With all of the pandemic and general craziness going on in the world right now, there is at least one thing that has not changed. Everybody still needs to eat!😄 If you’ve been following me for a while, you know that I love the instant pot. My husband and I were in the process of remodeling our home for quite some time. (We still are but that’s a whole other blog post.) We went without a full kitchen for about a year and used our instant pot and microwave to prepare ALL of our meals. It was wild but proves the true convenience and versatility of the Instant Pot. Here are some of my favorite recipes that I constantly made during that time.
Once our kitchen was done, I didn’t want to even look at my Instant Pot for 6 months. I wanted to really appreciate my oven. (Nice to eat you again frozen pizza. Hello, eggs from the stovetop. It was glorious!) But by the time summer came around, I didn’t want to heat up my whole house and fell in love with the Instant Pot all over again.
This is one of my FAVORITE recipes and our kiddos just love it. A friend of mine asked me for this again since I posted it from another blog a while back. Unfortunately, that page is no longer up and running. (May simplehacksliving.com rest in peace). You could make this on the stovetop as well. If there’s enough interest, I’ll experiment and see if I could whip up a recipe for you guys to prepare it that way.
I mentioned before in another blog post that my daughter loves to bake with me. That is now branching out into cooking. I like to cook with her too but I have to be mindful of when I have her help me. Things take so much longer with kids and it took us an hour to do something that would take me 20 minutes but that’s kids. 😊 This recipe takes about 40 minutes, is delicious, and probably a tad healthier than regular takeout lo main. Here goes!
Instant Pot Chicken Lo Mein
Prep Time: 10 Minutes
Cook Time: 30 Minutes
Total Time: 40 Minutes
Ingredients:
- 1 tbsp Sesame Oil
- 1 sliced Bell Pepper (You can use either red or green. Last time I used half of each kind.)
- 1 sliced Carrot
- 3 shoots of Green Onion chopped
- (I’ve used more veggies than this because I’m a veggie lover.)
- 1 lb Noodles COOKED (You can use linguini or any kind of Asian style noodle.)
- 1 1/2 lb chicken cut into bite-sized pieces that have been seasoned lightly with salt and pepper
- 3/4 cup Soy Sauce (You can also use liquid aminos just be sure to dilute accordingly. Directions for that are on the bottle.)
- 2 tbsp Brown Sugar
- 2 tbsp Sesame Oil
- 1 tbsp Garlic Powder
Instructions
- Start preparing your noodles or make sure whatever noodle you purchased is pre-cooked so you can add it in at the end. The last thing you want to do is go through this whole recipe and have to wait to eat it because you didn’t cook your noodles. 😬
- In a small bowl mix soy sauce, brown sugar, 2 tbl sesame oil, and garlic powder. Set aside.
- Select salute on Instant Pot and allow to heat up until hot.
- Add 1 tbl Sesame Oil. Add chicken and saute for 3 minutes.
- Add Bell Pepper, Carrot, and Green Onions to chicken.
- Pour sauce over chicken and veggies and stir.
- Turn Instant Pot off, put lid on, close valve and cook for 13 minutes on high pressure.
- Natural Release for 5 minutes, and then release pressure completely.
- Add noodles to chicken and veggies and mix well until all pasta is covered in sauce.
- Serve with extra green onions if you want. (I don’t. 🙂 )
I’ve been branching out more lately and creating things that I’ve never prepared before. I made a whole 6 lb FROZEN turkey breast in the instant pot that was super easy ready in about 2 hours start to finish and didn’t heat up our home in early July. I thought I died and woke up at Thanksgiving. 🦃
If you have an instant pot, what is your favorite recipe to use with it? I’d love it if you shared a tried and true recipe in the comments. Happy cooking! 👩🏿🍳