What would you do? Grab something from Mickie-D’s? Eat sandwiches? Heat up chicken nuggets? Skip dinner, and go right to dessert?
I’ve done that before, but dinner is family time in our home. We like to eat a good meal and enjoy some good conversation. Earlier in the day, I had planned to make stew (to take advantage of the stew meat on sale at my local Wal-mart), but, like it often does, life takes over and, before I knew it, it was after 5 pm with no dinner in sight!
With some dishes, it’s not a big deal. But stew needs to “stew” for at least 2 1/2 -3 hours, so the meat is nice and tender. My youngest goes to bed at 7:30, which meant there wasn’t time for our stew to “stew.” Not if I wanted him to eat and be in bed on time. (Which I do, because he is a GROUCH if he does not get enough sleep!) No biggie. I whipped out my pressure cooker and used it to speed up the cooking process. Come along! You can cook right along with me.
I assembled my ingredients and got started.
I put a couple tablespoons of flour in a gallon size ziplock bag and put in the stew meat.
I zipped it up, shook it, and ended up with this.
I preheated the oil in my pressure cooker.
Opened up my ziplock bag of stew meat coated in flour…
And put some in the pan.
I cooked the meat in two batches. Here’s the first one.
I made sure to turn the meat to brown all sides.
When it was nice and brown, I pulled the first batch out and set it aside…
Then I cooked the remaining meat. See how the oil is started to turn a lovely brown shade and is getting thick? It’s like I’m creating a roux (a combination of fat and flour) while I’m browning my meat.
I was out of stew mix, and I didn’t feel like pulling out my stew recipe, so I used Pioneer gravy as my base. I mixed the packet with 4 cups of water.
And whisked it really well.
Then I added the first batch of meat back to the pan, combining it with the second batch.
I added the gravy packet and water mixture along with a bay leaf. I also snuck in an onion, roughly chopped.
Next, I put the lid on the pressure cooker, turned the heat on high, and brought it to pressure. See the red button has popped up on the left hand side? Once it was pressurized, I set the timer for 10 minutes and let it work its magic. A few minutes in, I turned the heat down as it only needed to be on medium heat to maintain pressure.
While the cooker was bubbling away, I chopped up the celery and carrots.
Once the timer went off, I used the pressure release valve to release the pressure within the cooker. This allowed me to safely open it and add the veggies.
Which I did here. Then, I brought it back up to pressure and cooked the stew for 5 more minutes.
I released the pressure as before, then I added the potatoes and 2 1/2 cups of water mixed with another gravy packet. I also added a little black pepper. As before, I brought the cooker back up to pressure and cooked the stew for 5 more minutes.
And Voila! It’s done!
Not too shabby for 20 minutes of actual “stewing” time, and an hour from start to finish, huh? The meat was fall apart tender, and the stew was a hit with my husband and teenager eating two big bowls full! Much better than chicken nuggets or Mickie D’s!
Kind of makes you want a pressure cooker*, doesn’t it? I made dinner for under $10. It fed four people (2 adults, 1 teenager, and 1 12-yr old) with leftovers for my oldest son when he gets home from work and leftovers for lunch tomorrow. McDonald’s would have cost us at least $13, and that would be with the super cheap mini meals, which are no where near as satisfying, and don’t even think about leftovers!
$10 = at least 2 meals for a 5 people VS $13 = 1 small meal for 4 people
Pressure cooking wins, hands down!
What’s your favorite “get dinner ready quick” tip?
My Foray Into Food Storage 