blue_dolphin

I really enjoyed the flavors in Molly Stevens' Roasted Fennel, Red Onion, and Orange Salad and need to give it another go. I overloaded my little Cuisi-oven pan but it still tasted great.

Did you taste the wine pre-Fizz? I would recommend using a wine that you know you enjoy. I usually go with a dry rosé because the pink bubbles look especially festive. I haven't done carefully controlled studies but when I've stored the Fizzed product in the fridge for a couple of hours, I thought the bubbles were finer. But as you have noted, do we really have that sort of time on our hands????? Of course, I defer to M. Rotuts on all of the above. A side note. Over the summer, I was thinking it would be nice to have a spare PureFizz bottle and looked into buying a second unit as a spare. My, but they were hard to come by and pricy, too! Just the other day, I broke down and ordered one of these SodaPlus units. I bought an Amazon Warehouse deal (slightly damaged packaging) for ~ $50, including a box of 10 chargers. It arrived yesterday and except for the 1.2L container, everything is identical to the PureFizz, down to the wording of the manual. Haven't used it yet.

A quick search of the IP Facebook page shows people report scorching when cooking Steel Cut Oats w/milk in the IP on Porridge setting.

This page on the Instant-Pot website has little graphs you can click on to show the temp and pressure for the various pre-set programs.

Happy Anniversary, Shelby! I have friends who got married on New Year's Eve and have always thought it was a great choice. Good question. I'm still thinking about it. My house guests have invited a group for football watching on New Year's Eve afternoon and another group for dinner. Munchies have been arranged for the afternoon. The guests bought 8 lobster tails from Costco, 8 baking potatoes and champagne for dinner. I am apparently responsible for the cocktails and apps, salad, sides and dessert. I'm thinking batched Manhattans, bruschetta with swiss chard and smoked trout plus various nuts to nibble. Beet, satsuma mandarin and blue cheese salad and roasted asparagus to go with the lobster. Not sure about dessert. Maybe just small scoops of vanilla ice cream and lemon sorbet with a pour of limoncello. I'm a little worried that the afternoon football people will think they are invited for dinner and with that menu, it's not going to be easy to stretch things! New Year's Day brunch will be spinach/mushroom/onion quiche, fresh fruit, TJ's croissants, bacon, sausages and champagne cocktails. If anyone is hungry later, there will be grilled ham & cheese sandwiches, various pickles and plenty of ham bone soup.

Mmmm. I love steel cut oats and need to pick up some more. So warming on a chilly morning. I want to try them out in the Instant-Pot. I noticed lots of people like to set them up in the pot at night with the timer set to have them all cooked and ready first thing in the AM.

Ham bone soup with a poached egg and some crispy bacon bits.

I've read the same all-over-the-place methods which has encouraged me to continue to poach eggs in a pan on the stove - I admire those of you who have experimented further! I made this lemon, artichoke and shrimp risotto this evening. Super easy and it was very well received by my house guests. I used frozen artichoke hearts instead of canned but otherwise followed the recipe. It says that it serves 4 as a main course but 3 of us stuffed ourselves and polished it off as we sat around the table and worked on a second bottle of Louis Jadot Pouilly-Fuisse that was a perfect pairing for this dish. Edited to add that this was my first pressure cooker risotto and I was pleasantly surprised at how much this hands-off method recapitulated the texture of the traditional method of adding broth one ladle at a time with fairly constant stirring. A side-by-side comparison might show up the imposter but for something so quick and easy, this was very good.

I received a Breville Milk Café Milk Frother. Not entirely sure what I will do with it as I drink my plain old drip coffee black but it seems like it could make a nice Mexican hot chocolate with some of the Rancho Gordo chocolate that lurks in my cupboard.

I do that, too. And then I observe that some of the cloves are a bit small so maybe 2 X the recipe would be best. Plus maybe a little more since I really like garlic.....

Yesterday my cousin and I cooked a big turkey, stuffing and gravy at my house to bring to a dinner at his daughter's home. The Instant-Pot proved the perfect tool to transport the gravy and keep it warm at the event. Used the locking lid for the car ride and switched to a glass one for the warming part. Very handy.

That could well be the case. It's possible that the high temp/pressure combo can release more volatile compounds. I also think that the sealed pressure cooker can sequester some of those odoriferous components that are usually released gradually into the kitchen atmosphere during conventional cooking so your naive olfactory system gets a big dose of them when you open the cooker. In a regular pot on the stove, your olfactory receptors would be more gradually be exposed to slowly increasing levels of these components and develop a bit of tolerance as they dissipate through your space. Nuisance odors can be a factor in any work environment although modern hospitals tend to be pretty good in terms of air changes and filtering. With the usual odd exception that sucks all the loading dock or trash autoclave exhaust fumes directly into the staff break room!

I'd bet you could make creative use of the Sauté function for a quicker-cooking proteins. Obviously that's not a walk-away-from activity but could be an option if you had the time. And easy enough to hit "cancel" and remove the food if you get a call.

I've recently candied lime, lemon and mandarin peels with this pressure cooker method, described by Laura Pazzaglia, who posts here on pressure-cooker topics. It's not a high-volume method as the recipe cautions that it is important that the volume be kept below the 1/2 full line of the cooker and that pressure be allowed to release slowly. I'm sure this is to prevent the sort of disaster that @andiesenji describes above, which would no doubt ensue if that caution were disregarded. While this doesn't address @pastrygirl's need to make a lot of candied product quickly (and wouldn't be much help since it's more than 6 years late!) but if one needed a modest amount of candied peel (say 5-10 fruits worth) to garnish a dessert or other confection, this method can get you there in a couple of hours, with less hands-on time than the microwave method. I used the Instant-Pot electric pressure cooker so it's particularly easy but the recipe includes instructions for both electric and stove-top pressure cookers. Just thought I'd add this small bit to a great thread that contains so much wonderful information.

The Instant-Pot community convinced me that I should have a spare silicone sealing ring. They are currently $9.95 sold by Instant-pot on Amazon (with Prime shipping but out of stock until 12/24) if anyone else feels similarly inclined.

Those are very pretty little bottles, @Jmahl! I made a number of ____-cellos for holiday gifts this year. Regular lemon with lemons from a friend's tree. A lime version from my tree and this Grapefruit-Rosemary version: Plus some non-alcoholic lime and cranberry-lime cordials. I did some last minute tasting and tweaking and bottled them up the other day right before heading out to a party and had to laugh out loud when I came home and surveyed the mess I'd left on the kitchen island. It was covered with at least 10 empty vodka and wine bottles, small shot glasses that I'd used for tasting and a scattering of measuring beakers and transfer pipettes. It looked like a mad scientist had gone on a bender! Time to get those empties washed out so I can get some new batches going!

I'm glad a solution is on the way and I hope you will post about your cooking endeavors with that beautiful pot, @Jaymes. I have been coveting it ever since I saw it in the RG newsletter - it looks so lovely, I want to touch it and smell it and cook beans in it! Oh my pot, is that RG mixteca pot a thing of beauty! However, I have plenty of nice bean cooking options: so I can't really justify the purchase right now and I'm hoping to cook vicariously through your pot. I'll get out my lovely black La Chamba and hold it when I read your reports!

What a great spread, Shelby. I had to google "pickle dip" - is there no end to the things eGullet prompts me to research and learn about ???

Sorry about the plate but very witty use of its remains. And great looking burger!

I'm guessing the pink stuff is prickly pear fruit. Tipped off by @FauxPas's great post about the Desert Rain Cafe. By the way, @Smithy, I am amazed at the meals you turn out in your mobile kitchen - lots of creativity going on there!

The Desert Rain Café and the San Xavier Festival would form the nucleus of a great road trip! And that time in the spring should be a lovely time to visit that area. I've got to make a note of this!

Yes, I was! I grew up in northern NY and still get a kick out of the novelty of my very own citrus trees out back! And IP-related, I candied the peels from some satsuma mandarins (my mandarin tree is still a baby compared with that big old lime, not too many fruit yet) yesterday. To be dipped in dark chocolate today.

And @Darienne, your orange julep talk has me wanting to make one, too! I grew up in northern New York in a town with an Orange Julep stand shaped like a giant orange and serving what were probably knock-offs of the Montreal area Orange Juleps. Always cracked me up to see that enormous orange dusted with snow for much of the year!

There are some previous threads that may give you some ideas of what people like about different solutions they are using. Evernote seems quite popular and it's not cooking-specific so you may find other uses for it. Organizing Recipes from Several Sources Organizing what you've learned at eGullet Storing, Tracking, and Accessing Favorite Recipes

Is this because you want to avoid any seeds? Sometimes navels are the only game in town but if other varieties are available, I would encourage you to consider them, even if you have to pick out some seeds. I have 2 trees, a navel and something that might be a Valencia. They tend to get ripe at different times and I use them interchangeably. The navels get sweeter when they are totally ripe but I think the others are more flavorful. I think the heavy-for-size and sniff-test are the best guides although the waxes they use can confound the nose!