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.

Intro: Hey, hey everybody. Welcome 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: Hello, hello everybody. What’s good today? So I’ve been doing something kind of new recently that I have absolutely fallen in love with. There’s a new platform on Pinterest called PinTV. It’s where you can go live and cook. Some people paint, some people do makeup. I’m obviously cooking and I have fallen in love with this platform. It’s super easy. I can literally make dinner live and share all of my, you know, kitchen tips and tricks and recipe knowledge. It goes live out to Pinterest and people join and watch me, and I absolutely love it. Who knew that that’s something that I would like to do? So it’s kind of opening a whole new world for me this year. Like maybe I wanna do TV or a news segment or something. So anyway, I made this recipe for Instant Hot Chicken Alfredo last night on PinTV. So you can listen to the recipe here like we always do, or you could pop over to the episode on PinTV which I’ll link in the show notes for you and you can actually watch me live making this recipe. But if you are just looking for a really good easy pasta, maybe Instant Pot pasta recipe, this is so good. I ate it after the pin TV episode last night, and I think I could have eaten my weight in this chicken alfredo. It’s that good. 

Tips and Tricks: There’s a few key ingredients that make it better than any other alfredo recipe you’re gonna find on the internet. So let’s go ahead and get started. We always start with tips here on let’s make dinner. So we’re gonna start with tips and specific ingredients that you want to have for this recipe. So we’re gonna actually start by talking about the Parmesan cheese. Parm is definitely a key ingredient to making Alfredo, and it’s no different here with this Instant Pot Chicken Alfredo. My tip is to purchase the very best Parmesan cheese you can, and generally that’s going to be something that looks kind of craggy and dry and has a rind on the outside that maybe is stamped or has lettering or words on it.

That generally means that it came from a larger wheel and it’s going to have a really true Parmesan flavor. Buy the best Parmesan you can. And whatever you do, don’t buy pre shredded and don’t buy the powder stuff. You want to grate your own Parmesan. It’s going to make it creamier and more flavorful. 

Another thing that’s gonna make your Alfredo the best Alfredo on the internet is by adding the lemon. We’re going to add lemon zest and lemon juice to the liquid that’s gonna cook the pasta and the chicken. That is just gonna add the perfect bright note that an Alfredo needs to balance all of the flavors. You’ve got the carbs, you’ve got the chicken, you’ve got the cream, the Parmesan. It’s a heavy dish. When you add that lemon, it just brightens everything up and almost separates the flavors so that you can taste everything individually. It’s definitely a key ingredient. 

Another key ingredient that cannot be swapped is the heavy cream. You have to use heavy cream in the Instant Pot to keep it stable. So that fat content of heavy cream ensures that it doesn’t separate or curdle when it’s being cooked in the pressure cooker. You cannot sub half and half, whole milk. Milk will not work the same. You need that heavy cream. 

Now, of course an Alfredo is generally made with a fettuccini, which is great, use a fettuccini. I have also tested this recipe with linguini, and that works as well too. 

All right, just a couple more things before we get to the full recipe. We’re gonna talk about just cooking pasta in general in your Instant Pot. So the key here with the longer pasta, we’re gonna break it in half, which I know is sacrilege to all of you full blood Italians out there. But to actually fit it in the pot, you do have to break your pasta in half. So you’re going to break them in half. Then the key here is you’re gonna crisscross all of the noodles so that they don’t cook together in one big clump. You’re going to just use eight ounces of pasta for this recipe, break them in half, and then separate that eight ounces into four or five piles. Crisscross them as you layer them in the Instant Pot, and they will cook up perfect for you. All right, and like I just said, this recipe only calls for eight ounces of fettuccini noodles. On the recipe I say this will serve anywhere from two to four people. At your house, eight ounces of pasta may only serve one person. It may serve four people. It depends on are you serving all adults that are really hungry? Are you serving kids? You’ll have to decide if you want to double or triple the recipe. But there have been plenty of people on the Mom’s Dinner comments and then also on Pinterest who have doubled and tripled the recipe with no problem whatsoever. So you should be able to do that and be just fine. Those are all of my tips and tricks. So let’s get on to making the full Instant Pot Chicken Alfredo recipe.

Instant Pot Chicken Alfredo Recipe: You’re gonna start with your Instant Pot on saute mode, just on normal heat. You’re going to add two tablespoons of butter. Get that melted down in the pot, and then you’re going to mince two garlic cloves. If you want to mince four garlic cloves, go for it. But the recipe calls for two garlic cloves. Add those into the pot and just stir them around in the butter until it becomes fragrant. So just about one minute. You don’t wanna brown it, you don’t want your garlic to burn. You just want to start to soften it and get it really fragrant in the butter. 

Then you can turn off that saute mode and you’re going to add in one in three quarters cups of chicken broth or stock. That’s going to add really nice flavor to your sauce for this Alfredo.

Then you’re going to add in one cup of heavy cream, one tablespoon of lemon juice and about two teaspoons of lemon zest. For me, that’s usually about the zest of one entire lemon. Give that a good stir so that the zest gets distributed all throughout that liquid. Now it’s time to add that pasta. We’re going to add eight ounces of fettuccini, separate them into piles, maybe like four piles. Grab each pile. Break them in half, scatter them into that liquid in the Instant Pot. Grab the next one, break it in half, but turn it the opposite way so you’re crisscrossing that pasta in the liquid. Repeat that until you’ve used all of your pasta, and then you can take a wooden spoon and lightly shimmy that pasta so that it is all at least touching the liquid. You don’t have to jam it down in the pot so that it’s all in the liquid. It just needs to be at least touching that liquid. 

Now you’re gonna take one large chicken breast and cut it up so that it’s in about half inch pieces, and then scatter that all over the top of the pasta that’s in the Instant Pot. Now we’re going to season that chicken. You’re going to take about a half a teaspoon, a scant half teaspoon of onion powder and kosher salt. Sprinkle that all over the top. Then you can add fresh cracked black pepper if you like. I love fresh cracked black pepper with anything creamy. So I like a lot added into my Alfredo.

Now it’s time to cook. You’re going to pop that Instant Pot lid on, lock it in place. Turn the vent on top to seal, and then set your pot to cook on normal heat, high pressure for six minutes. It’s gonna go ahead and come up to pressure. It’ll beep. It will count down, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. It will beep at you again, and then it’s time to release all of the pressure. You’ll turn that vent on top. All of the pressure will escape in full dramatic fashion. It’s so loud. Once it’s ready to open, open up the pot. You’ll notice that it is still very soupy. Don’t worry, you haven’t messed up the recipe. It will come together, I promise. 

So what you wanna do is give it a little stir and then just let it set for about five minutes. As it starts to cool, it’s going to start to thicken. During that five minute period, you can grate up your fresh Parmesan cheese. You’ll need one cup. So then it’s time to add that cheese to the pasta. What I recommend here is that you do it in two batches. Add a half a cup, stir it into the pasta, and then add another half cup, stir it into the pasta. This is just preventing you from dumping one cup of Parmesan cheese into your pasta and having it steamed together in one big clump. That’s the worst. So you’re going to have a really creamy, yummy pasta at this point. If it’s still a little too liquidy for you, you can absolutely let it sit for about five more minutes and it will thicken up even more. Of course, you wanna give it a little taste before you serve it, you know? Do you want a little more lemon zest? Do you want a little more lemon juice? Do you need more salt? Do you want to add a little garlic powder? Just flavor it up exactly how you like it. 

Now when you serve this, you can serve it just as is. I think that this heavy, creamy pasta does really well with a green vegetable, like green beans or zucchini, or doing a side salad with a really bright vinegarette dressed on the green. So I have a great recipe for a basil vinaigrette that would be perfect paired with this Alfredo. Of course if you like garlic bread or breadsticks, add those too.

So that does it for this full recipe for Instant Pot Chicken Alfredo. Of course, I will link all of the recipes that I talked about in this episode right in the show notes, as well as that PinTV episode that I told you about where I’m making this for dinner live. It’s a 30 minute episode, really fast. You can watch it and learn how to make this.

Outro: As a newer show, we would love to have you either rate and review the show or follow along on your preferred podcast player. Until next time, I hope this episode of Let’s Make Dinner makes your dinner time a little easier. See ya.

I think Alfredo means “with cheese”. I need to look that up. I’m going to look that up right now while I’m recording. Let’s see. What does Alfredo mean in English? Let’s look. Alfredo. Well, it’s just saying a sauce for pasta. Oh, I know. Let’s look up, what does Fredo mean? In English, I’m sure somebody out there screaming right now, means cheese!!!!!! Gosh, nope. Cold and passionless. I don’t think that that describes Alfredo at all.

Intro: Hey, hey everybody. Welcome 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. 

What’s up, everybody? Okay? Today I have such an easy recipe for you. It’s kind of like the recipe that anybody goes to when you’re like, okay, what in the hell are we going to have for dinner tonight? I don’t know, but I definitely have pasta and I definitely have sauce. Right? We are making a traditional spaghetti with meat sauce. We’re not making our own sauce. We’re going to use our very favorite jarred sauce and just keep it super simple. 

But there are a few ingredients that you can add to make it just a little bit more delicious and troubleshoot the flavors so that it comes out perfect and it will become your new go-to meat sauce that’s easy for any old Tuesday or Wednesday. 

Tips and Tricks: A couple tips when you are making spaghetti with meat sauce. First of all, let’s talk about pasta here. We’re talking about spaghetti, that’s fine. But anytime you are cooking pasta, you want to make sure that you salt the water. That is the key number one rule when you cook pasta. What you want to do is fill up a large pot with water and then bring it to a boil. Then you want to salt it generously, probably two tablespoons of kosher salt. Basically, you want the water to taste like sea water. So if you were to get a spoon, get a little bit of water, let it cool off, take a little sip of it, it should taste like salty sea water. Then you know that you’re actually going to season that pasta with the water, which is excellent. It makes a huge difference in the way your pasta dishes taste. 

The next tip here is obviously we’re not making our own sauce, so you want to use the very best sauce you can. For us, we find that Rao’s pasta sauce is number one. It is 100% more expensive at the grocery store, but that’s the main flavor that you’re using here. So you want to make sure that you’re using something that is super delicious. Even though you’re buying, let’s say a bottle of RAOs, that’s $7, and actually the very best place to buy RAO’s is at Costco. You get a double pack, and I want to say it’s $9 for the double pack. So if you want the RAO’s, go to Costco. But if you’re going to buy it at the regular grocery store, let’s say you buy that RAO’s. $7 for a bottle. You get a little pasta, maybe it’s a dollar for a pound of pasta. You get your ground beef, maybe another five or $6. You still have a fairly inexpensive dinner on your hands. 

The next tip we have here is for ground beef. We’re just making a traditional ground beef meat sauce. So with ground beef, anytime you’re making a recipe, the more fat content that your beef has, the more flavor it’s going to have. The fat is what equals flavor. However, the fat also is what equals greasiness. So in recipes like this where you’re actually cooking the meat in its own juices, I recommend using an 85/15 or a 90/10. You’re still going to have enough fat for it to be flavorful, but not so much fat that your dish turns out greasy. There’s also an option of 80/20 at the grocery store. I always like to say save that 80/20 for when you make hamburgers and you want all of that greasy juice, because some of it will cook out in the flames of the grill, but you’re left with just enough to have flavor.

Spaghetti with Meat Sauce Recipe: So let’s get on to making the full recipe for spaghetti with meat sauce. Obviously the first step is to go ahead and get your water onto boil, get it salted, and get your pasta cooking. 

While that’s boiling, it’s time to make your sauce. So what you’re going to want to do is grab a large skillet, something that has high sides that will hold all of the sauce and eventually the pasta. Go ahead and put that over medium heat and add one or two tablespoons of olive oil. Then you’re going to add your ground beef and cook it and kind of crumble it while it’s browning through. There is a tool called a meat masher that I will link in the show notes for you that is such a great tool to have. Anytime you’re cooking ground beef, ground sausage, ground pork, ground chicken, ground Turkey, it works really, really well. Now, if you have a lot of grease in the pan, you’re going to want to drain that off before moving on. Next, you’re going to add in half a yellow onion that’s diced, and three garlic cloves that are chopped. Get that sauteing around the pan for probably about five minutes until it’s starting to soften. Then we’re going to add a few extra spices. So you’re going to add one teaspoon of dried oregano, one teaspoon of dried basil, and then a half a teaspoon each of onion powder and garlic powder, and kosher salt. Give that a really good stir and let it coat all of the onions and the garlic and the ground beef.

Here’s a tip with your dried spices. Anytime you’re adding dried spices to a recipe, I always recommend that you put them in the palm of your hand, take the fingers from the other hand and just kind of crush them lightly. That will start to release their oils so that they can season your dish just a little bit better.

Now you want to turn the heat down to a low and go ahead and pour in that 24 ounce jar of marinara sauce. This is another tip that I love. We’re going to add a little bit of water, or you could do red wine, to your marinara sauce. But what you want to do is add about a third a cup of water to that empty marinara jar, you know how it’s really hard to get all of the sauce out of the jar. If you add just a third, a cup of water or red wine to that jar, pop the lid back on, give it a really good shake, and then pour it into the pan, you’ll get all of the sauce. Especially when you’re buying that expensive RAO’s sauce, you want to get every single drop out of that jar.

So then you’re going to let that simmer over low heat for about 10 minutes, just making sure that you’re stirring it occasionally, and then at the end you can either add the pasta right to your sauce and give it a really good toss or you can let people dish their own sauce onto their own pasta. Just make sure that you serve it with a little bit of Parmesan cheese or a Parmesan shaker on the side. Then we always love to add garlic bread or garlic breadsticks and a Caesar side salad. Some kind of just, especially on a weeknight, just an easy packaged salad is perfect here. So we usually get a pre-packaged Caesar salad and have that for dinner. 

Now, right on the recipe on momsdinner.net, you’ll find a lot of options for flavor troubleshooting as well. So I know that all store bought pasta sauces taste completely different. Some are really sweet, some are tangy, some are salty, and some are a little too acidic. So there’s lots of options for troubleshooting the flavor. Everything from adding a little cream to adding some sugar, adding some more spices. So you can find all of that right on Mom’s dinner.net.

Like always, I will link all of the recipes and all of the information that I shared here, right in the show notes for you so you can find it, pin it, share it, make it whenever you’re ready. 

Outro: As a newer show, we would love to have you follow or subscribe to your preferred podcast player. If you are on Spotify, we would love to have you just smash that five stars right on our show to give us a little rating. If you are on iTunes, we would love to have a rating and a review. It really helps our show to be put in front of other people. So until next time, I hope this episode of Let’s Make Dinner makes your dinner time a little easier. See ya.

74 Shepherds pie_final

Intro: Hey, hey. 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: So today we have the ultimate of all ultimate comfort food. It’s definitely a family favorite of my family and extended family as well. Today we are making a ground Turkey shepherd’s pie for dinner. You’re absolutely going to love it. It has all of the traditional flavors, except we’re using ground Turkey instead of ground beef. It’s got the carrots, the onions, the peas, and then it’s topped with a super flavorful mashed potato baked in the oven. Then your dinner is ready. You’re absolutely going to love this one. 

Tips and Tricks: Let’s talk about a couple tips with this recipe before we get started with the full recipe. Number one, this one is going to use a little bit of red wine, and I absolutely love cooking with both red and white wine in the kitchen. So the wine is just going to add a little bit of depth of flavor. You’re going to cook it enough so that the alcohol is going to cook out. But the other thing is that you’re only going to use about a half a cup of red wine. So you want to use something that you also want to drink, because half a cup out of a whole bottle is nothing. 

The other tip, or I guess just good advice is anytime you have a good amount of leftover mashed potatoes, this recipe should be top of mind because 50% of the recipe is making the mashed potatoes. So if you already have those done, this is going to be the perfect recipe, not only to use up those leftover mashed potatoes, but to have an amazing dinner. Now of course, if you don’t want to make your own mashed potatoes, you can absolutely use a store bought, pre-made mashed potato. I think some people will use the Bob Evans mashed potatoes, you know, that come in a little tub. Or you could go to your deli and get some mashed potatoes from the deli. Or if your store carries frozen mashed potatoes. I know that Trader Joe’s carries really great frozen mashed potatoes, you could use those as well. 

The other ingredient, the ground Turkey, if you would rather use ground chicken or ground pork or ground beef, you can absolutely make that substitution. The one thing I’ll say about using ground Turkey, you want to make sure that you’re not using the 99% lean ground Turkey. That stuff will cook up like the bottom of your shoe. It will be super chewy and flavorless. You want to opt for the 93/7 lean ground Turkey. That just means that 7% of the mixture is fat, and that is what gives it flavor, good texture, and moisture.

Shepherds Pie Recipe: Let’s go ahead and get into the full recipe. We’re going to start by making the mashed potatoes and what you want to do is take two to two and a half pounds of rustic potatoes that are peeled and cut into one to two inch chunks and place them in cool salted water. Then you just want to boil them or simmer them over medium heat until they’re about fork tender, so that’s going to be around 15 minutes.

You’ll drain those potatoes and return them back to the pan that you boiled them in, and you’ll mash them using either a potato masher, a potato ricer, or just a handheld mixer. You will also mix in a quarter cup of sour cream, five tablespoons of butter, two tablespoons of milk, either whole milk or half and half work really well here. One teaspoon of kosher salt and one fresh garlic clove that’s minced. So blend all of that together until it’s nice and smooth. Give it a little taste and make sure it tastes just how you want it. Then you can go ahead and set those aside and we’re going to make the filling for the shepherd’s pie. 

What I recommend doing here is making the filling in the pan that will also go in the oven. So you want to make sure you have an oven safe pan. What I love using is a 12 inch cast iron skillet. It works perfectly for the Shepherds Pie. Now you can also use a 10 inch skillet, but if you use a 10 inch, it’s going to really fill the pan up to the rim. So when it goes in the oven, you’re going to want to put a rimmed baking sheet underneath. You shouldn’t need that when you use a 12 inch. 

All right, so let’s get onto the filling. In that skillet, you’re going to place it over medium heat, and you’re going to add one tablespoon, up to two tablespoons of olive oil. Then you’ll add one small onion that’s been diced, a half a cup of celery that’s been diced, and a half a cup of carrots that are peeled and diced. Go ahead and saute that around the pan for about five minutes until the carrots and the celery start to soften just a little bit. Then you’re going to stir in one pound of lean ground Turkey, so that’s the 93/7 ground Turkey that we were talking about and three minced garlic cloves. While you cook that ground Turkey through, you can just crumble it up using either a wooden spatula or one of those meat mashers. If you don’t have a meat masher in your kitchen, it’s an item that I use all the time. It’s like if you took a wooden spatula and made five prongs on it, and it works through ground Turkey, ground pork, ground beef, sausage, everything perfectly. So I will link that piece of equipment in the show notes for you. 

So you’ll crumble that Turkey and brown it until it’s all the way cooked through, so about five minutes. Then you’re going to stir in one heaping and teaspoon of fresh chopped rosemary. You could also sub fresh thyme here if you don’t like rosemary, or if you prefer thyme. A quarter teaspoon of ground sage, one and a half teaspoons of kosher salt, a half a teaspoon of black pepper, one teaspoon of onion powder, two tablespoons of tomato paste. Give that a stir around the pan, and then you’re going to sprinkle in two tablespoons of all-purpose flour. Stir that in the mixture so it coats all of the veggies and the ground Turkey. Then you’re going to deglaze the bottom of the pan with the red wine. So you’re going to pour in a half a cup of red wine, a Cabernet, Merlot, Malbec, Pinot noir, any of those would work really well. What you want to do is when that liquid hits the pan and it sizzles really fast and steams, you want to scrape up any little bits that are cooked to the bottom of the pan, and that’s called deglazing. So you’ll want to reduce that at this point. So about four to five minutes, just let that simmer in the pan. Then finally, you’re going to stir in one and a half cups of beef broth, one cup of frozen peas, and one tablespoon of worcestershire sauce. Give that a really good stir and let it simmer for about two to three minutes. Then we’re ready to assemble everything. 

Now, one note though about your filling for the Shepherd’s Pie. If you like it just a little bit sier, you can absolutely add in an additional quarter cup to a half a cup of beef broth or red wine would be good too. You’ll take those mashed potatoes and dollop them on top of the filling that you just made the ground Turkey filling. Then what I like to do is take the back of a spoon and smooth it and spread it from edge to edge of the pan. Then I like to make some little swoops and swooshes in the mashed potatoes because those will get kind of brown in the oven and be so tasty and crispy.

So you will then take that skillet that is totally prepared and bake it at 350 for about 30 minutes. If you like the topping, the mashed potato topping a little bit more golden brown, you can absolutely pop it under the broiler for just a few minutes. But you do want to watch it because it will burn fast if you turn your back on it.

So at the end, you will take that Shepherds Pie out of the oven and just let it rest for about five to 10 minutes before serving. At our house, we consider Shepherds Pie, kind of like a one bowl meal or like just a complete dinner within itself. So you’ve got your protein, you have your veggie, you’ve got your starch all together in one dish. Now if you want to make it more of like a bigger dinner experience, you can absolutely add some dinner rolls, add a roasted veggie, like roasted fennel or roasted broccoli would be great. Or if it’s more of a springtime dinner, you could add roasted asparagus and then maybe even a side salad would be perfect here. With this dish, I think something like a balsamic vinaigrette or maybe like a blue cheese or a creamier dressing would be perfect. 

So that does it for the full episode. As always, I will link all of the recipes that I talked about in this episode, write in the show notes for you so you can pin it, save it, make it, share it, whatever, whenever you’re ready. 

As a newer podcast show, I would love it if you have a minute to rate or review or just follow the podcast on your preferred podcast player. 

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

Intro: Hey, hey everybody. Welcome 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: I’ve got such a luxurious, but still pretty easy recipe for you to make for dinner tonight. We are making a Shrimp Carbonara Pasta recipe today that is so rich and luxurious and delicious, but it’s full of super simple, easy to find ingredients which we love here at Let’s Make Dinner and Mom’s Dinner Kitchens. Also, if you believe in the statement bacon makes everything better, then this is going to be your jam, 100%. Also, before we get started, I will say that I’m a little nasally. I’m a little nasally right now. I just got over being sick for about a week, and so I’m still a little bit nasally, so I apologize for the sound. 

All right, so this recipe is actually super easy, like I said before. The one thing that you want to do is do something called mise en place. In cooking or baking, mise en place is basically just the French word for getting all of your things together in the kitchen. Making sure that you have everything measured, you’ve got all of the equipment that you need and when you do that, when you get all of your things in place, it just makes the recipe run a little bit smoother. So make sure that all of your spices are measured, that you have your water on to boil for your pasta. That your cheese is grated and that your eggs are at room temperature. Then it’s just going to run smoothly and dinner’s going to come together really, really quickly.

Tips and Tricks: So let’s go over a few tips for this Shrimp Carbonara Pasta recipe before you get started making it for dinner. So to bring your eggs to room temperature, the tip here is to take your eggs out, put them in a little dish of warm water while you get your mise en place ready, and your eggs will come right up to room temperature and be ready to use. The reason we do this is because the warmer egg is actually going to break down a little bit better in the sauce. So when you warm that egg up, the yolk I’m sorry, not the yolk, the egg white actually starts to get kind of runny and soft. When it’s cold, it’s really firm and it sets up like when you crack it into a skillet to make over easy eggs, and the egg white stays together, and that’s because it’s really nice and cold.

All right, so let’s also talk about the Parmesan cheese because that is one of the main components of the sauce for this pasta. I recommend using the best quality Parmesan cheese that you can buy. If you can find one that comes off of a large wheel that has the stamped rind, absolutely use that. But if not, just try to find the very best quality Parmesan cheese you can. It seems to me that the more you’re paying for Parmesan cheese, the higher quality and more true Parmesan flavor it has. Now if you don’t want to use Parmesan, you can absolutely sub some other cheese options. You could do a gruyere and it would be beautiful. Grana Padano or you could use a Pecorino Romano. The Pecorino Romano is going to be a little bit tangier in taste, but if you like that, it would work perfectly.

All right. This is another kitchen tip that you can use all the time. I love this tip. I think I first read it in my Cook’s Country magazine or maybe Cook’s Illustrated. But if you ever have a recipe that calls for reserved pasta cooking water, what you want to do is, you know, take your colander, put it in the sink, so it’s waiting for your pasta. But put a glass measuring cup into the bottom of the colander, and even if you forget to reserve your pasta water, it will catch some of the water as you start to pour your pasta in. That’s a great tip to keep in your back pocket for any time you’re in the kitchen. 

Okay, one more tip. This recipe also calls for bacon. You need six slices of diced bacon. And so if you’ve ever tried to cut raw bacon, it can be kind of hard to cut. What I like to do is just peel six strips off of the package and use sharp kitchen shears to just clip chunks of bacon off and just leave it in those strips put together and just clip right through it. It works really, really well. Those are all of my tips for this recipe. 

Shrimp Carbonara Recipe: So let’s go ahead and get started making your Shrimp Carbonara pasta recipe. Like I said at the beginning, you want to do your mise en place. So you want to get everything prepped before you actually get started with this recipe. So what you’ll want to do is put your egg in a little bowl of warm water and let that sit. Then make sure that you have a third cup of Parmesan cheese grated. Crack opened six garlic cloves. Measure out a half a teaspoon of red pepper flakes, a quarter teaspoon of kosher salt. Get your bacon out. Make sure you’ve got three quarters of a pound of large shrimp that’s peeled and deveined. 12 ounces of a linguini. Then put your colander in the sink with the glass measuring cup in the bottom. Then chop up a third of a cup of Italian parsley. Now you’ll also want to put some water on to boil on the stove and just salt it generously. Then also get out either a really strong blender or a food processor.

Then to start, in that food processor or blender. You’re going to add your one egg, your six garlic cloves, and six is a lot of garlic cloves, I know. But it goes really, really well with all of the other flavors in this dish. But if you’re really sensitive to garlic, you can absolutely dial that back to four cloves or two cloves, or you could leave it out completely. So you’ll also add red pepper flakes, the kosher salt, six tablespoons of room temperature butter, and that third a cup of the grated Parmesan cheese. Then you’ll blend that for about 15 seconds until it comes together and is nice and creamy. You may need to stop a few times and scrape the sides down to make sure that everything gets blended up together. Once that’s ready to go, you can just pop that to the side and let it sit and we will turn our attention to the pasta. 

You want to make sure that you boil your pasta salted water for as long as it takes for your pasta shape to become al dente. It should tell you that right on the package. Now when you go to strain your pasta, make sure you reserve at least a half a cup of that starchy pasta cooking water.

In a really large skillet, you’re going to saute your bacon pieces over medium heat until it is nice and crispy and brown. Then with a slotted spoon, you’ll just remove those bacon pieces to a paper towel lined plate and set those aside. Now you want to use that bacon grease that’s in the pan, but you only want to use about two tablespoons of it. So if you have more than two tablespoons in there, then go ahead and remove and discard some of that grease until you have about two tablespoons left in the pan. You’re going to go ahead and add that shrimp to the bacon grease and cook that over medium heat for about three minutes until they’re a nice pink color. Then you’re going to remove the shrimp and you can just put it on that same plate with the bacon. Then in that empty skillet, you’re going to pour a quarter cup of that reserved starchy pasta cooking water, and that’s going to deglaze the bottom of the pan. De glazing is basically when you use heat and a liquid to remove any flavored bits that get on the bottom of the pan. So the flavored bits that you have down there right now are going to be all of those bacon pieces and maybe even some shrimp pieces. So you want to release those from the pan and include them in your sauce. 

So then you’re going to stir in the pasta, the cooked pasta. Scrape in that butter egg mixture from the blender or the food processor. Add in the third cup of chopped parsley and then add in that bacon and shrimp from that plate. You’ll give everything a really good toss with a pair of tongs and it’s ready to go. 

Now, if you want it to be just a little bit creamier, you can absolutely add a little bit more Parmesan cheese and a little bit more pasta water, and just keep tossing and it will get creamier and creamier.

So you definitely want to serve this right away. This is not a make ahead dish. Serve it right away and you can top it with extra Parmesan cheese, with red pepper flakes or plenty of cracked black pepper. 

I will say this is definitely a five star recipe on Mom’s Dinner. It has over 20 5 star ratings, and I believe this recipe was also featured in the magazine L, their France edition. It’s a very, very popular recipe and I think you’ll be very happy with your dinner. 

As far as side dishes go, this is a pretty hearty recipe, so you could just do a really delicate green side salad or Caesar salad or some garlic bread or breadsticks on the side would be perfect. Then of course, maybe a big glass of cold white wine. That’s what I would have with it for sure. 

All right, so that does it for the recipe for today. I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. As always, I will link all of the recipes I talked about in this episode right in the show notes for you. If you are loving these episodes of Let’s Make Dinner, I would love to have you subscribe or follow or rate or review this show in your preferred podcast player.

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

72 Instant Pot Baked Potato_final1

Intro: Hey, hey everybody. Welcome 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: What’s up everybody? All right, so do I have any Instant Pot lovers out there? I know that I am a huge fan of my Instant Pot. When I got it, of course, I was first very scared of it. I definitely thought it was going to blow up my entire house. I made everybody leave the kitchen the first couple times I used the Instant Pot, even for the water test. That first little test that you do in the beginning, definitely thought it was going to explode and throw shrapnel all over my house. But it did not, and I’ve become more and more comfortable with my Instant Pot as time has gone on.

I love cooking just about everything in my Instant Pot. Everything from hard boiled eggs, which is divine. I mean the shell literally slips off the egg and you can go back, I’m not sure which episode it is, but I will link that episode for the hard boiled eggs in the show notes for you guys. I love cooking soup, even large cuts of meat, such as pot roast, pulled pork, barbecue, beef, carnitas, anything works so well in the Instant Pot and it really cuts down the time and makes a lot of dishes, more hands off than they would normally be. 

Just like the recipe we’re going to go over today. Today we are talking about making baked potatoes in your Instant Pot. The nice thing about this is that it shortens the amount of time. So if you were to make baked potatoes in your oven, you’re looking at definitely 60 minutes, if not longer. You could also do them in the microwave, but that’s a lot of watching, checking, piercing. You know, there’s a lot of moving parts when you bake potatoes in the microwave. 

The nice thing about using your Instant Pot is you’re going to pop them in there, you’re going to set it, you’re going to forget it, come back, they’re going to be good to go, and it’s going to be a much shorter time. So I think in total we’re talking for like 30 minutes. So it’s going to be like a 15 minute cook time with a 15 minute natural release depending on what size your baked potatoes are. 

Tips and Tricks: So let’s go ahead and get into talking about this full recipe. There’s going to be a lot of little tips and tricks instead of just running through a full recipe because the actual recipe is so short.

So first let’s talk about the potatoes. A traditional baked potato is made with a russet potato, and that’s what we’re using here. So a russet potato may also be known as a baking potato or an Idaho potato. I’ve even heard of them called, this is super weird, an old potato. I’ve never seen it in the grocery store, but if you look it up, if you look up Russet potatoes, old potato is one of the words that they use to describe it. Generally it’s going to be baking potatoes or russet potatoes that you’ll find in your grocery store. The other thing is that they vary wildly in size. You can find potatoes that are pretty small. They’re going to be like four to seven ounces each. Then you can find something in the mid-range, so maybe like an eight to 12 ounce. And then you can find crazy large potatoes that look like the size of a thigh that are a pound or more each.

I think the great size when you’re looking at making a side dish or even a meal with a baked potato is more of that middle range. So anywhere from eight to 12 ounces per Russet potato is going to be perfect, and that is what this recipe is written for. 

The other thing is when you’re eating a baked potato, maybe you want to eat the outside, maybe you don’t. But Russet potatoes definitely have a layer of dirt on the outside. So you want to make sure that before you start this, that you give them a nice scrub or a nice wash under some running water. But if you do like to eat the skin of the baked potato and you want it to be a little bit crispy, there is an option that we’ll go over after the recipe where you can actually crisp the skin up in the oven. Because obviously if you’re cooking it in the Instant pot, the skin is not going to get crispy. 

Instant Pot Baked Potato Recipe: So let’s go ahead and get into the full recipe for Instant Pot Baked Potatoes. Like we said before, go ahead and wash your potatoes, then make sure that you take a fork or a really sharp knife and pierce your potato all over so they don’t explode from the pressure in the Instant Pot. Then you’re going to pour about one to one and a half cups of water just down into the inner pot of your Instant Pot. Then you’ll take that trivet that came with your Instant Pot, it’s like a little metal table looking thing, pop that into your Instant Pot and then go ahead and pile your potatoes right on top of that trivet.

If you’re using that eight to 12 ounce range of potato size, you’re going to fit probably four or five potatoes in your Instant Pot. The only thing you need to watch, you can layer them up, put them all in there. They can stack on top of each other. You just want to make sure that you don’t go past that max fill line that’s on the inner pot of the Instant Pot. You’ll see it, it’ll be a little line somewhere near the top and it will say max fill. So once you have those potatoes in there, go ahead and close the lid, turn that pressure valve to seal, and then set your pot to cook on high pressure for 15 minutes. 

Now, if you have smaller potatoes, if you found that you bought some smaller potatoes, then just set it for 10 minutes. If you found that you have the gigantic potatoes, then you do want to set it for 20 minutes. Let your pot come to pressure. Cook for, we’ll say 15 minutes for the medium sized potatoes. Then at the end you’re going to do something called a natural pressure release. What that is, your pot will count down to zero, beep telling you that it’s done and then it will start to count back up in time. That counting back up in time is considered a natural release. It’s no longer building pressure. The pressure starts to naturally dissipate. It’s just a nice way to have just a little bit more cooking time without it being that high pressure. So do that natural release for 15 minutes and then you’ll turn that valve on top to release. The remaining pressure will escape, and then you can open up the pot and your baked potatoes should be done, tender and soft all the way through. 

Now, here’s one little tip. If you want to check the true doneness of your baked potato, you can actually use an internal instant read thermometer. So go ahead and slide that into your potato. If it reaches right around 210 degrees, that means that your potato is going to be perfectly soft. It’s not going to be still a little firm. Now at this point, your potatoes are good to go. You can absolutely go ahead and eat them. But if you like to have a little bit of a crispy skin on your potato, then you’ll just want to give them a little rub with olive oil. Pop them in a 450 degree oven for about eight minutes, and you’ll just want to flip them during that cooking time. They should get a nice little crispiness on the outside. Of course, if you like it even more crispy, leave it in there a little bit longer, but make sure you’re watching so that they do not burn. 

Then of course when you’re serving them, we recommend just to load them up however you like. Butter, sour cream, cheese, bacon, green onions, even chili would be excellent poured over top of these baked potatoes. 

This is going to be really weird and I wasn’t even going to share this, but now I’m thinking about it. So how I like to eat my baked potatoes is just a little bit of butter, a good amount of kosher salt, a really generous drizzle of Italian dressing, and then black olives. It’s so weird and I’m not even sure how I came across eating them like that, but it is absolutely delicious. So if you want to maybe save a few calories and you’re not trying to have all the sour cream and cheese and all of that, give that method a try. It’s actually super delicious. Sometimes I’ll even put a little cottage cheese on top. It’s so bizarre, but it’s great. 

If you like any really weird toppings on your baked potato, I would love to hear in the comments of the actual recipe. So you can click through the link in the show notes to the baked potato recipe, jump down to the comments and just let me know what toppings you like on your baked potato.

So of course, like I said, all of the recipes that I talked about here today will be linked right in the show notes for you, so you can pin them, save them, make them whenever you’re ready. 

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

Intro: Hey, hey everyone. Welcome 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. All right, so if you’re listening to this in real time, then it is New Year’s 2023. Welcome to the New Year. Time to reset, refocus, kind of a clean slate. Doesn’t it Feel fresh? It feels fresh and new to me. It feels like I have a chance to restart. I mean, it’s still the same old me, same podcast, all of that, but it feels like a clean slate. I’m super pumped for this year, the first podcast episode of 2023, we are making homemade chili. It’s the perfect winter food. When it’s really cold out, or like if it’s going to snow, you know, I’m making chili.

The chili recipe on mom’s dinner is definitely a classic. I would say maybe Midwestern chili, so it includes ground beef, it has celery, onions, garlic. It has a chili flavored tomato sauce, and then of course it has beans. I know that’s super controversial for some people, whether you have beans or not in beans and chili. But for this recipe, we are pro bean. If you do not like beans in your chili, this will not be the recipe for you. You’ll want to move on, make something else. Search no bean Chili on Google.

Tips and Tricks: A few tips for this recipe. You definitely want to start with a really flavorful ground beef. When I say flavorful ground beef, that just means that you’re going to use a higher fat content beef. So an 80/20 or an 85/15, will be perfect. 

The other part of this recipe that can be up for debate is the beans, which we talked about. In my recipe, I use a canned chili bean in sauce, and for me and my family, I like a mild one. It also comes in hot, which you can just find at the grocery store. For my chili beans, I love Brooks chili beans. Those seem to be the best, if you can find them, that’s what we prefer here. And I would definitely recommend you give them a try. The other beans that we add are Northern beans, and it’s like a white bean. I think it might be similar to a cannellini bean, so you could use those as well. Or you could use more of a kidney bean if you prefer that. A light or a dark red kidney bean will work here as well. As well as like pinto beans, really, the second bean, the chili beans in sauce, you want to keep just how it is, but the second bean that you add, that really is up to you. 

Homemade Chili with Beans Recipe: All right, so let’s get started with this full recipe for homemade chili. You’re going to start with a large pot. This makes a good amount of chili, so you want a big pot. I of course love a glazed dutch oven. You’re going to start over medium high heat, and you’re going to saute three minced garlic cloves and one large onion that’s chopped, and then two celery stocks that are chopped. Saute those in one or two tablespoons of oil until they start to soften a little bit. So this is going to be about five minutes. Then you’re going to add one pound of ground beef, and again, try to use something like an 80/20 or an 85/15 and just crumble that up while it cooks through. Probably about another five minutes.

Then at the end of that process, if you have quite a bit of grease at the bottom of your pot, what I like to do is scrape all of the beef and the veggies to one side of the pot and then tip the pot up and sop up just a little bit of that grease with some paper towels and a pair of tongs, and then discard the paper towels.

Now you’re going to turn the heat to medium low and you’re going to add in one four ounce can of chopped green chilies. A 15 ounce can of diced tomatoes, 16 ounces of tomato sauce, one cup of water, a 15 ounce can of chili beans in sauce. You want to make sure you don’t drain those because you want that chili sauce in your chili. However, you’re going to add another 15 ounce can of beans and the recipe calls for Northern beans. But like I said, you could use cannellini, you could use pinto beans or kidney beans. You want to drain those. 

Then for all of the spices and seasonings, you’re going to add one and a half tablespoons of sugar. It may sound weird to add sugar to your chili. Your chili’s not going to be sweet. What that’s doing is balancing the tartness and the acidity of all the tomatoes. You’ll add one bay leaf, one heaping tablespoon of chili powder, one teaspoon of dried oregano, one teaspoon of cumin. One teaspoon of kosher salt and half a teaspoon of black pepper. Now we’re going to add some spices you may not normally add to your chili, but they add such a warm flavor to your chili. So add a pinch of ground allspice, and a pinch of ground clove. Then if you like it spicy, you can definitely add some red pepper flakes or some cayenne pepper. 

So stir all of that to combine, and then you’re just going to let it simmer over low heat for about 30 minutes, stirring it occasionally. That’s the whole entire chili recipe. Of course, before you serve it, you’ll want to remove the bay leaf and just discard it. If you know or if you don’t know, chili actually gets better with time. It’s like the flavors develop and meld together. So if you can make this chili a day ahead. If you can’t, it’s going to be super delicious just as it is.

If you do make it ahead and you’re going to reheat it the next day, you may want to loosen it up just a little bit with a little water or chicken stock, or maybe even beef broth or even red wine would be really good. 

Now, when you serve your chili, we like to add all of the toppings and make it more of like a loaded chili. So we’ll put out maybe Fritos, sour cream, green onions, jalapenos, shredded cheddar cheese, or shredded pepper jack cheese, maybe some hot sauce. Fresh, chopped avocado or just saltine crackers or cornbread. So I have a lot of cornbread recipes on Mom’s Dinner that I will link in the show notes for you as well as a recipe for this chili made in the Instant Pot. So if you love your Instant Pot, you could pop over and make it in your Instant Pot instead. 

So that’s it. That does it for the full recipe for our classic chili. I hope that you will make this chili and enjoy it on a super chilly night with the blankets and maybe a good movie. As always, I will link all of the recipes I talked about in this episode right in the show notes for you so you can find them, pin them, save them, make them whenever you’re ready. 

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

Intro: Welcome, 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: Woohoo. Happy holidays, everybody. If you’re listening to this episode or you’re looking at this recipe, then it’s probably close to Christmas time. Because today we’re going to make a really quick and easy Christmas dessert called a chocolate Christmas trifle. Super delicious, super easy. It’s not quite a traditional trifle. If you’ve ever had a trifle before, it’s kind of a traditional English dessert that’s made in one really big bowl that’s usually stemmed. It’s going to have layers of a pudding or a custard or a whipped cream and cake and fruit. But we’re going to sub out some of the flavors or something a little bit more festive. So we’re going to use peppermint cream cheese whipped cream. We’re going to use brownies, fudge and these little peppermint chip baking chips things that are so delicious, layer it all together in individual cups and it just makes a super impressive dessert. Perfect to stand up to the expectations of Christmas. 

Tips and Tricks: Let’s get on to making this delicious recipe for a chocolate Christmas trifle. Like I said, it’s not going to be totally traditional, so instead of using the stemmed trifle bowl, we’re actually going to make them in individual cups and just about any small cup will work here. What I like to use is something called a bodega glass, and I actually get them at World Market. They’re super affordable. I think they’re like 2.99 a piece or something, and it’s just a very thin plain glass, but it looks beautiful. Another option would be to go to a thrift store or an estate sale and find a set of really unique little glasses that you could serve your trifle in. But for the Bodega glass, I will link that in the show notes so you guys can take a look at it.

Christmas Trifle Recipe: To start this recipe, you’re actually going to need some prepared brownies. There’s two options here. Of course, you can make some brownies cool them completely, and then cut them up into little half inch pieces. Or you can go to your local grocery store bakery, buy a pan of brownies, chop those up, and that works too. So once you get those chopped up into little half inch pieces, you can just set that aside. 

Now in a large bowl of a stand mixer, or you can use just a large bowl and a hand mixer, you’re going to whisk together one quarter cup of cold heavy cream and four ounces of softened cream cheese. It’s really important that your cream cheese is completely softened at room temperature so that the cream layer is nice and smooth, and there’s not little chunks of cream cheese in it. I will tell you that cream cheese actually softens really, really quickly at room temperature. You can actually just cut it into smaller cubes and it should come to room temperature within about an hour. Once that quarter cup of heavy cream and the four ounces of cream cheese come together totally smooth and soft, you’re going to pour in one teaspoon of peppermint extract and a half a cup, this is a heaping half cup of powdered sugar. Then you’ll continue to whisk that until everything is combined. Now, to finish this off, you’re going to slowly stream in an additional one and a quarter cups of cold heavy cream. You’re going to whisk that until soft peaks form. So what a soft peak is, let’s say you’re using a stand mixer and you pull that whisk up out of the cream cheese mixture, a little peak and it will slowly sink back into the bowl. That’s a soft peak. The whipped cream cream cheese mixture should be about the texture of a thick pudding. 

Now another ingredient that you’re going to need is hot fudge. What I like to buy for this, there’s a brand in the grocery store called Mrs. Richardson’s, and we love that fudge. So you could just buy a 15.5 ounce jar of hot fudge. Take the lid off because the lid is metal. Take the lid off, pop that glass jar in the microwave for just a few seconds and let it warm through and then it will be ready to use. 

Now it’s time to assemble your individual chocolate trifles. So for this part what I like to do is put all of my glasses onto a rimmed baking sheet that will fit right in the fridge. Then in each glass, you’re going to start by putting about three to four pieces of brownie down on the bottom. Then you’re going to drizzle in one to two tablespoons of fudge sauce. Then you’ll cover that with a layer of that peppermint whipped cream. Then you’re going to do a generous layer of this stuff called Andes Peppermint Crunch chips. They sell out like hot cakes this time of year. So if you are going to make this, you’re going to want to run to the store and see if you can find it. You’ll either find it in the baking aisle near the chocolate chips, or you’ll find it in the candy aisle near all of the Christmas candies.

So put a generous layer on that, and then you’re going to repeat all those steps one more time. So three to four pieces of brownie, one to two tablespoons of the hot fudge, a layer of the peppermint whipped cream, and then you’ll finish it off with the Peppermint Crunch chips. Then you’ll put all of those glasses right into the fridge. That’s why I like to put them on that rimmed baking sheet because you can put them all in there at the same time, about 12 to 24 hours in the fridge for everything to set up. Then you serve those cold. They go perfect with a candy cane on the side and a nice hot cup of coffee. 

So that does it for the full chocolate Christmas trifle recipe. I hope you’ll make this for Christmas. If you do, I would love to have you rate and review the recipe right on momsdinner.net. 

So as always, I will link all of the recipes I talked about right in the show notes for you so you can save it, find it, pin it, use it whenever you’re ready. 

Outro: Until next time, I hope this episode of Let’s Make Dinner makes your holiday time a little sweeter. See ya.