Name: Cheesy Chili Mac (Pressure Cooker/Instant Pot)
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 35 min
Yield: 6-8 servings
Ingredients: 1 tablespoon vegetable or canola oil; 1 medium onion, diced; 1 red bell pepper, seeded and diced; 3 garlic cloves, minced (I press mine through a garlic press); 1 jalapeño, finely diced; 2 tablespoons chili powder; 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional); 1 pound ground beef, 85 percent lean; 2 cups water; 14.5 ounce can diced tomatoes; 8 ounces (2 cups) elbow macaroni; 1 cup frozen corn; 2 tablespoon chopped cilantro; salt and pepper, to taste; 4 ounces cheddar or Monterey jack cheese, or a blend; sour cream and avocado, for garnish (optional)

Instant Pot Chili Mac + Video

November 5, 2017

This Instant Pot chili mac hardly requires any effort. It’s ready in 45 minutes, mostly hands-off! Super-cheesy but also packed full of vegetables! It’s definitely a crowd-pleaser, and it’s perfect for a chilly night, but I serve it year-round! It’s a great dish to help you learn how to use your Instant Pot. Scroll down for video.

Click here to save the recipe on Pinterest!

Instant Pot Love

I have recently discovered the joys of the Instant Pot (<–affiliate link). It’s seriously like the best thing ever, you guys. I’ve talked about it before, but I honestly just can’t say enough about how cool this little gadget is. It’s a slow cooker, pressure cooker, steamer, sauté pot, rice cooker…it’s the best. I have a feeling it’s going to get a lot of use over the summer, because it allows me to cook pretty much anything without heating up my kitchen. Love.It.

Pressure Cooker Perfection

I picked up a book at McKay’s recently called Pressure Cooker Perfection (<–affiliate link) from none other than my favorites at America’s Test Kitchen. Um, I had no idea that you could cook pasta right in the sauce in your pressure cooker. Yesssssssss. This book is a tiny little pressure cooker bible, and I’m in love.

Pasta in the Instant Pot

One of the recipes in Pressure Cooker Perfection is a recipe for Tex-Mex Chili Mac. Honestly, chili mac isn’t something that my mom ever made, so it really never caught my attention until I saw an episode of Cook’s Country (what else??) recently where Christopher Kimball was talking about Tex-Mex and he casually mentioned chili mac. Suddenly I was obsessed and had to make it. I was pretty happy when I saw this recipe in the pressure cooker book.

Instant Pot Chili Mac

Instant Pot chili mac is based on the recipe from the book, but I took some liberties to make it little fresher and more colorful. The important thing is that it is: quick, easy, and delicious. It takes about 15 minutes of hands-on work, including chopping the vegetables, sautéing everything in the pot, and grating the cheese. The pasta in this cheesy chili mac comes out perfectly cooked without any boiling or draining water. Perfection, indeed.

Give my cheesy chili mac a try for an easy, low-effort weeknight dinner!

Shared on the Weekend Potluck on Served Up with Love and Meal Plan Monday on Southern Bite!

Click here to save this recipe to your Instant Pot or pasta boards on Pinterest!

Mary

Yield: 6-8 servings

Cheesy Chili Mac (Pressure Cooker/Instant Pot)

This recipe was adapted from the book Pressure Cooker Perfection from America's Test Kitchen.

10 minPrep Time:

35 minCook Time:

45 minTotal Time:

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Ingredients

1 tablespoon vegetable or canola oil
1 medium onion, diced
1 red bell pepper, seeded and diced
3 garlic cloves, minced (I press mine through a garlic press)
1 jalapeño, finely diced
2 tablespoons chili powder
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional)
1 pound ground beef, 85 percent lean
2 cups water
14.5 ounce can diced tomatoes
8 ounces (2 cups) elbow macaroni
1 cup frozen corn
2 tablespoon chopped cilantro
salt and pepper, to taste
4 ounces cheddar or Monterey jack cheese, or a blend
sour cream and avocado, for garnish (optional)

Instructions

Preheat the pressure cooker over medium heat (or use the sauté setting on the Instant Pot). Heat the oil until shimmering. Sauté the onion and red pepper until softened, then add the garlic and jalapeño and sauté until fragrant.
Add the meat and cook until browned, breaking it up with a wooden spoon while cooking. Stir in the chili powder and cayenne pepper (if using). Add the water, tomatoes, and pasta.
In a regular pressure cooker: bring to high pressure over medium-high heat then reduce heat to medium-low and cook for five minutes. Quick release the pressure.
In an Instant Pot, set to bean/chili and set time for five minutes. At the end of the cook time, turn the Instant Pot off and quick release the pressure.
Stir in the corn and the cilantro. The residual heat from the pot should thaw the corn. Salt and pepper to taste then stir in the cheese. Serve immediately, topped with sour cream and avocado if desired.

https://chattavore.com/cheesy-chili-mac-pressure-cookerinstant-pot/

This post contains affiliate links. This means that if you click through and make a purchase on Amazon, I will receive a small commission. This does not affect the cost to you. For more information, please see my disclosures. Thank you for supporting my blog!

Instant Pot Stick of Butter Rice and Steak Dinner + Video

October 2, 2017

Stick of butter rice is a Southern classic…Instant Pot stick of butter rice and steak dinner will have your family asking for seconds! Scroll down for video.

Click here to save this recipe on Pinterest!

Stick of Butter Rice

Stick of butter rice is a Southern classic…it’s pretty much exactly what it sounds like: some rice, an entire stick of butter, and some beef consommé (it has to be consommé, not just regular beef broth – though condensed French onion soup is pretty delicious too). My grandmother used to make it all the time when I was a kid, in her amber Pyrex baking dish, with Minute rice. We didn’t know it was called stick of butter rice; we just called it brown rice. No matter what the name, I could throw it down.

Instant Pot Stick of Butter Rice

As with pretty much everything in my cooking repertoire, I was determined to turn stick of butter rice into Instant Pot stick of butter rice. Turns out it was pretty simple…but I decided I wanted to turn it into a full meal. I originally imagined this as Philly cheesesteak rice but then decided that the cheese I added was kind of moot and really just served to make it a lot more difficult to clean the Instant Pot (<–affiliate link) when I was finished.

A few tips for making a perfect dinner:

1) Don’t be scared of the butter
There is a lot of butter in this dish. I promise it’s worth it (butter is always worth it to me). This recipe actually makes about half the rice of a regular stick of butter rice recipe, but I still use a whole stick of butter, and that’s because of the vegetables. If you’ve ever sautéed mushrooms, you know that they soak up their cooking fat like crazy. The finished product is rich and buttery but not overpowering or greasy.

2) Not just any steak will do
Confession: I bought the wrong steak for the video. I got top round instead of sirloin tip steak. It was so much harder to shred. Get sirloin tip steak. You’ll be glad you did.

3) Use the rice setting on the Instant Pot
Sometimes I use the manual setting, but here I go on full automation and use the rice setting. When you add things to your Instant Pot with the rice, sometimes it doesn’t do a very good job of adjusting for extras and the rice ends up extremely mushy and overcooked. It totally works here, though.

4) You can totally leave all the other stuff out of this
If you want to serve this as a side dish for something else, just leave out the steak and the vegetables. I will give you specific instructions in the notes of the recipe.

Shared on The Weekend Potluck on Served Up With Love!

Click here to save this recipe to your Pinterest Instant Pot board!

Mary

Yield: 4 servings

Instant Pot Stick of Butter Rice and Steak Dinner + Video

10 minPrep Time:

35 minCook Time:

45 minTotal Time:

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Ingredients

1 stick (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter
1 pound sirloin tip steak
salt and pepper
1 small onion, sliced
1 red bell pepper, seeded and sliced
8 ounces mushrooms (button or cremini), wiped clean and sliced
1 cup long grain white rice
1 can beef consommé

Instructions

Plug in the Instant Pot and press the "sauté" button. Place half of the butter in the Instant Pot and allow it to melt. While it is melting, cut the steak into 4 pieces and season both sides with salt and pepper.
Sauté the steak pieces in the butter for about 2 minutes per side. Remove from the Instant Pot and set aside. Add the onions and peppers to the Instant Pot and sauté until they begin to soften. Add the mushrooms and sauté until the mushrooms begin to soften.
Add the remaining butter to the Instant Pot and allow it to melt. Stir in the rice then the consommé. Lay the steak pieces on top of the rice.
Turn the Instant Pot off and cover with the lid. Make sure the vent is set to "sealing". Press the "rice" button. Make sure the time is set to 12 minutes.
When the Instant Pot is finished cooking, turn the Instant Pot off or unplug it. Quick release the pressure by turning the vent to "venting". Remove the lid.
Remove the steak and shred it. Add the shredded steak back to the Instant Pot and stir it in. Serve immediately.

Notes

1) Cook time includes inactive time when the pot is coming to pressure. 2) To make this without the vegetables and steak, omit 4 tablespoons of the butter. Melt the butter in the Instant Pot using the sauté function then add the rice and the consommé. Turn the Instant Pot off, cover with the steam release set to sealing, and manually set the Instant Pot to low pressure for 3 minutes. Quick release the steam when the rice is finished cooking. Fluff with a fork and serve.

https://chattavore.com/instant-pot-stick-of-butter-rice-steak-dinner/

This post contains affiliate links. This means that if you click a link and make a purchase, I will receive a small commission. This does not affect the cost to you. For more information, please read my disclosures. Thank you for supporting my blog!

BBQ Bacon Smashed Burgers

September 29, 2017

In my opinion, these smashed burgers are the PERFECT burgers! BBQ sauce, bacon, and caramelized onions make them even better!

Click here to save this recipe on Pinterest!

Homemade Burgers: Better or Worse?

There was a time in my life where I was convinced that I would never be able to make a burger that was as good as the burgers that I ate in restaurants. There was also a time in my life – a LONG time – where I was deceived into thinking that the quickest way to ruin a burger was to (gasp) smash it.

Turns out that neither of these things are true. While I still love a great restaurant burger, there is no home cooked dinner that excites me more to come home and cook than one of these burgers. That’s for two reasons: 1) they might be even better than a great restaurant burger; and (2) this dinner takes 15 minutes from start to finish, assuming that I made the caramelized onions ahead of time.

Smashed Burger Perfection!

Upscale fast food chains like Shake Shack, Smash Burger, and the grande dame, In-N-Out, have, pardon the pun, smashed the notion that you shouldn’t smash your burgers. All you need for a perfect smashed burger are: some good 80/20 ground beef, salt and pepper, a hot skillet (preferably cast iron), and a whole lotta pressure. Bonus points for a squishy potato roll (Martin’s is my preferred brand) and a fantastic burger sauce. Other toppings are optional, and I always err on the side of simplicity with my toppings.

This BBQ bacon smashed burger is quick, simple, and delicious, and you will need two napkins to eat it. That, my friends, is the sign of a great burger.

Shared on Meal Plan Monday on Southern Plate!

Click here to save this recipe to your Pinterest burger and dinner boards!

Mary

Yield: 4 burgers

BBQ Bacon Smashed Burgers

5 minPrep Time:

5 minTotal Time:

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Ingredients

1 pound 80/20 ground beef, divided into 8 portions (I use a kitchen scale to weigh out 2 ounce portions)
salt and pepper
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
4 potato rolls (I get the smaller ones, not the big Mamma Jammas with sesame seeds on top)
1/2 cup BBQ sauce (store-bought or use my recipe below)
4 slices American cheese (I like the kind that isn't wrapped in plastic, like Land O'Lakes)
4 slices bacon
caramelized onions

For the BBQ sauce

1/2 cup ketchup
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon liquid smoke
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon onion powder
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional)
salt and pepper, to taste

Instructions

If you are making your own BBQ sauce, whisk the ingredients together in a small bowl. Cover and refrigerate until ready to use.
Roll the ground beef into balls and salt and pepper both sides of each ball.
Place a 10-12 inch cast iron skillet over medium heat and melt one tablespoon of butter. Brown the cut sides of two of the potato rolls. Remove to a place and repeat with the remaining butter and potato rolls.
Place each potato roll on a plate and spread both cut sides with BBQ sauce.
Increase the heat on the skillet to medium-high. Place 4 of the balls of ground beef in the hot skillet and smash with a flat spatula or even a clean trowel, using another spatula to increase the pressure, until the patties are as thin as you can get them. Cook for 1-2 minutes, until browned and slightly crispy. Flip the burgers and cook for another minute or two.
Top two of the burger patties with cheese and place the other patties on top. Allow the cheese to melt and remove to two of the prepped buns. Repeat the cooking process with the remaining ground beef.
Top the burgers with bacon and caramelized onions and serve immediately.

Notes

Prepping the buns before you begin cooking the burgers allows you to get the burgers from the pan to the table as quickly as possible!

https://chattavore.com/bbq-bacon-smashed-burgers/

Grilled Teriyaki Burger

May 22, 2017

This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc., and Kikkoman®. All opinions are mine alone. #KickinItWithKikkoman #CollectiveBias

Thank you for supporting the brands that keep Chattavore running!

This grilled teriyaki burger with pineapple and white sauce is a delicious way to celebrate Memorial Day weekend!

Did you know that May is burger month? I mean, in my world, every month is burger month…but May is like official, capital letter Burger Month. I’m not really sure why, but maybe it’s because May is the month that sort of takes us into (unofficial) summer with Memorial Day weekend?

I’m going to let you guys in on a little secret. Okay, not so secret, but whatever. This is my last week of work for a while! School is out on Friday and I get to be a full-time blogger for two months??. What better way to celebrate than a holiday weekend? Memorial Day grilling doubles as start-of-summer-vacay grilling for me.

And I know that I mentioned here a couple of weeks ago that learning to grill was one of my goals for the summer. I think before now I have used my grill exactly once, and that was pretty much Philip getting everything started and me just going out and turning the chicken (or whatever it was). After this summer, Imma be a grilling pro!

What better way to start than this grilled teriyaki burger? Kikkoman®Teriyaki Marinade & Sauce kicks up the flavor in my teriyaki burger to eleven (where are my Spinal Tap fans???) and a slice of pineapple on top rounds out the sweet and savory flavor of the burgers perfectly. Oh, oh…and my white sauce, with Kikkoman®Traditionally Brewed Soy Sauce, is the perfect way to sauce up this teriyaki burger. I have to admit, I’ve been a soy sauce addict most of my life – my dad has been dousing everything from steak and chicken to vegetables and casseroles with Kikkoman®Traditionally Brewed Soy Sauce since I was a kid, so I’ve never been short on ways to include soy sauce in my cooking, and not just my Asian-style cooking. KikkomanUSA.com has lots more great recipe ideas using their awesome products! And if you’re like me and need more summer grilling inspiration, click here!

Like I mentioned last week, the Walmart Neighborhood Market near my house has become one of my go-to stops for groceries (I love their grocery pick-up option during weeks that shopping for groceries makes my busy brain hurt). I stopped by there to pick up my Kikkoman®Teriyaki Marinade & Sauce and my Kikkoman®Traditionally Brewed Soy Sauce (I love that fun little bottle like you always see at your favorite Chinese restaurants). For a coupon for Kikkoman®Teriyaki Marinade & Sauce and Kikkoman®Traditionally Brewed Soy Sauce, click here!

Shared on Meal Plan Monday on Southern Bite and The Weekend Potluck on The Country Cook!

Mary

Yield: 6 burgers

Grilled Teriyaki Burger

10 minPrep Time:

8 minCook Time:

18 minTotal Time:

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Ingredients

2 pounds 80/20 ground beef
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons Kikkoman®Teriyaki Marinade & Glaze
6 rings fresh pineapple
6 sandwich slices of your choice of cheese (I used Havarti)
6 soft hamburger buns
6 tablespoons white sauce

Instructions

In a large bowl, combine the ground beef with the Kikkoman®Teriyaki Marinade & Glaze, taking care to not overwork the meat. Divide the meat into 6 portions and gently form each portion into a patty, pressing a deep indention into the center of each patty.
Heat one side of the grill to high and one side to low (if using a charcoal grill, arrange the coals to create a high heat zone and a low heat zone). Place the burgers on the high heat zone and grill for two minutes, then move to the low heat zone and grill for 3 minutes (for medium-rare burgers) to 5 minutes (for well-done burgers). During the last minute of cooking, place the pineapple slices on the cool area of the grill and top the burgers with the cheese slices.
Spread each bun bottom and top with half a tablespoon of white sauce. Place a burger and a pineapple slice on each bun bottom. Top with bun tops and serve immediately.

Notes

If you don't have a grill, you can cook these burgers on your stovetop. A cast iron skillet is ideal for this. Preheat over high heat. Cook for 3-5 minutes on each side, adding the cheese in the last minute of cooking. Remove the burgers from the pan and cook the pineapple slices for about one minute each. Sauce and serve the burgers as directed in the recipe.

https://chattavore.com/grilled-teriyaki-burger/

This grilled teriyaki burger with pineapple and white sauce is a delicious way to celebrate Memorial Day weekend! #KickinItWithKikkoman #CollectiveBias #Ad | Recipe from Chattavore.com

Instant Pot Taco Pasta

March 3, 2017

Instant Pot taco pasta is a simple sauté, dump, stir, lid, and top one-pot meal. There’s minimal clean-up with maximum flavor and satisfaction!

Guys, it has been two months since I wrote a new recipe. That is the longest that I’ve gone without creating something new in SIX YEARS. Well, almost six years. You know what I’m getting at, though. It’s been nice to take a little break and let myself focus on just thinking of new ideas and taking some prettier pictures of old posts. I hope you guys have enjoyed the updates!

So, since we haven’t talked in a while, I hope that 2017 has been good to you. It’s been a little bit rough for me so far, I have to admit. Nothing too terrible has happened to me personally, but I’ve seen a lot of bad stuff happen to some friends and I’ve just been kind of dully sad. I try to be a positive person but it’s not always easy to do when you don’t see a lot of great things happening. How do you deal when you are feeling discouraged? Prayer and yoga and just trying my best to be mindfully positive have worked best for me so far (some sickness and a foot injury caused me to miss about 2 weeks of yoga and my jaw has not been that sore in a long time!). (By the way, if you are interested, this is the yoga that I am doing and I love being able to do it at in the comfort of my own home – for free.)

The blog has been doing well, though! Thanks to all of you for reading. You guys will never know how much I appreciate that you choose to come here to get recipes – and for my Chattanooga folks, restaurant reviews. I recently started booking kids’ cooking classes, so if you are interested in that, check out my kids cook page! Be sure to note that I don’t have a physical space, so I bring the class to you – you provide the space and the students, I bring everything else. I also recently did my first food tour, so if you are interested in learning more about the Chattanooga food scene through a tour, please get in touch!!

Okay, enough about that. Two months off left me with a lot of updates to give. Let’s talk about taco pasta. Instant Pot taco pasta, that is. One thing that has definitely not changed is my obsession with my Instant Pot. When I got the Instant Pot for Christmas in 2015, I thought, “I’ll keep my slow cooker. I’m sure I’ll still use it a lot. Having it and the Instant Pot will allow me to slow cook two things at once.” Well, I used my slow cooker like one or two times after I got the Instant Pot. First off, it’s just rare that I slow cook more than one thing at a time, and honestly, I just use the pressure cooker settings on the Instant Pot way more frequently than the slow cooker settings (but if you are going to use the Instant Pot as a slow cooker, I highly recommend that you get the slow cooker lid. It’s way easier to clean.).

I have found that pasta is one of my very favorite things to cook in the Instant Pot (I’m sure you guys didn’t notice with my cheesy chili mac or my Instant Pot spaghetti). I love that it’s a total one-pot operation and I don’t even have to dirty my stovetop (I cannot even put into words how much I despise cleaning my stovetop). I had never planned to make my taco pasta (an idea that I wrote down ages ago) an Instant Pot recipe but it just kind of happened like that, because I am 100% obsessed with the Instant Pot. Seriously, can I say that enough? I use it at least weekly, usually more.

This Instant Pot taco pasta is literally just a sauté, dump, stir, and lid up recipe. It’s that easy. While the pasta cooks in the pot, you can grate your cheese and cut up your toppings, then just hand everyone a bowl and let them build their own taco pasta bowls. It’s as simple as that.

Instant Pot Taco Pasta is sure to be a weeknight crowd pleaser!

Shared on Meal Plan Monday on Southern Plate!

Recommended for this recipe:

Mary // Chattavore

Yield: 4-6 servings

Instant Pot Taco Pasta

10 minPrep Time:

25 minCook Time:

35 minTotal Time:

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Ingredients

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 small onion or 1/2 medium onion, chopped
1 pound ground beef (I used ground sirloin)
taco seasoning (1 packet or use my recipe below)
14.5 ounce can crushed tomatoes (or puree a can of diced tomatoes, which is what I did)
8 ounces small pasta shape (I used shells, but bowties or rotini would work great here too)
2 cups water
taco toppings: grated cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, avocado, sour cream
tortilla chips, optional

Homemade Taco Seasoning

1 tablespoon chili powder
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Instructions

Turn the Instant Pot on "sauté". Add the oil and heat until shimmering. Add the onion and sauté until it begins to soften.
Add the ground beef and cook, stirring constantly and breaking up the meat, until browned. Add the taco seasoning and stir until well combined. Turn the Instant Pot off.
Stir in the tomatoes, pasta, and water. Place the lid and make sure the vent is set to "sealing". Select the manual pressure button. Leave the pressure and temperature at their default settings and set the timer for five minutes. Use the time that the Instant Pot is coming to pressure and cooking under pressure to prep the toppings.
When the timer goes off, turn off or unplug the Instant Pot and open the vent to quick release the pressure. Open the lid, test the seasonings and add more salt if needed, and serve immediately with desired toppings and tortilla chips.

https://chattavore.com/instant-pot-taco-pasta/

Instant Pot taco pasta is a simple sauté, dump, stir, lid, and top one-pot meal. There's minimal clean-up with maximum flavor and satisfaction! | recipe from Chattavore.com

This post contains affiliate links. This means that if you click a link and make a purchase, I will receive a small commission. This does not affect the cost to you. For more information, please see my disclosures. Thank you for supporting my blog!

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