@mrsbozz and I have been putting our new toy through it's paces since we purchased it. She has been scouring the Internet and Pintrest to find recipes that we can make in our Instant Pot.

Just the other day we made some Salsa Verde tacos that were absolutely fantastic! Sadly, I forgot to take any pictures of the process...

This past weekend we made some fajitas and I was able to capture the steps we took to make those.

Let me give you a little bit of background first. Growing up, I used to eat a lot of beef. My aunt and uncle own a farm and they used to raise cows. We would typcially purchase one of the cows that they sent to the slaughter and for the next year or so we would have a freezer full of beef.

@mrsbozz is not a big fan of beef. Nor is she a fan of pork or fish to be honest. She really only eats white meat turkey or chicken. It isn't a moral stance, she just doesn't particularly care for the taste. Likewise many pieces of chicken or turkey both white and dark meat can have spots where the tendon or sinew connects and I think we all know that can be a rather off-putting experience.

Due to those facts, we tend to eat a lot of ground turkey and chicken. Likewise, about once a month we purchase a 10 pound bag of boneless skinless chicken breasts. I then butcher those breasts down to several different cuts. In the process, I remove all of the areas that contain blood, fat, scary bits, etc.

What we are usually left with is a big pile of chunk chicken which is just small cubes about 1" by 1" square and breasts that we will marinate and grill. We use a Foodsaver to vacuum seal the chicken giving us enough to last us about a month. This way @mrsbozz never has to touch the chicken, she can just grab a bag from the freezer, let it thaw, then cut it open and dump the portion into the pot or pan for cooking.

It works out really well for us and I know it may sound high maintenance, but it really isn't that big of a deal and how could I not do this service for the woman I love.

I still get a steak or ground beef for burgers occasionaly, but compared to when I was younger, I eat far less red meat now.

All that being said if you guessed we were having chicken fajitas you would be correct!

@mrsbozz cut up half of a red(purple, whatever) onion and some red, yellow, and orange peppers.

She then cut open one of the bags of chunk chicken that we had prepared ahead of time and put it in the Instant Pot. To the chicken she added some spices (garlic powder, cumin, chili powder, oregano) and some chicken stock.

We stopped buying the packaged taco/fajita seasonings a long time ago. They have far too much sodium in them and other anti-caking agents. We much prefer the spice blend I mentioned above when we are making Mexican food.

When you are cooking under pressure with an Instant Pot, it is very important to make sure you have enough liquid. The liquid is what creates the steam that gets trapped in the cooker and applies the pressure to the food being cooked. This is what allows a pressure cooker to break down tough pieces of meat and cook things so quickly.

Most recipes call for at least 1/4 to 1 cup of liquid to be added to the pot for whatever you are making. Many times you will then drain off that liquid when the cooking is finished. For some recipes you may choose to use the Saute' feature of the Instant Pot once the cooking is done to reduce the liquid down and impart a little more flavor to your food.

Once all of the ingredients were in the pot, we closed it up and got ready to pressure cook. Everything I have read suggests that it is important to put your ingredients in the pot in a specific order. Your protein will usually go on the bottom, then you pour in your liquid and finally you add your pasta or veggies on top.

This particular recipe only required about 10 minutes to cook the chicken and vegetables. It does take some time for the pot to remove the excess air from inside and get up to pressure before it starts cooking.

You can tell when the Instant Pot is up to pressure because the float valve (silver circle) will rise to the top as shown in the picture above.

I mentioned in a past post that there are two ways to release the pressure after your food is finished cooking and your timer has gone off. One way is a natural release where you simply allow the pressure to equalize without any manipulation.

The way you can tell is that same float valve I mentioned above will fall down as you can see in the picture here. Once that valve is in the down position you know it is safe to move the other nob from sealing to venting and open the lid.

Some recipes call for your to only do natural release while some have you do a manual steam release to stop the cooking process right away. Finally, some recipes have you do a combination of the two.

After doing a short natural release, I was able to grab this picture of the steam coming out from me manually moving the nob from seal to vent.

I then had to drain the liquid out of the Instant Pot and we were left with the plate of fajita innards that I put at the beginning of this post. If we had used full chicken breasts instead of the chunk meat that I had prepared, we would have needed to shred the chicken with two forks.

We used some of the refried beans that we made in this post and added the toppings from there. I ate about three or four of these bad boys before I was finally full. The end result was fantastic and although they didn't have that grilled flavor that fajitas often do, they were still really good.

This recipe is definitely a keeper for us!

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