Always learning with that Instant Pot

Always before when I’ve cooked with this gadget, it yells at me, “FOOD BURN” and I have to scramble over to scrape, swear, and potentially dump everything into a soup pot while I clear out the bottom of the pot. However, this recipe cooked without a hitch!

This is not to say there is no room for improvement. Especially with my habits.

Some day, I swear, I will prep all my ingredients before the oil in the pan starts smoking. The next lofty goal will be to have all the prep done before heating the pan itself. These are easy targets that I hope to someday achieve. This will avoid the hectic spectacle of me panicking while the oil is burning and the veggies need to be tossed in, but the turkey still isn’t cut up, and weren’t there spices involved in this?

Rather colourful!

Yeah, prep really ought to be done before hand. I’d like to have an cooking experience where all I need to do is calmly follow instructions. Instead of feverishly stirring and slicing simultaneously, while trying not to get meat juice on the counter.

• Notes to self:
  1. Those potatoes dissolved by the end of all my stirring. Either cut them bigger or pick a different potato.
  2. The carrots were good, could use more.
  3. Use the entire onion – it didn’t make that much of a difference.
  4. 1 cup of veggies each? Pfft. See above.
  5. DO NOT BOIL WITH COCONUT MILK.

The original recipe called for a cup of each vegetable. One potato did not fit in a cup. One pack of turkey (I bought stir fry strips) did not equal 1.5lbs. I felt like I had gained a new appreciation for chefs and cooks where measurements were a suggestion rather than a rule. Basically, because half way through, I started justifying overabundance.

Let’s keep in mind that while a pandemic certainly encourages one to use everything at their disposal, I am horrible at keeping track of what lies in the bottom or rear (or worse, the bottom rear) of my fridge. If I don’t use what I have while in the midst of that first flush of cooking, it’ll probably be overlooked until after it’s changed colour and texture.

So, that extra third of an onion/corn/coconut milk/potato had better go in now while it’s still recognizable. Regrettably, I could not use up an entire celery bundle nor a bag of carrots, but I also have three packs of Thai curry ready to be fried up. Let’s hope my new found curry glee consumes faster than it can ferment.

I’m a fan of green!

I did initially fuss over exact cups and such… which is why cooking this recipe took two hours instead of a prep of 10 minutes and a cook time of 15. Maybe if I had all the veggies washed and all my tools laid out and then started the timer it would have been 10 minutes. Chances are, by racing the clock, I’d have a few more cuts on my fingers instead of just the one (which I suspect I earned by opening the new thyme sachet with gusto).

I’m looking forward to not caring about measurements and being kind to myself by prepping everything. Seriously, I’m such an impatient cook who unwisely thinks I have more time than I actually have while the heat is on.

Alright, enough about prep, what else can I say? Ooooh… definitely could use pepper. Pepper isn’t in the original recipe so I didn’t think of it until after everything was cooked – so my addition of it in the ingredient list is my own wistful thinking. The eggs were also my addition and even made it into the pot; it’s something I have seen done. Actually, speaking of…

This whole venture into turkey chowder started because I craved soup that wasn’t salt based. I have tomato and mushroom and a literal case of instant noodles; not interested. I wanted something a bit sweet, but while I do love butternut squash and sweet potato, hubby hates it. So what soup could he possibly like? Turkey! Which brought to mind the turkey (w/ corn and lobster) chowder that a friend makes yearly for her Christmas party (which unfortunately I have turned down repeatedly as I work weekends). She also stirs in eggs, which come out in lovely streamers. Thus, Instant Pot turkey chowder with corn and egg.

The whole cooking thing was going well enough. Nothing burned (tho the oil smoked a bit while I measured out garlic and before I tossed in the veggies), and it all seemed happily soup like and smelled amazing when I pulled off the lid.

Lids off!

I messed up at the end though. I thought I would heat it up a tad to boil off some of the extra liquid after adding the coconut milk. So I turned sauté back on to high, turned around and started washing a few of the remaining dishes. A bit later, a whisper of paranoia had me turning around to discover… coconut milk curdles at a boil (just like any other milk).

I hadn’t even realized that it would do this; my sparse experiences with coconut milk had always stuck to a simmer. This explains the simmer only instructions.

… Cue a lengthy bout of swearing (self-aimed). Luckily it still smelled, and tasted, lovely, but ooooh the aesthetics had failed.

In any case, the meal of the day was a success. After this, I managed to stay awake until 8:30pm and passed out until quarter to 7am this morning. Melatonin for the win.