02 January 2017

Soup of the Instant Evening

I succumbed to the lure of the Instant Pot and gave it to my husband for Christmas. He hasn't actually used it yet, but I opened it up and inaugurated it with a potato leek soup. It worked admirably well even though I barely read the instructions and didn't really use a recipe. Well, the instruction book had a recipe for ginger butternut squash soup, so I kind changed out all the ingredients and used that. Does that count as using a recipe?


Potato Leek Soup, in the Instant Pot

1 medium onion, chopped
3 leeks, split down the middle and cut into 1/2" half rounds
1 parsnip, chopped
2 stalks of celery, chopped
3 large potatoes, peeled and chopped
1 quart chicken stock (or vegetable stock if you prefer)
2 T. butter or olive oil
1 t. salt
a few good grinds of pepper
1/2 t. dry tarragon
1/2 cup heavy cream (optional)

Have all of the vegetables prepped before you start. Plug in the Instant Pot, put the butter and onion in the pot, and hit "sauté". The pot gets hot very quickly, so have the ingredients in before you turn it on. Once the onion is starting to soften, add the leeks. Give the onion & leek a stir or two and once the leeks are wilting, turn the Instant Pot off (use the Keep Warm/Cancel button). Add the parsnip, celery, potatoes, stock, salt, pepper and tarragon. [My stock was frozen, and I didn't bother to defrost it - I just dropped the whole block in the pot.] Put the lid on, latch it in place, and make sure the steam release lever is set to "sealing". Then hit "manual" and set the time for 10 minutes. Wander off. The machine will heat up and pressurize; once at pressure, it will cook for 10 minutes. When it beeps that it's done, release the pressure - this will be a dramatic, noisy and unexpectedly long whoosh of scalding hot steam, so be warned and be careful. Use an immersion blender to puree the soup (or transfer to a blender or food processor). Add heavy cream, and eat. Makes about four servings.




1 comments:

Kyla said...

I love our Instant Pot! We've used it to make mashed potatoes and corn on the cob, cook still-frozen chicken, and cook a chicken noodle meal. Our biggest reason for eating out is that we forget to prep in advance, so it eliminates a lot of that.