Intro: Welcome everybody to another episode of Let’s Make Dinner, your Audio library of amazing Dinner recipes you can always get on the table. I’m your host, Susie Weinrich. 
Susie Weinrich: Hey everybody. Happy Thursday. I’m so glad that you’re joining me today to make a little bit of dinner. I know on Thursdays a lot of people run out of dinner ideas and you’re like, what the hell am I going make for dinner tonight? You know that you can always come to the Let’s Make Dinner Podcast and figure out what you’re going to make for dinner. If you’re a part of my newsletter, then you know that we are in the middle of a huge construction project at our house. We are finishing our basement completely. We’re leaving a little bit of storage left, but the rest of it’s going to be finished. So I’m going to have a large kitchen space down there so that I can start doing some live video and just recorded video for YouTube. We’re putting a living room, kind of a game space, a bedroom and a bathroom down there. So I have my fingers crossed that they will not be drilling cement while I am recording this episode. So if you hear anything that’s herky jerky or me starting and stopping, it’s because they started drilling cement. But hopefully, fingers crossed, we can make it through this episode.
I do want to say, speaking of newsletter, If you are not a part of the Let’s Make Dinner and Mom’s Dinner newsletter, I would love to have you join our newsletter community. So I send out a newsletter every Thursday of course, you know, for the new podcast episode. Then I send out a newsletter on Sunday morning that goes over all the new recipes that are on Mom’s Dinner. So if you’re not familiar, Mom’s Dinner is actually the website where I share the actual recipes. Let’s Make Dinner is the podcast portion.
On Sunday, Mom’s Dinner sends out a newsletter that has all of the new recipes. It has kitchen tips and tricks, it has dinner ideas for the week. So if you want to join that, there will be a link to subscribe right on the show notes of this episode. 
This week since we’re kind of in the middle of Lent, so if you’re listening to this real time, we are halfway through March. So you’ve got just a couple more weeks of Lent to go if you celebrate Lent. We actually don’t give up anything or do fish Fridays in this house, but I know that a lot of people do. So I thought this week we would make some homemade crispy fish sticks. So if your family is a fish lover, then you are absolutely going to love these because it’s like having a really high quality fish stick. So basically like fried fish, right? But instead of frying, we’re actually going to bake these, but since we’re using a Panko breadcrumb, they’re going to get nice and crispy right in the oven. So this crispy fish stick recipe will take, I don’t know, probably about 15 minutes to prep, but the cooking time is super short. We’re talking under 10 minutes here to get them nice and crispy in the oven. So you’re looking at probably around 30 minutes by the time everything is prepped and done and in the oven and then ready to go. So not a super long labor intensive dinner recipe, which is great. How the recipe is written, it will serve about five people. But of course, if you want to double or triple the recipe, you absolutely can. On my recipe card. There will be a little button that says servings. You just hover over how many servings there are, and a little slider will appear and you can just increase the amount of people to serve. What will happen is all of the ingredients will also increase in the recipe cards, so you know how many ingredients you need to serve you know, seven people, 10 people, 20 people, whatever you want. I’m sliding it right now, it looks like it goes all the way up to 20 people. I’m going to slide it right back down to five. 
Tips and Tricks: Now as far as tips and tricks, let’s talk about a couple ingredients that you need for these fish sticks. One of the first ingredients is obviously the fish. The recipe says that you need one and a half pounds of fresh cod filets. You can use cod. If you can’t find cod, or you maybe don’t like cod, or the cod looks terrible at the grocery store, you could also use some other firm white flesh fish. That is so hard for me to say. Firm white flesh fish. You can use a haddock, a hake, or a catfish. Even tilapia will work, although sometimes tilapia filets are awfully thin. 
The next ingredient is the Panko breadcrumbs. When you’re at the grocery store, the aisle where you normally get your breadcrumbs. There will also be an option called Panko breadcrumbs. That’s what you want. They’re actually considered a Japanese style, I think it’s Japanese, Japanese style breadcrumbs. What it is, it’s bread with the crust removed and then it’s dried and ground into a much coarser texture. So traditional breadcrumbs are pretty fine and kind of smooth. Panko breadcrumbs are like if you took a saltine cracker and crunched it up. So they’re perfect for a crispy, crunchy coating. 
Then all of the other ingredients are pretty traditional as far as you know, breading, fish or chicken. You’ll have flour, eggs, seasonings, and then you will need a non-stick spray. 
Crispy Fish Sticks: So let’s go ahead and get into the full recipe for your crispy fish sticks. So when you’re breading an item, my best tip here is to set up an assembly line. So you’ll need three shallow bowls. In the first bowl, you’re going to place a half a cup of all-purpose flour mixed with one and a quarter teaspoons of kosher salt. Then in the second bowl, you’re going to beat together three eggs with one tablespoon of Dijon mustard. This part is optional. If you like a little tiny kick of heat, you can add a quarter teaspoon of cayenne pepper and mix that in there with eggs. Then the third bowl, you’re going to mix those breadcrumbs. So you need two cups of Panko breadcrumbs mixed with one teaspoon of onion powder, one teaspoon of garlic powder, one teaspoon of paprika, or smoked paprika and that’s it. So mix all those together, line up your three bowls. 
Then you also want to preheat your broiler in your oven and place the oven rack right in the middle position. Get a really large rimmed baking sheet. Cover it with foil and then generously spray it with non-stick spray. 
Now you want to take those cod filets and pat them dry with a paper towel. Then you’re going to cut them into about one inch strips. Maybe one inch thick and maybe three inches long. So just a normal fish stick that you would get, you know, a frozen fish stick. That’s kind of what you want them to look like. But, you know, these are homemade, so if they don’t look great, it’s totally fine. They’ll still taste good. 
All right. You’ll start by dipping a cod strip into that flour mixture. Dredge it all through there, and then give it a little shake to shake off any excess flour. Then you’re going to dip it fully in that egg mixture. Then the last step is to dredge it in that Panko mixture. What I like to do is kind of lightly press the Panko mixture onto the fish sticks so that it adheres to the fish. Then you’re going to place that right on your prepared baking sheet, and then repeat that with all of the fish sticks that you cut. 
When all of them are coated and they’re on that baking rack, what you want to do is spray the tops of them with non-stick spray. Again, generously spray them. Spraying the tops and having the foil sprayed on the bottom is going to help that Panko breadcrumbs become nice and golden and crispy.
So you’ll pop them into the preheated oven on that middle rack for about four minutes. Then you’re going to pull them out, flip them over, and pop them in for about another three to four minutes. You’ll know when they’re done when your fish sticks have reached 145 degree internal temperature. That means they are cooked through. You can use just one of those. Instant read thermometers are great. I will actually link the one that I use right in the show notes for you.
For serving these fish sticks, you know, keep it casual, keep it easy. Traditionally, we’re talking french fries, tater tots, kettle chips, fish and chips. Maybe some raw veggies with ranch dip or hummus. If you want to add a little bit more, you could add a green side salad or maybe some roasted vegetables. 
Traditionally, you add a little bit of tartar sauce on the side, and I actually have two recipes for homemade tartar sauce. If you’re like, yeah, I’m not making my own tartar sauce, you can just get some at the grocery store and use that, but my guess is one of the kids in your family will just use ketchup because that’s how it is at my house. One kid uses ketchup, one kid uses mustard. But, if you guys like tartar sauce, I have a classic tartar sauce recipe. Then I also have a jalapeno tartar sauce recipe that’s really good. 
If you are someone who likes to prepare meals and kind of get things ready ahead of time, right in the recipe card, I’m not going to go over it here, but right in the recipe card, there are instructions for making the fish sticks and then freezing them and then reheating them from frozen. So just like you would have frozen fish sticks from the grocery store, you can actually make them to have frozen fish sticks. 
Outro: All right, so that does it for the full episode of Let’s Make Dinner. I hope that you make these wonderful fish sticks for dinner tonight and cook along with me here on this episode.
Like I said before, I would love to have you guys join my newsletter. There will be a link right in the show notes, whatever podcast platform you’re listening on, I’m going to pop a link right in there so you can click it and just send your email address to me and you’ll be signed up for my newsletter.
So until next time, I hope this episode of Let’s Make Dinner Makes your Dinner Time a little easier. See ya!
Double Dip: All right, now it’s time for your double dip. Thanks for sticking around, guys. So in the double dip, if you’re enjoying cooking along with me on Thursdays and you’re finding it helpful and that it helps you plan your dinners when you’re fresh out of dinner ideas, you can always listen to the Double Dip and know it’s coming up the next week. Make sure you have the groceries ready and cook along with me right on Thursdays. 
So next week on, let’s see, what date will that be? That will be March 23rd. We are making Asian meatballs with a delicious hoisin glaze over top. These are so, so good. You can serve them up with a little bit of steamed rice or fried rice, which actually we like to buy ours just right at Trader Joe’s in their frozen food section. Super easy, and then I usually get some either sugar snap peas or snow peas and saute them or make some roasted broccoli and it makes just an absolutely perfect dinner. 
Okay, so here’s what you’re going to need to make the Asian meatballs with the hoisin glaze. Hoisin glaze. I have a really hard time saying that word too. Oh my gosh. Okay. Here is what you need. I’m going to preface this just like I did when we made our Veggie Pad Thai. Some of these Asian style recipes have a ton of ingredients, but really once you get some of these ingredients, you have them and you can make a whole lot of delicious Asian style food. 
So for this next episode, you’re going to need one egg, soy sauce, sesame oil, kosher salt, red pepper flakes, ground ginger. I’m talking about like dry ground ginger that you would find in the spice cabinet. Fresh garlic cloves, panko breadcrumbs, one and a half pounds of 85% lean ground beef, three scallions, non-stick spray. Then for the glaze, for the hoisin glaze, you need vegetable oil, garlic, fresh ginger, and this is a little tip about fresh ginger. You can of course buy the big knobs of fresh ginger in the produce aisle, or you can go to the frozen food section and go where they have some frozen herbs and there’s a brand called Dorot Gardens, and they have little cubes of frozen ginger that are perfect and it couldn’t be easier to use. So that’s what I use. You’ll need hoisin sauce, ketchup, rice vinegar, sambal, which is basically like garlic chili sauce, soy sauce, and again sesame oil. So that’s what you need for next week. I hope you’ll join me and cook along with me next week. Until then, I hope you guys have a great week. See ya.

Welcome everybody to another episode of Let’s Make Dinner, your Audio Library of amazing Dinner recipes you can always get on the table. I’m your host, Susie Weinrich

Hey Hey everybody. Okay. I’m so excited to be in my office today. It has been a minute, so this last week, if you’re listening to this in real time last week, I actually spent five wonderful glorious days in Chicago with other people in my industry. So content creators, photographers, recipe developers, podcasters, and a lot of those people. When you’re doing the job that I do, you’re just meeting those people online or through social media and to actually meet some of these people in person is just, it’s so inspirational and so wonderful.

So I’m feeling on top of the world today and it’s also good to be home and to be eating in my own house. I’m gonna tell you what, when you’re traveling for five days, the constant eating out gets to be too much. I love a good, rich, yummy dinner, but when you’re eating steak and fries and you know really rich breakfasts every day it gets to be a little bit much and when you’re having all the drink, It can be a little bit much after five days.

So I’m back home. Happy to be here. Super happy to be recording another podcast episode and I bet you’re wondering what we’re making for dinner tonight. So tonight we are making the creamy mushroom pasta. So when I’m in the kitchen cooking, one of my absolute favorite smells in the kitchen, this is kind of weird, but one of my favorite smells is when butter is simmering in a pan and you add fresh garlic and mushrooms. That three ingredient combo, they need to make a candle that is mushroom, garlic, and butter . I would burn it in my kitchen every day. So that’s going to be the foundation of this recipe for creamy mushroom pasta.

I was looking at this recipe because we’re gonna make it for dinner and the recipe calls for eight ounces of pasta and you know, then it has the cream sauce and the mushrooms and I have on there that it serves four people, and I’m like, in what world does eight ounces of pasta feed four people.

So I think I need to go back and make this recipe. Obviously I’m gonna make it tonight, but I need to maybe, adjust how many people this serves. So I think with eight ounces of pasta, I think you could serve that to four people, but you for sure better have a side salad and maybe some garlic bread to go with it.

So my recommendation for right now is that if you make this pasta dish for four people, Double the recipe, and then if you have leftovers, great. You’ll have delicious pasta for lunch the next day. This recipe is going to come together pretty quickly, so probably in the time that it takes for you to cook the pasta, which is probably gonna be, you know, eight to 10 minutes, you can also have the cream sauce with the mushrooms already in another pan. So I would say in total, at like 20 minutes tops to get this done.

Recipe Tips and Tricks

For our tips and trick section, the only thing that I really wanna talk about here are two of the ingredients included in this recipe. One is a 10 to 16 ounce container of Cremini mushrooms. In the grocery store they are going to be the ones that are about the size of button mushrooms, like the white button mushrooms, but they’re gonna be really dark brown in color.

It should say cremini mushrooms on the package, or it might say baby bella mushrooms, because a cremini is basically the same thing as a portobello mushroom, just much smaller and more in the middle of its ripeness. But it still has super delicious, you know, really earthy, hearty mushroom flavor. Of course, any mushroom type will work here, but the cremini or baby bella mushroom is what is written in the recipe.

The other ingredient that I wanna talk about is the Parmesan cheese. So this is going to add quite a bit of flavor to the actual sauce for your pasta. So my recommendation is that you get a really good Parmesan cheese. So if you go to your grocery store and they have, you know, the really processed commercial Parmesan cheese, it’ll look like a little triangle that’ll work, absolutely.

But if you want that really kind of tangy, rich aged Parmesan flavor, look for something that comes off of a full wheel of Parmesan. It’ll look really craggy, kind of dry and rustic that is going to have way more flavor than your, you know, really processed Parmesan. So that’s it for ingredients and tips and tricks.

Creamy Mushroom Pasta Audio Recipe

Let’s go ahead and just jump right into the full recipe for the creamy mushroom pasta. So, like I said before, you’re gonna need eight ounces of pasta. Just cook that per package instructions to like an al dente. The tip here though, is that you always, always wanna cook your pasta in a salted water. Your water, it’s gonna take way more salt than you think.

So add that kosher salt. You can actually taste the pasta water, and if it tastes like salty sea water, then you’ve salted it enough. So go ahead and cook your eight ounces of pasta. If you’re doubling the recipe, go ahead and use a whole pound. You can use penne pasta, any kind of like tubular noodle, like a rigatoni, a cavatapi, anything like that will work really well.

So while that is cooking, you’re gonna go ahead and get the mushrooms sauteing and make that cream sauce. So in a large skillet, something with taller sides melt three tablespoons of butter over medium to medium low heat. Then you’re gonna stir in those 10 to 16 ounces of sliced cremini mushrooms. And three, at least three, plump garlic cloves that have been chopped.

If you like more garlic, add more garlic. Then get that sauteing around the pan for about 10 minutes and inhale that smell. The smell of butter and garlic and mushrooms is like heaven.

Now at this point you’re gonna add one more tablespoon of butter to the pan. we do this because we’re gonna make a roux to make the sauce thick, and when you cook mushrooms and butter, they generally will absorb all the butter, which is great.

Makes it super delicious. But you need a little more fat in the pan to thicken your sauce. So add one more tablespoon of butter. Then you’re gonna stir in an entire teaspoon of salt and two tablespoons of all-purpose flour. You’re gonna stir that around the pan. It’s going to coat the mushrooms, and it’s going to start to kind of thicken up a little bit.

Then you’re going to pour in one cup of heavy cream and a half a cup of milk. That milk can just be 1% milk, whole milk, skim milk. It just slightly lightens up that heavy cream. Stir that really well so that there’s no lumps left in your sauce and simmer it lightly until it starts to thicken up. And this will just take a couple minutes.

Now you’re going to remove it from the heat, you’ll add in your cooked pasta, and then you’re going to add in a half cup of shredded Parmesan cheese. You stir it until the pasta is completely coated with that melted creamy cheese sauce. So good. My mouth is watering right now.

Serving

And then give it a taste. We always recommend that you taste before you serve. Make sure that you don’t want to add a little more salt or if you want to add some fresh garlic at the end or if you want some parsley in there.

The other nice thing about this recipe is you can absolutely add some extra mix ins, so if you want, you can add some fresh spinach in there and just wilt it down to add a green note. You could add some sauté or grilled shrimp or chicken. You could also add some asparagus in there when you add the mushrooms. Or this is another great idea at the very end, you can stir in a couple tablespoons of pesto, fresh pesto. Super, super delicious. It add adds a really bright note.

Now, when you taste it, if you feel like the dish is a little heavy, you can also squeeze on a little bit of lemon juice, and that always adds a little bright note. I always say if you taste a recipe and you feel like there’s just something missing to the recipe, it’s usually an acid. And what you add for that is, you know, vinegar, balsamic vinegar, citrus. Any of those things will work to add that high note.

Side Dishes

Like I said before, when you’re serving this, I definitely recommend adding a side salad.

This is such an easy recipe that, you know, just a really good bagged Caesar salad from the grocery store will work perfect. You wanna put a little more effort in? You could absolutely make my big old Italian salad (podcast episode for Italian Salad) with fresh pesto vinegarette, but that’s a little more work. If you’re making this during the week, on a Thursday, you might wanna just like grab a bag of.

If you have a Trader Joe’s nearby, they have an excellent salad that would be perfect with this, that I’m actually serving tonight. It is an arugula salad that has a lemon vinaigrette and it has like almonds or maybe it’s pistachios in it. Look for it at, um, Trader Joe’s. Super delicious. And then of course, warm bread, like a ciabatta bread or breadsticks or garlic bread would be perfect here as.

Tips for Cream Sauces

Now since we’re making a cream sauce, I’m gonna talk through just a couple points here about troubleshooting cream sauce. And this is gonna be, you know, whether you’re making an Alfredo, if you’re making this creamy mushroom pasta. Sometimes cream sauce can give you problems.

So if you’re making cream sauce and you’re feeling like it’s not thick enough, you can simmer it for longer, but you always wanna make sure that you’re stirring cream sauce because that cream that fat can burn to the bottom of the.

If you are simmering your cream sauce and it didn’t thicken up at all, and you’re like, this is still like milk . What you can do is mix a heaping tablespoon of corn starch with about one and a half tablespoons of cool water. Stir that together, and what that is called is a slurry. And then while your sauce or your liquid is simmering, you pour that in, whisk it, and it should thicken up right.

Now if you don’t want to use a corn starch, there’s another option called a beurre manie, and that is a French word, fanciness, for kneaded butter. And what you do is you take a tablespoon of softened butter, a tablespoon of all-purpose flour, take a fork and mash it together completely. And then while your sauce is simmering, whisk it in and that will thicken it perfectly.

Now if you’re done with your cream sauce and you’re like, this is light glue, it is too thick. What you want to do is just whisk in a little more milk. Maybe you want to whisk in some more cream, chicken broth, water, whatever you wanna use, just whisk in a little bit more liquid.

All right. That does it for our full recipe for creamy mushroom pasta today.

I hope you make it for dinner on this Thursday night. If you’re listening real time, it’s Thursday! You can always look for a new recipe to come out on Let’s Make Dinner podcast every Thursday morning, and then hopefully you’ll grab the ingredients and make it for dinner that night.

Of course, all of the recipes I talked about in this episode will be linked right in the show notes, so you can click through and go to the recipe hit jump to recipe. Jump right down to the recipe card. Cook from my website. If you’re on your phone, there’s a little button in the middle of my recipe card called Cook Mode, and it’s a little toggle switch. Toggle it on and then your screen will not go dark, like best invention ever. So when you’re cooking, you don’t have to continually turn on your screen.

It will just stay on for you the whole time and you can cook. You could also print out the recipe. You can pin it, you can actually, if you’ve got to go to the grocery store and you’re on your phone, you can text yourself all of the ingredients and a link back to the recipe right from my recipe card. So check it out I hope you’ll use that feature. It is so slick.

All right, we’ll see you guys next week, and as always, I hope this episode of Let’s Make Dinner Makes your Dinner Time a little easier.

Double Dip- Next Weeks Episode

And now it’s time for the double dip. . I love the double dip. Double dip is so casual. Here we are.

What a double dip is, is where you are enjoying making these recipes and cooking along with me on Thursdays when you’re fresh out of dinner ideas. You can come here, make the recipe, and then listen to the double dip and figure out what we’re making next week.

So next week on the Let’s Make Dinner Podcast, we are going to make crispy fish sticks. So if you’ve ever had fish sticks from the grocery store, then you know that a lot of times it’s actually minced and pressed fish. It’s like a chicken McNugget . It’s just pressed. So if you want something a little bit better, something a little bit fancier, but doesn’t take a ton of time, then you can actually buy a really nice filet of fish into, you know, sticks.

Bread it with some Panko, get it really crispy in the oven and serve that up. You can make your own tartar sauce. You can bite it at the grocery store, whatever you wanna do. , but that’s what we’re making next week. So I want you to be prepared and have the ingredients that you need to make your crispy fish sticks.

So let me go over all of the ingredients that you need to grab to have on hand for next week’s episode. All right? There’s not a lot. Most of it’s going to come from your spice cabinet. You need:

• 1.5 pounds of codfish, filets
• all-purpose flour
• three eggs
• Dijon mustard
• Kosher salt
• Cayenne pepper
• panko breadcrumbs
• onion powder, garlic powder, paprika, or smoked paprika.
• non-stick spray
• Foil

I hope that you’ll join us next week and make the crispy fish sticks with us, and I’ll see you then.

Have a great week you guys.

Intro: Welcome everybody to another episode of Let’s Make Dinner, your audio library of amazing dinner recipes you can always get on the table. I’m your host, Susie Weinrich. 

Susie Weinrich: Okay, I’m going to have to apologize for my little bit of froggy voice today. So in real time as I’m recording this, I live in the Kansas City area and the Kansas City Chiefs just won the Super Bowl. It was so exciting. It was an excellent game. Super fun. Had a big party and actually had perfect timing. I made this Instant Pot Buffalo Chicken Chili for our Super Bowl party, and it was delicious. It is perfect game day food. So unfortunately, the football season is over, but you can use it for other parties, for baseball, for just a fun weeknight dinner or for next football season.

So of course for this recipe, you’re going to want to have an Instant Pot. I actually currently have two Instant Pots because I love it so much and I do a lot of Instant Pot recipes on PinterestTV. So I need two pots so that I can make a recipe and then make a recipe during the show. The pot that I have is the Six Quart Instant Pot Duo Plus, and then I have a seven in one and a nine in one. I have to say that the seven in one is plenty for me. I don’t really use the nine functions. In fact, I don’t really use the seven functions. I use about four of the functions. So save a little bit of money, get the seven in one Instant Pot, if you don’t already have one, it’ll save you about 30 bucks.

The most important feature is that you want to have at least a six quart Instant Pot. Most recipes are going to be written in either a six quart or an eight quart pot. This recipe for Instant Pot Buffalo Chicken Chili is going to serve about, it’s tough to say because it depends on, if you’re at a Super Bowl party and you have a lot of other food, it’s going to serve a lot of people. But if it’s just a dinner that you’re doing, it’s going to serve probably about six people. You can double the recipe, but I think if you have just a six quart pot, doubling the recipe is going to be hard because it will fill the pot to the brim. If you’ve worked with an Instant Pot before, you know that in the inside of the pot, there’s that max fill line, and you don’t want to go over that when you’re cooking in the Instant Pot.

Total time to make this recipe is going to be probably about a good 20 minute prep time just because you have chopped onions and peppers and garlic and then the actual pressure cook time is only 12 minutes. Now not calculated in there, of course, is the time it comes to bring your pot to pressure and then the release time. 

Tips and Tricks: There’s not a ton of tips and tricks that I’m sharing before the recipe today, but there are two ingredients that I want to talk about briefly. So the ranch packet, it’s that little one ounce envelope of Dry Ranch Mix. I have tried the Aldi brand or off brand or store brands, they’re not quite the same as the Hidden Valley brand. I’m not sponsored by Hidden Valley. I just think that it is definitely a better flavor. So if you see the Hidden Valley ones, grab that. 

Then also the buffalo sauce that goes into this recipe. Number one, if you don’t like spicy things, this is not the recipe for you. After the Super Bowl this year, I had somebody email me and tell me that my Buffalo Chicken nachos were too spicy. I’m like, if you don’t like buffalo or you don’t know about buffalo, or you don’t like spicy things, then this recipe is not going to be for you. But the buffalo sauce, Frank’s Red Hot Original, is always good. But I will say I’ve tried the Aldi one and it is just as good, truly. Now you’ll also see buffalo sauce and then you’ll see wing sauce. They will both work, but the buffalo sauce is not going to have as much like oil and butter in it as a wing sauce. The wing sauce is ready to be put on chicken wings and stick to the chicken wings. Like I said, they’ll both work. But if you can find the Frank’s Red Hot Original, it’s delicious. 

Instant Pot Buffalo Chicken Chili Recipe: All right, so let’s get on to making this full recipe for Instant Pot Buffalo Chicken Chili. You want to start by setting your Instant Pot on saute mode. Once it reads hot, you’re going to add one tablespoon of oil to the pot. Then, you’re going to add in one yellow onion that’s been diced. Three garlic cloves that are chopped. One cup of chopped celery and one bell pepper that’s been chopped. You can use any color; red, green, yellow, orange, they’ll all work here.

So let that saute around for about five to eight minutes. Then you’re going to turn the saute mode off. You’re going to add in two large chicken breasts, and what I like to do here is cut them into four pieces each so that they cook all the way through in your cooking time. Then you’ll sprinkle in that one ounce packet of ranch dressing mix, and then pour in four cups of chicken broth or chicken stock and then three quarters cup of buffalo sauce that Frank’s Red Hot Original that we talked about. Now if you are like, I just want a little bit of spice, you can absolutely adjust this to a quarter cup all the way up to the three quarters. So just add as much buffalo sauce as you think you want. Of course you can always add more at the end if you want to taste it and then see what your heat level is.

Now you’re going to place the lid on your Instant Pot. Turn it, lock that pressure valve to seal and set it to cook either on manual mode, high pressure for 12 minutes, or you can do the meat and stew mode, which is basically the same thing for 12 minutes. After the pressure cook is done, you’ll do a quick release of pressure, which just means you turn that pressure valve to vent and all of that steam will escape.

So at this point we’re going to finish the soup. What you want to do is fish out all eight pieces of that chicken breast and you can chop it or shred it. My very favorite tip for shredding chicken is putting it in your stand mixer with a paddle attachment and it needs to be warm or hot chicken to do this. So put it in your Kitchenaid with a paddle attachment. Buzz it on medium speed for about 15 to 30 seconds and it shreds it beautifully and it’s so, so easy. So shred that up. Set that aside. 

Now, in the Instant Pot, you’re going to add your cream cheese. It’s an eight ounce block of cream cheese. I like to cut mine up into one inch blocks so that it melts down into the soup a little bit easier. Usually I’ll take a whisk and whisk it in so that it breaks up and melts down into the soup. Then you’re going to finish the soup by stirring in the shredded chicken. A 14 and a half ounce can of diced tomatoes that’s been drained and a 15 and a half ounce can of great Northern beans that’s been drained. One and a half cups of frozen corn. A third cup of fresh chopped cilantro and then one tablespoon of honey. The honey just balances that flavor and balances all of the spiciness and the tanginess. You’ve got a lot of tanginess in this soup, so that honey just balances everything out. So give it a really good stir, mix it all up, and then let it cool for about 15 minutes and it will start to thicken up as it cools.

So that is the full recipe. Now, in the recipe, I do have troubleshooting for spice levels. If you don’t like things too spicy, like we said, dial back the buffalo sauce. If it’s too late and you already made it too spicy, what you can do is add more cream cheese, or you can stir in a little bit of heavy cream or half and half.

Now, if you have just started the recipe and you’re like, give me all the spice, I want more spice than just the buffalo, you can add one or two chopped jalapenos in the beginning when you’re sauteing the onions and celery and bell. 

Now if you’ve already made the chili and you want more spice, of course you can add in a little bit more buffalo sauce. You can add in some ground cayenne pepper or a couple dashes of your favorite hot sauce. You can also serve it with fresh jalapenos. That will be nice and spicy.

Now when you’re serving this Instant Pot Buffalo Chicken Chili, what I like to do is have all of those buffalo toppings ready. So blue cheese, cheese. My favorite is to crumble up some tortilla chips into the soup. I like to have celery sticks, carrots sticks, maybe some cornbread, some different corn breads or Fritos, sour cream, avocados. All of that is delicious piled on top of this soup. 

All right, so that does it for today’s recipe for Instant Pot Buffalo Chicken Chili. Of course, all of the recipes that I talked about in this episode can be found on momsdinner.net. That is my website where I share all of my recipes. You can save them, print them, and cook right from my website. I would love to have you check them out. I will put links to all of the recipes right in the show notes for you.

Outro: If you are loving these episodes and it’s helping you in the kitchen, I would love to have you rate and review this show in your favorite podcast player. Until next time, I hope this episode of Let’s Make Dinner makes your dinner time a little easier. See ya.

Double Dip: Now it’s time for your Double Dip. So if you are enjoying cooking along with these episodes, then I want you to be prepared for next week’s episode, which of course, comes out every Thursday. So next week we’re making a Veggie Stir Fry. So it’s going to be really similar to a vegetable Pad Thai that you would get from a Thai restaurant.

Yes, you can absolutely make it at home. It’s pretty easy to do and it’s absolutely delicious. However, it does have a longer list of ingredients, but I want to give you all of the ingredients now so that you can have everything you need and cook along next Thursday. I will also put a link in the show notes to next week’s recipe so that you can check it out. You can actually even text yourself the ingredients from the recipe so that when you go to the grocery store, you have it right in your text. There’s a big button right in the middle of the recipe that says, text me the ingredients. So you can use that, especially if you’re on your mobile phone. 

All right, so let’s get to these ingredients. You’ll need eight ounces of rice noodles. I like the Thai Kitchen brand. Vegetable oil, broccoli florets, a red pepper, garlic cloves, kosher salt, two large eggs, one cup of bean sprouts and green onions. Then for the Pad Thai sauce, of course you could buy a Pad Thai sauce at the grocery store and be good to go. But if you want to make your own, you’ll want vegetable broth or chicken broth, tamarind paste, fish sauce, soy sauce, brown sugar, creamy peanut butter. Again, garlic, fresh ginger and red pepper flakes. A note about the fresh ginger. So I usually don’t use fresh ginger. What I use are the little frozen cubes. They’re, I think they’re called Dorot Gardens, I get them at Trader Joe’s and they’re little frozen cubes. Each cube is a teaspoon of fresh grated ginger. It couldn’t be easier. 

All right, then for the garnish, you’re going to want to have roasted peanuts, cilantro, and fresh lime wedges. That’s it. So I hope you join me next week and make some Pad Thai for dinner on Thursday when you are fresh out of dinner ideas and you’re like, what am I going to make for dinner? You can come back to this podcast, Let’s Make Dinner and cook along with me. I’ll see you then.

Intro: Welcome everybody to another episode of Let’s Make Dinner, your audio library of amazing dinner recipes you can always get on the table. I’m your host, Susie Weinrich. 

Susie Weinrich: Okay, you guys, I had the best time the other night. I made this recipe. We’re making Veggie Lasagna tonight. I made it live on PinterestTV the other night, and I had the best time. The recipe turned out perfect and it was absolutely delicious. I actually made two because my PinterestTV episodes are only 30 minutes long. So I don’t have time to actually bake the recipe. So I have one that’s cooked and yummy and delicious, and we’ve been eating it for lunch all week. I have one that I’m going to bake today that I’m going to cut up into individual pieces and pop them in the freezer so that over the next three months I can pull out just an individual piece of lasagna and have it for lunch whenever I want to. Perfect. You’re going to love this recipe. 

So like I said before, we’re making a vegetarian lasagna today. It’s just going to be like a normal lasagna. It’s got the cheese, the noodles, the sauce, all the spices. But instead of a meat layer, it’s going to have a veggie layer that’s filled with onions, carrots, zucchini, and roasted red peppers. It’s the perfect blend to go into your veggie lasagna. 

So this recipe is a little bit different from a traditional lasagna recipe. It’s actually made in either an eight by eight or a nine by nine pan. Either one will work. It’s going to give you a couple different options for serving. If you’ve got four super hungry people in your house, you can absolutely just cut this two by two, have four huge slices, and be good to go. You can also cut it so that it is cut three by two, giving you six slices, which that’s normally what I do. I just slice the pan in half and then go three across the other way. Your other option is to cut it three by three, so you have nine smaller slices. That’s great for if you’re having the veggie lasagna, and then you’re going to have maybe a roasted fennel or something on the side and a salad and garlic bread because they will be a little bit smaller slices. You can see with this recipe, there are a ton of different options for how you want to cut it and serve it. 

Now, like any lasagna, it’s going to take a little bit more time to put this recipe together. Lasagna is a labor of love. So you want to make sure that you plan out enough time, maybe 20 minutes for the prep in getting all the veggies sauteed and getting the lasagna all layered together. Then you’re going to need about 50 minutes for cooking time and then another 15 to 20 minutes for the lasagna to just sit and settle. Make sure you plan enough time. This maybe is not the recipe, this definitely is not the recipe for a busy Wednesday night. This is a great recipe for a Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or maybe a weekday where you really don’t have much else going on.

Tips and Tricks: All right, so like always, let’s go over a couple tips for this vegetarian lasagna recipe. First of all, we’re talking about lasagna noodles. Since the lasagna is made in a smaller eight by eight pan, we love to buy the Barilla or Barilla, I don’t know how you say it, but whatever. You know what I’m talking about. It’s in the blue box. Their oven ready lasagna noodles are a little bit shorter, and they’re just in these thin sheets. They’re perfect for that eight by eight or nine by nine pan. So that’s what we recommend. Then for your marinara sauce, since that is such an important component of this recipe, you want to make sure that you buy a really good marinara sauce.

So of course, I say it all the time. We love RAOs. It is way more expensive at the grocery store, but we have found in just taste testing through the years that the RAOs are delicious and it’s absolutely worth the extra dough. The best place to buy your RAO sauce actually is at Costco. It comes in a two pack and it’s way cheaper than the normal grocery store.

All right. Another ingredient that you may turn your nose up to is cottage cheese. I grew up eating cottage cheese in my lasagna, and actually, I think it’s America’s Test Kitchen, recommends cottage cheese for your lasagna. It bakes up really creamy and it lends just a really nice flavor to the lasagna. Ricotta, to be totally honest, ricotta that you buy at the store, does not have a ton of flavor. I think that even if you’re on the fence about using cottage cheese, I think that you should definitely, definitely give it a try. 

Three last little tips, and this is good for any lasagna that you make. Number one, when you cover your lasagna with foil to put it in the oven, spray the underside of your foil with a little non-stick spray and then put it over the lasagna. What that does is prevents the cheese from baking to that foil, and then when you take the foil off, all the cheese goes with it. That will not happen if you spray it with that non-stick spray. 

The other tip, especially for this lasagna, is to make the whole lasagna in that eight by eight or nine by nine pan, but then when you go to put it in the oven, place that pan on top of a rimmed baking sheet. I can almost guarantee you that this lasagna will bake over the edges. It’s just a very hearty lasagna. 

The very last tip before we get to the full recipe. With any lasagna, when it comes out of the oven, it is crucial that you let it sit and settle for 15 to 20 minutes. It needs that time to congeal. My husband loves that word. So it needs to set together and the layers need to cool and set in place. Then when you go to cut it, the layers will stay together. If you cut it too soon, you risk the layers falling apart. Which would still be delicious, but that’s not what you want when you actually serve a slice of lasagna. 

All right, so those are all the tips and tricks. I hope you have your ingredients ready, and we’re going to make a delicious veggie lasagna.

Vegetable Lasagna Recipe: So we’re going to start in a skillet, and what you want to do is put your skillet over medium heat, add about a tablespoon of olive oil, and then you’re going to add in one cup of chopped onion. I like to usually use either a white or a yellow onion here. Then also, one cup of carrots. For the carrots I like to cut them in kind of thin coins so that they soften during the saute and the cook time.

So get those two in the pan and just start sauteing and softening those for about five to 10 minutes. Now while that’s sauteing, you can go ahead and chop up three garlic cloves. Then one medium size zucchini. Chop both ends off and then just slice that up into, I don’t know, about a quarter inch or an eighth inch size slice.

You’ll also want to measure out a half teaspoon each of dried basil, dried oregano, and kosher salt. Then a quarter teaspoon each of onion powder and garlic powder. I usually go with a really generous quarter teaspoon of both of those things because they’re delicious. 

So once those carrots and onions have sauteed together for a while, go ahead and add in the zucchini, the garlic, and then all of those spices and seasonings and salt that you just measured out. Give that a stir around the pan and just let that saute for about three to five minutes to start to soften that zucchini. Now while that’s sauteing, you’ll take a 12 ounce jar of roasted red peppers and drain it in the sink. I usually just use a mesh colander or something and drain all that juice off so that you just have the red peppers.

Now usually jarred red peppers come, they can come in really long strips. It’s almost like the whole red pepper is still together. So after you drain it, you definitely want to give that red pepper a rough chop so that it’s in bite size pieces. Then you can remove all that veggie filling off of the stove and off of the heat. Just stir in that chopped red pepper. That is your filling for the lasagna. That’s all the veggie filling. It will smell really, really delicious at this point. 

Now, another layer that we need to put together is the cottage cheese layer. You can empty out a 15 ounce container of cottage cheese into a bowl, and I usually like to use the 2% or 4% milk fat cottage cheese, because it’s a little bit creamier and heartier. Then crack one egg into that cottage cheese and give it a light mix. Then you can set that aside. 

The last step is your mozzarella cheese. Highly, highly, highly recommend that you shred your own cheese, and if you can find it at your grocery store, a round of whole milk mozzarella, I highly recommend buying that and shredding that up. It will melt really creamy and really flavorful. So you need two cups of shredded mozzarella mixed with a half cup of fresh grated Parmesan cheese. Mix those two together and then set that aside. 

Now it’s time to layer up your lasagna. You’ll want to go ahead and preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Grab that eight by eight or nine by nine pan, and we’re going to start to layer. So make sure that you have 24 ounces of marinara sauce, your veggies, the cottage cheese, and the cheese, and then the no-boil lasagna noodles. We’ll get to layering everything up. 

So start by grabbing a third cup of that marinara sauce, and you’re going to just layer that down into the bottom of your pan and smooth it out so it covers the entire bottom. Then you’re going to lay two lasagna noodles side by side. On top of that, you’re going to add a third of that cottage cheese mixture. Again, just spread it edge to edge. Top that cottage cheese with a third cup of the marinara sauce. Again, spread it out. Then you’re going to top that with a third of that veggie mixture.

So usually what I like to do is spoon out some of the red peppers, onions, and carrots, and just scatter it all over the top of the lasagna layer. Then I like to grab out some of the zucchini and place them more strategically so that you don’t end up with just one pile of zucchini in the center of the lasagna. So get all those veggies spread out and then on top of that you’re going to put a generous quarter cup of the mozzarella and Parmesan cheese mixture. Just sprinkle that all over it. Now we’re going to repeat the layers two more times. Noodles, cottage cheese, marinara, veggies, cheese mixture. Then you’re going to do it again. Noodles, cottage cheese, marinara, veggies, cheese. 

Now we have the last layer. This last layer is just going to be two noodles, and when you put these noodles on, give them a little press because I bet that your dish is super full. Give them a little press just to kind of set the lasagna together and then take the rest of that marinara sauce and spread it all over the top of the lasagna from edge to edge. Then you’re going to finish with the remaining cheese, all of that cheese that you have. Spread that across the top.

Now you’ll notice that your pan is very, very full. So what you want to do is take a big piece of foil, spray it with a little bit of non-stick spray on one side, and then place that directly over the lasagna. Make sure you crimp that foil really well, all around the edges of the pan. Then take that pan and place it on top of a large rimmed baking sheet. Like I said, this is a full hearty lasagna and it will probably boil over in the oven. So you’re going to pop that in your preheated 400 degree oven for about 30 minutes.

At the end of the 30 minutes, you’re going to pull it out, take that foil off, and put it back in the oven for another 15 to 20 minutes. I usually err on the side of 20 minutes because I like those little golden bits on the top of my lasagna. Then at the end of that 20 minutes, you’ll pull the lasagna out. This is key to a really good lasagna. You have to let it sit for like 15 to 20 minutes, up to 30 minutes. It will still be hot. It will still retain all of its heat. But in that time it will also come together, set up, settle, and the layers will stick together, which is exactly what you want. Now, like I said in the beginning of the episode, at the point where it’s time to cut, you can cut it in two by two for four slices, in a two by three for six slices. Or three by three for nine smaller slices. 

So let’s talk about side dishes for your veggie lasagna. If you want to make it a really hearty meal, something like a roasted broccoli or a roasted fennel would be a great veggie side dish. Then of course, garlic bread, garlic breadsticks would be great. Either a Caesar salad or a green salad with a basil vinaigrette would be delicious. I have a wonderful recipe for a homemade basil vinaigrette that I will link in the show notes for you. 

Outro: So that does it for today’s episode of Let’s Make Dinner. I hope you enjoyed cooking along with me and making this vegetable lasagna for dinner. If you made this recipe and you’ve loved it, I would love to have you rate and comment on the recipe on momsdinner.net. Of course there will be a link to the recipe right in the show notes for you. 

So until next time, I hope this episode of Let’s Make Dinner makes your dinner time a little easier.

Double Dip: Now it’s time for your Double Dip. If you love cooking along with the Let’s Make Dinner podcast, then I want to let you know what recipe we’re making next Thursday. So when you are out of dinner ideas by Thursday, you can come to this podcast and be like, oh yeah, that’s what we’re having for dinner. So next week we are making a Buffalo Chicken Chili, and I’ve got two different ways to make it. We’re either going to do Instant Pot or stove top instructions. So either way, I hope you join me and make that for dinner.

Now here are the ingredients that you need to make this Buffalo Chicken Chili. You’re going to want to make sure you have one onion, garlic, one cup of chopped celery. Some bell peppers, any color will work. Two large chicken breasts. One one ounce packet of that, you know that ranch dressing mix? The powder dressing mix? You’ll want one of those. Four cups of chicken broth. Three quarters cup of buffalo sauce, Frank’s Red Hot is always a good choice. a 14 and a half ounce can of diced tomatoes and a 15 and a half ounce can of great northern beans.

Then you’re going to need frozen corn, fresh cilantro. An eight ounce block of cream cheese and one tablespoon of honey. Make sure you have all of those ingredients, and of course, if you want to print the recipe out or text yourself the ingredients, I will have a link in the show notes to the recipe where you can print it out or text yourself all of the ingredients and head over to the grocery store.

All right, I hope you guys have a great week. I’ll see you next Thursday.

Intro: Welcome everybody to another episode of Let’s Make Dinner, your audio library of amazing dinner recipes you can always get on the table. I’m your host, Susie Weinrich. 

Susie Weinrich: As I record this podcast episode, I am sitting at my desk and I have my new little happy light sitting up in the corner, and it truly is making me so happy. I definitely suffer from, oh, what’s it called? SAD. Seasonal Affective Disorder. When it’s really cold and not very sunny out and you can’t go outside and get any fresh air, it is seasonal depression. I think they also call it winter blues. So I ordered myself one of these little happy lights and set it on my desk, and I’m telling you, it is like my eyeballs are soaking up the energy from the light. It is wild. So I highly recommend, if you suffer from any kind of winter blues syndrome, that you get one of these lights. 

I also recommend that you make this recipe that we’re making today. It’s Instant Pot Beef and Barley Stew. It is one of the most popular recipes on momsdinner.net, which is where I share all of my recipes. That’s where you can find any recipe you listen to on Let’s Make Dinner. You can find it on momsdinner.net, the website.

This recipe to date, I think, has around 105 star reviews. That’s huge. That is testament from your peers, your cooking peers, that say, this recipe is amazing. So it’s not really complicated over the top flavors. It’s really basic, just hearty stew. Let me tell you, I have a ton of women, just because that’s a huge demographic for my site, that say that they have very picky husbands and that they absolutely love this stew recipe. So if you’ve got some picky eaters in your house, absolutely give this recipe a try.

So of course the one piece of equipment that you’re going to need to make this is your Instant Pot. Instant Pot is actually a brand. You just need an electric pressure cooker. So if you’ve got one of those, it’ll work. I use the Instant Pot Duo plus nine in one six quart style. It’s a lot of words. I also recently bought a second Instant Pot because I love mine so much, and I ended up going with a very similar Instant Pot, and instead of nine in one, it’s seven in one, so it just has seven functions instead of nine functions. Because I found that I really didn’t use all nine functions. It was unnecessary money to spend. So I will link both of those Instant Pot types in the show notes. So if you don’t have one and you’re interested in getting one, you can check both of those out on Amazon. Of course, if you have any questions about Instant Pot, I would love to have you guys email me and we can have a little conversation. My email is susie@momsdinner.net. It’s Susie, s u s i e. 

Tips and Tricks: Let’s go over a couple tips about this recipe before I share the recipe completely. First of all, this recipe is made with stew meat. So if you need a really economical recipe, this is a great one. Stew meat is a great cut of beef that definitely needs either a longer, low and slow cooking time, or like with this one, hot and high pressure. Stew meat works really, really well in the Instant Pot. 

Another ingredient that we use here is something called beef base. You can find beef base in the soup aisle. It’s going to be like bouillon, but way more flavorful and way more intense. So it usually comes in a jar or a tub, and it will be in a paste form. The brand that we love to use is the Better than Bouillon brand. That’s an actual brand. I just got the roast beef base. It really punches the flavor up for you. 

Now another ingredient that you’re going to want to have is barley, and there’s going to be a couple different options when you go to buy barley. I always get the pearl barley for this recipe. Pearl barley is going to be longer cooking barley, so it’s going to hold up to the Instant Pot pressure while that stew meat cooks down. There’s another type of barley called quick cooking barley, but you don’t need that quick cooking. You want to get the pearl barley.

The rest of the ingredients for this recipe are just your average garlic, onions, oil, seasonings, beef broth, salt and pepper. So I think we can go ahead and get into the full recipe for your Instant Pot Beef and Barley Stew. 

Instant Pot Beef and Barley Soup Recipe: You’re going to start this recipe by popping your Instant Pot onto saute mode. Actually, your Instant Pot saute mode has three different functions. There is low heat, normal heat, and high heat. You just want normal heat to saute your veggies. Low heat is more like, let’s keep things warm. High heat is going to be more searing, browning or wok style cooking. To scroll through all of those functions, you can just hit your saute button a couple times and you’ll see it scroll through all of those functions. So just make sure it’s normal. 

Add that oil. You’re going to add one tablespoon of oil, and then you’re going to add in one yellow or white onion that’s chopped. Two large celery stalks that are sliced. Three garlic cloves that are chopped. One and a half cups of carrots that are sliced either in coins or you can dice them. It’s up to you, you know, how you want to eat your soup. So go ahead and saute those in the oil for about five minutes. While that’s sauteing, you can get the rest of your ingredients all ready. 

So you’ll want to measure out a half a teaspoon each of onion powder and garlic powder. One and a half tablespoons of worcestershire sauce, one tablespoon of tomato paste, two teaspoons of that beef base we talked about, one teaspoon of kosher salt, half a teaspoon of black pepper. Then there is an optional ingredient here. You could add two teaspoons of fresh chopped rosemary or thyme. It just adds another little layer of flavor, but is totally optional. You do not have to add it. After those veggies saute for about five minutes, you’ll add in all of those seasonings and give them a really good stir around the pot. You want the tomato paste and the beef base to coat all of those veggies, and then also kind of start to caramelize on the bottom of the pot. Do that for just a couple minutes and then you’re going to pour in your beef broth. So you need 32 ounces of beef broth and one and a half cups of water. 

When you do that, you’re going to want to do something called de-glazing the bottom of the pot. You want to make sure that all of that tomato paste and beef broth that may be caramelized on the bottom of the pot, you need to scrape all of that up. By deglazing, you’re going to prevent getting the burn notice with your pot. Knock on wood, I have yet to get a burn notice with my pot. So the deglazing definitely works as long as you scrape up all of those bits that are on the bottom.

Now at this point, you can turn off the saute mode and we’re going to add in the rest of the ingredients. So first you’re going to add in the stew meat and you need about one and a half pounds of stew meat. If you’re just shy of that, that’s totally fine. Just make sure that all of the pieces are cut into half to one inch size pieces, so they’re bite size when you go to eat the soup. 

Then I like to pour in the one cup, and I usually do about one scant cup of pearl barley and just make sure it’s touching all of the liquid. There’s no need to give this a really good stir at this point. You kind of want that barley to be on top of the beef. 

Now you’ll close your Instant Pot and set it to either that meat slash stew mode or just manual pressure, high pressure for 25 minutes. You’ll let the pot come to pressure. It will count down from 25 to zero. Once it hits zero and it beeps at you, you’re going to do a quick release. That means you’re just going to turn that little valve on the top of the pot and all of that pressure is going to rush out and release, and then you can open the pot.

Once you open the pot, you’re going to give it a really nice stir, and then you’re going to let it cool for about 10 minutes. During that 10 minutes, it’s going to start to thicken up. So the starch from all of that barley is going to combine with the liquid and it will get nice and thick and so delicious. 

So that is it. Dinner is ready. With this soup, I like to serve on the side, either just saltine crackers or like a warm ciabatta bread or maybe if we want it to be a little bit harder, I might do a green side salad or maybe a tray with raw veggies and ranch dip. Or if you’re serving this as a weekend dinner, you can also add little tea sandwiches. Tea sandwiches are what I call them. So you just use slider buns or mini buns or pretzel buns. Put either ham or Turkey or both. Maybe a little provolone cheese and then a little bit of mayonnaise and mustard, and you have your little tea sandwiches that go perfect with soup.

As always, I will link all of the recipes that I talked about in this show, right in the show notes for you. Like I said in this episode, if you ever have any questions about the recipes, about cooking, about Instant Pot, you can always email me, susie@momsdinner.net. I would love to connect with you and answer any cooking questions that you have. 

Outro: So until next time, I hope this episode of Let’s Make Dinner makes your dinner time a little easier. See ya. 

Double Dip: Now for your Double Dip. If you are following along with the Let’s Make Dinner Podcast and you enjoy cooking along and you want to be prepared for next week’s episode, I want you to make sure you have all the groceries you need. So we are making a Vegetarian Lasagna next week that is the ultimate. It is so, so good. 

So some of the ingredients you want to make sure that you have on hand to follow along next week are olive oil, onions, carrots, zucchini, garlic, a 12 ounce jar of roasted red peppers, 16 ounces of cottage cheese, one egg. Then you’ll need a few spices from your spice cabinet. So kosher salt, dried basil, dried oregano, onion powder, and garlic powder. You’ll need eight oven ready, no-boil lasagna noodles. A 24 ounce jar of marinara and then two cups of shredded mozzarella cheese. 

You can find the vegetarian lasagna recipe on momsdinner.net, and I will of course link it in the show notes for you. So mark your calendar for next Thursday and we will make Vegetarian Lasagna for dinner together.