, or more as part of a selection of dishes. You can easily half this quantity if you wish to, and it freezes really well.

394 to 492 calories per serving (depending on whether a tenth or an eighth of the whole quantity - if you want to knock off around 30 calories a portion you can use pure oil spray for browning the beef and cooking the peppers, but you will need the keep the oil as stated for browning the onions).

Easy Chilli con Carne (with Pressure Cooker method)

Chilli con Carne is something most of us have been cooking for years, without even looking at a recipe book...

I know I have - probably for the best part of two decades. I already have one chilli con carne 'recipe' on my blog here from over three years ago, back in the early days - so it's somewhat detailed on the method and goes on a bit! Although it does use soaked chipotle chillies and tastes bloody gorgeous, so it's staying where it is!

Anyway, I digress. This one is much, much simpler, has pressure cooker instructions for those who have one, and tastes equally amazing!

It's a decent sized batch if you're catering for friends, or want to put a few portions in the freezer (which is what I always do!), but you can easily halve it. It tastes even better the next day, if you've got any left! Last time I made this, I made half the quantity for a family of four and it all got eaten in one sitting, so I decided not to make that mistake again!

Serves 10 to 12 portions, at 265 to 318 calories per serving (depending on size).

Want a low carb / low calorie meal? 

Serve on top of 200g cauliflower rice per person (76 calories a serving), or 50g rice per person (raw weight, 176 calories per serving) or serve in a couple of taco shells (e.g. Old El Paso boxed tacos, for 67 calories per taco, check ingredients for GF), or mini-tortillas (87 calories each, for a 28g flour tortilla, not suitable for  GF)... or you could even use lettuce leaves to wrap it in - whatever floats your boat! All of these suggestions will bring you in at under 500 calories quite comfortably.

***WINNER of the Instant Pot Duo 7-in-1 Giveaway!***

I am delighted to be able to announce that the winner is...

Sarah, Melton Mowbray

Congratulations Sarah, you will now be the proud new owner of an Instant Pot Duo 7-in-1, courtesy of Instant Pot UK!

In order to claim your prize, you need to contact me within 7 days of this announcement (send me a message on my Forking Foodie Facebook page) with your full postal address, and Instant Pot UK will arrange delivery to you.

Sarah was picked at random using a random number generator, and numbering the comments below then entering the lower and upper numbers into the generator. The number 5 was generated, and Sarah's comment was the 5th comment under the giveaway blog below.

             

Happy cooking, Sarah!!!

Fantastic Instant Pot Duo 7-in-1 multi-function power cooker give-away worth £129!

All I can say is that words cannot describe how delighted I am to be able to give away one of my absolute favourite kitchen gadgets to one of you!

I actually love my Instant Pot so much, I bought one for my parents too!

Firstly, I just want to say a big thank you to all of you who have followed my blog over the last couple of years, and enjoyed cooking my recipes (and told me so!) - I've just exceeded half a million views on my blog, which is amazing - so what better time to be able to give something fabulous back to you (other than my tasty recipes, of course)!

Braised Ox Cheeks in a Rich Red Wine Sauce (includes Instant Pot Pressure Cooker method)

Moist, tender beef with a really rich, dark and delicious sauce

Although you don't have to cook this in a pressure cooker (you can slow cook it instead), it will shave a few hours off the process and give you the same meltingly tender results from the meat from just 30 minutes cooking at high pressure.

Ox cheeks are becoming easier to get hold of, now that they've become popular again - although the downside of this is that any surge in popularity means a surge in the price too. However, they're well worth it, as they are one of the tastiest, most tender cuts of beef, when cooked properly. They are practically the beefy embodiment of the word 'unctious'. If you can't get hold of ox cheeks, then beef shin will give you a similarly tender, gelatinous result.

One thing to note about cooking ox cheeks in this way is that they do shrink quite considerably during cooking, so if you want to cut them into single portions, I'd probably go for about 250g each which may seem like a large piece of raw meat, but not once it's shrunk after cooking! I cut it into large chunks about 125g each (so if buying in portions of around 500g, cut into four portions) to cater for my family, where people can choose whether to have one, two or three pieces each that way, according to their appetites (naming no names!). One piece is enough for me and the kids for a small portion, but I think most people would go for two (or three for larger appetites!). If you don't have access to a good butcher to buy your ox cheeks from, they can be found in some Waitrose and Morrisons stores (UK).

Serves from six to eight. Approximately 206 calories per 125g (raw weight) piece of ox cheek with sauce, therefore 412 calories for a serving of two pieces with sauce.

Sweet and Sour Spare Ribs (includes Instant Pot Pressure Cooker method)

Who doesn't love a sticky spare rib from the BBQ, with tender, slightly charred meat that falls off the bone?

Well, there's definitely a knack to it! I've not always been a fan of spare ribs, having been given my fair share of over-cooked ribs with dried out, 'cottony' textured meat clinging stubbornly to the bones, and therefore it wasn't something I chose to cook very often. However, there came a point where I learnt that the secret to cooking *really* good spare ribs on the BBQ (or indeed under the grill) was all in the pre-cooking - low and slow (or the equivalent in the pressure cooker, as I have now discovered!) to ensure tender and succulent meat, which just needed a quick spell to give that characteristic, caramelized deliciousness on the outside.

Not only will this recipe give you delicious ribs, you also get an incredibly tasty Thai-influenced sweet and sour sauce to serve alongside - and unlike many sweet and sour sauces, there are no refined sugars, ketchups or artificial ingredients in it, it's all natural! If you're having a BBQ, it's easy to prepare these ahead, and then just warm the sauce through when you're ready to go.

Serves: 1kg spare ribs will serve four to six people as a starter, or as a main with another dish of similar proportions (e.g. with one quantity of my Sticky Sichuan Chilli Chicken Wings - recipe here).

Calories: For those counting, a quarter of the ribs (served with sauce) is approximately 593 calories, and a sixth is 395 calories. [Calories shown in square brackets]

Sticky Sichuan Chilli Chicken Wings (including Instant Pot Pressure Cooker method)

Whether on the BBQ, or under the grill, you can't beat spicy, sticky chicken wings!

With only four ingredients, and no chopping, these wings couldn't be simpler, and they have a unique umami kick from the Sichuan chilli bean paste.

          

There's no need to marinate (although you're welcome to if you'd like to!), and you can pop them in the pressure cooker for 10 minutes before barbecuing or grilling to ensure your wings are perfectly moist and tender inside with crispy sticky skin on the outside.

Serves: 1kg chicken wings will serve four to six people as a starter, or as a main with another dish of similar proportions (e.g. with one quantity of my Sweet and Sour spare ribs).

Normandy Pork Cheeks In Cider (includes Instant Pot Pressure Cooker method)

Meltingly tender, succulent braised pork cheeks in a cider and brandy sauce with carrots, mushrooms and caramelised apples.

This is a delicious dish, which you can choose to pop into a low oven, and allow to languish over a period of a few hours - or if you want to complete the whole process in a much shorter amount of time with the same tender and flavoursome results you can utilise the magic of pressure cooking and shave hours off. Once everything is in the pot, it takes 25 minutes at high pressure, to be precise (plus time to reduce the sauce). Excuse the rustic photo - I cut the vegetables large both to ensure that they stayed intact, and also with the idea of a nice, clean, minimalistic plate but hunger took over, we all ate together and I haven't had time to set up another photo yet! The best part about this dish, was how much everyone enjoyed it - my son loved the tender texture of the pork, and said "Mummy, I don't know how you got the pork that texture - is the cheek quite expensive?"

I have fond memories of what I knew as 'Normandy Pork' from my first forays into braising meat (nigh on a couple of decades ago!) alongside Boeuf Bourguignon and Coq au Vin, and it seemed like the perfect way to cook pork cheeks. Pork cheeks are an amazing cut of meat - as a hardworking muscle they are full of flavour, and banded with connective tissue which renders down through cooking to give you the most meltingly tender and unctuous nuggets of meat. As a bonus, they're also an incredibly economical cut (well, until they get too trendy, that is - right now, if you don't have access to a good butcher, at a supermarket they're around £5 a kilo). If you can't get hold of pork cheeks (you only want the meaty parts, see below for a photo), you can use any other cut suitable for braising, trimmed of excess fat and cut into large dice, e.g shoulder, or even use thick pork chops on the bone.