Wednesday, April 19, 2017

Exploring The Instant Pot - Teriyaki Chicken


I promise I'm not going to bombard you with Instant Pot recipes because I know many (maybe most) of you don't have one. But this was really good and it's making me think that the Instant Pot is worth adding to my kitchen. Understand that I have plenty of storage space, so I don't have the issue of where to store it. That might be a real problem for some of you.

And if you are a fairly competent cook, you can make this recipe without an Instant Pot. You could mix the sauce, pour it over the chicken and put it in the oven. Or, it could be done in a regular pressure cooker. And I imagine it would be fine in a crockpot.

Using the Instant Pot did free me to prep the rest of the dinner. From the time I pushed the button to start the cooking process until the pressure released at the end, it was 21 minutes. Add about five minutes at the beginning to measure out the sauce ingredients and another five minutes at the end to thicken the sauce. So dinner was on the table in thirty minutes. For us, that is faster than any takeout food that we could have picked up.

Now, oven cooking and slow cookers also give you a "hands off" way to make dinner. You must do a little prep work, but the cooking itself with any of these methods does not require your attention. An hour in the oven, about eight hours in a slow cooker, or twenty minutes in a pressure cooker. Any of these will give you teriyaki chicken for dinner. Pick the cooking style that fits your day. It's nice to have choices.


Tonight it was the Instant Pot that worked with my schedule. I started cooking at 6:00 pm and we sat down to eat at 6:30. That's pretty quick. I am not ready to declare that the Instant Pot has "changed my life" (yes, there are people who say that) and I am not using it every day, but so far I'm glad I gave in and ordered one.

If you are cutting back on sugar in your diet, this recipe is not for you. But it was delicious. The food rule around our house is "all things in moderation." So this won't be a weekly meal, but I will make it again.

TERIYAKI CHICKEN (Instant Pot)

1 cup soy sauce
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup ketchup
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon minced garlic
1-2 lbs thawed chicken breasts

Combine the soy sauce, brown sugar, ketchup, ginger, and garlic in the Instant Pot. Add chicken and turn in sauce to coat. Close lid and set vent to pressure.
Set Instant Pot to Poultry setting and set time for 5-7 minutes. Let pressure release naturally.
Remove chicken from sauce and set aside. Stir in cornstarch to thicken sauce. (I turned on the "saute" function to do this.)
Slice chicken and add back into sauce.

Serve over rice, with plenty of sauce.


The chicken breasts I had were large, so I cooked for 7 minutes. Smaller ones or thinner ones might take the lesser time.





4 comments:

  1. There are times when I read your posts...like this one, that remind me of the High School Home Ed class I wasn't allowed to take.* You give good information, discuss possible perspectives about your topic, weigh in from your perspective, and then....share a recipe. Yeah! And thank you!
    *I had to take Quantitative Analysis instead of Home Ec.

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    1. Would you believe I signed up for Mechanical Drawing and not Home Economics and they wouldn't let me take it? It was for BOYS ONLY. They stuck me in a home ec class which I greatly resented. And what do you know...I fell it love with that class, majored in home ec, and then worked as a home economist for years. Pretty sure the hand of God was in all of that.

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  2. Your food looks so good!! I love chicken and according to my husband I make too much chicken but it keeps us healthy. Eating too much red meat isn't healthy I tell him. Thanks for the recipe! Have a great week!

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    1. We raise beef cattle, so there is certainly no plan to cut out red meat. But we try now to eat all meats in moderation. As we get older, we eat more thoughtfully than we used to.

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Hi, y'all! I love that you've taken time to tell me something here. Makes me feel like we're neighbors.