So, I’ve been playing with the new gadget. Overall, the Instant Pot is pretty handy. While I think some recipes I have seen go overboard in trying to make it the end-all-be-all, “lets cook everything in it” wunderkind, I still can see using it a couple of times a week. Thus far, it’s worth the investment.
My awesome neighbor dropped by a couple of days ago with a big bag of freshly shelled purple hull peas from the farm. Score! Local food and purple hulls I didn’t have to shell myself? Can’t beat that with a stick. I knew these would work fairly well in the pressure cooker, so I tossed them in and ended up with perfectly cooked, delicious peas in record time. Here’s how I did it:
Fresh Purple Hull Peas in the Instant Pot/Pressure Cooker
Ingredients
- 6 cups fresh shelled purple hull peas
- 1 ham hock
- 4 cups chicken broth
- 1/2 tbsp kosher salt (plus more for additional seasoning if needed)
- 1 tsp black pepper
- 1 splash olive oil supposedly this helps beans/peas not foam like crazy, so I added it as a precaution
Instructions
- Place peas, ham hock, chicken broth, 1/2 TBS of salt, pepper, and olive oil in the Instant Pot/pressure cooker. Attach lid and set pot to "manual" for 20 minutes. Allow pressure to release naturally. Taste peas for seasoning and add additional salt if needed.
One thing I really appreciated about cooking the peas in the pressure cooker was that I did not steam up my kitchen by simmering them on the stove for hours. The heat index is 102 degrees today, so you can see how that also helps tip the scales onto the “it’s ok I splurged on a trendy thing” side. At least, that’s what I’ll keep telling myself.
Y’all, I’m not an impulse buyer. I am also from the Alton Brown school of thought in that my kitchen has no room for “uni-tasker” gadgets. I don’t fall victim to infomercials, nor do I see the value in random items such as a perfect pancake silicone insert, countertop rotisserie, or even the microwave omelet cooker. I’m fairly old-school in that my electronic kitchen gadget staples include:
It’s no secret that we love to fish, and now that Bean is older and a wee bit more patient, we get to go a lot more often. Thus far this summer, we’ve fished the waterways of south Louisiana, a local lake, and down on the shores of Galveston. We still have plenty of side trips planned (assuming the brutal Louisiana heat doesn’t cook us to death), so I hereby declare this the Summer of the Fish!
