Holy Pressure Cooker Batman!

I have a confession to make.  I am an infomercial junkie.  There is not an infomercial I won't stop to watch: exercise equipment, cooking appliances, mops, car wash supplies, makeup.  You name it, I need it!

I think I come by this trait naturally as my mother is quite the QVC shopper herself!

Eric and I have had our eye on the Power Pressure Cooker XL that has had an infomercial playing on tv for a while.  When we saw the cooker in an outlet store in Tulare while we were down at a basketball tournament this past weekend, we decided to buy it.

I spent a bit of time on my day off for MLK looking up recipes.  I was a little nervous to try the machine, but man oh man, was our first meal a great success!

Here's the final version of our Honey BBQ Chicken Thighs and Chipotle Lime Rice.

I got the recipe from The Kitchen Whisperer.  I tweaked things as necesssary (I didn't broil the chicken), but otherwise followed the recipe as closely as possible.

The thing that amazed me most?  We started with frozen chicken.  Hard as a rock.  Would have taken hours to defrost and cook.

Those are two packages of frozen chicken thighs with sauce poured over the top.  The sauce was Baby Ray's Honey BBQ with pepper, water, honey, cayenne, and paprika whisked in.

After about 15 minutes, we had fully cooked thighs swimming in sauce!

This is where I strayed from the recipe a bit.  I was supposed to broil the chicken while letting the sauce cook and reduce uncovered in the pressure cooker.  However, I just baked the chicken in the oven a bit, and Eric poured the sauce from the pressure cooker to a pan on the stove.  We did this because we wanted to use the pressure cooker again right away to make rice.

Yummy sauce reducing on the stove top.

I basted the chicken with the sauce and flipped them over after a few minutes of baking.  This was the finished chicken product.

Eric cleaned out the cook pot and it was ready to go in seconds for the rice.  We mixed the oil and cilantro right into the cooker pot.  

Transferring sauce to be able to pour right onto the chicken at the table.

I ended up mixing my sauce, chicken and rice all together, and it was delicious.  The kids didn't like anything, but they have no taste.  Eric and I both really liked the flavor and decided that our first pressure cooker meal was a huge success!  

I guess I don't have any more excuses like, "I forgot to take the meat out of the freezer," or "It's too late to cook!" 

Here are a few recipes I plan to try in the near future:

Mac N Cheese

Cheesy Potato Soup

Tortilla Chicken Soup

I promised Eric if he got me a pressure cooker that I'd cook everyday for a month!  Let's see if I keep that promise!