Last night's dinner: Pressure Cooker to the Rescue

Okay, I think I actually sort of invented a one dish meal for the pressure cooker, GO ME! Here is what I did.

I added 1 C of brown rice to the pressure cooker, 2 C of water, an onion cut in half, some salt and cooked it on high pressure for 10 minutes, when it was done I added 2 semi-frozen chicken breasts, cut into chunks and seasoned with adobo to the pan, put the lid on and cooked it all for another 10 minutes, while that was cooking I chopped some zucchini into nice thick rounds and when 10 minutes was up I stirred up the chicken and rice; added the zucchini, 1 TB of Italian herbs, another 1/4 C of water and cooked it all for 5 more minutes. Semi-frozen chicken (still very firm and cold in the middle) is much easier to chop up into cubes, plus you don't need to take the extra time to defrost it completely before cooking which saves time. The brown rice cooks (in about half the time!) into a creamy texture in my pressure cooker, almost a risotto type consistency without the bother of standing over a pot for 30 minutes stirring and adding ladles full of broth. I think another fun way of making this would be to add a can of chopped Italian style (herbs added) tomatoes in the last 5 minutes of cooking. To serve you could top it with a bit of freshly grated Parmesan cheese or some chopped fresh herbs. Prepared just as it was it was a flavorful, nutritious and very easy dinner. Another bonus of pressure cooking is because it is all one contained unit it does NOT heat up the house the way you do cooking on the stove top or in the oven.

Pressure cookers require some water in order to come up to pressure, which is why I added water every step of the way, your pressure cooker may require more or less liquid in order to cook, please consult your manual before attempting my recipe.