Instant Pot Taco Rice

This comfort food combines taco-seasoned meat with cooked rice and salsa in a hearty bowl of family-friendly food. This recipe is great to serve a crowd, too. Use the Instant Pot for easy clean up!

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This is not a pressure cooker recipe, but I am including it in my Instant Pot on Campus series for a couple of reasons. First, this recipe is a family favorite which my son has cooked on the stovetop many times under my tutelage. I'm posting it on my website so that he can access it without sending me texts at 10:49pm asking how to make it.

Second, using the Sauté function on the Instant Pot or Mealthy (or Brown on the Presto) makes your electric pressure cooker function like a high-sided electric skillet. When I make this dish in my 12 inch cast iron skillet I inevitably fling some of the contents all over the stovetop as I'm stirring. That results in a thorough cleaning not only of the skillet but also of the stove. Using the Instant Pot to cook this meal saves clean up!


The third reason I'm sharing this is because I think that electric pressure cookers are hidden gems for disabled cooks. Instead of having to strain to access a stovetop to brown meat--or pay to modify the stove height--cooks can position the electric pressure cooker on a convenient flat surface and work in comfort. Wear an apron and mind the splatters, though.

Instant Pot® Pickled Pork Sliders

Pickled pork sliders combine bacon, ground pork, and pickles for a savory sandwich. These are terrific with coleslaw or over rice. Use the Instant Pot® or make it on the stove top--with only 5 everyday ingredients, this recipe is easy to make and fun to eat.

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Disclosure--this post is sponsored by the Ohio Pork Council. The more I meet with Ohio hog farmers the more inspired I am to create recipes showcasing their hard work. Pork is a versatile protein and I always have some in my freezer. I'm glad to show you an easy way to enjoy ground pork!

I've been using my new Instant Pot to make new versions of old favorites. In this post I'm updating my Pickled Pork and White Bean Sliders recipe with a new-and-improved version, using bacon instead of beans, and cucumber pickles instead of yellow squash pickles. If you're looking for the old version, scroll down to the bottom and you'll find the stove top directions.

When I embraced making pickles--thanks to the clear directions and approachable small batch recipes in Marisa McClellan's book Food in Jars (Amazon affiliate link) and on her eponymous blog--I did so with gusto. I pickled cucumbers, beets, peppers, green beans, squash, and turnips nearly as fast as I could accumulate mass quantities of them from my Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share. I soon had jars of quick-pickled vegetables in my fridge, and water bath-processed jars of pickled vegetables in my pantry. I had a family who unanimously loved cucumber pickles--at least on sandwiches and burgers.
What I didn't have were kids who would embrace different types of pickled vegetables.

Pickled beets?  Um, they're beets, Mom. Pickled turnips?  No, thanks. Pickled peppers?  Too hot! Pickled squash? Just . . . . why? Dilly Beans? Ok, none of us really cared for them, though I tolerated them in a nicoise salad.

Salsa Verde Pork Tacos

Salsa verde spices up ground pork in these gluten free tacos. Spread the corn tortillas with a layer of refried beans for extra protein & fiber, and finish with your favorite toppings!

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Photo credit Emily Bir

This post is sponsored by the Ohio Pork Council, so it's odd that I'm going to start off talkin' turkey, but bear with me. Have you ever had a small interaction, a seemingly insignificant moment, that stuck with you, burrowed in, and changed your outlook on life? Allow me to share one such moment in my life.

A few summers ago I had the opportunity to assist The Foodbank with the quadrennial Hunger in America study. This involved going to many member agencies--the food pantries throughout Montgomery, Greene, and Preble counties who receive food from The Foodbank and get it into their clients' hands. I met the folks distributing food and interviewed folks receiving food throughout the Miami Valley. It was at one of these pantries that I experiences a tiny shift of my axis that has stayed with me.                        It was a hot, muggy August day and the food pantry had a surplus of whole turkeys in their freezer. As the clients were leaving, after they'd gotten their normal allotment of food, they were offered a frozen turkey. Some folks took a turkey, but the majority did not. I overheard one client say, "now what would I do with a turkey in August?"    Mind. Blown.    My assumptions--that folks have access to an oven to roast a turkey, or access to the rest of the kitchen infrastructure needed to fully utilize a 20 pound uncooked bird [check the Bed Bath & Beyond circular in November if you don't know what I mean], or the skills to know how to cook the bird--were challenged. Free food doesn't help anyone if you can't transform it into ready to eat meals.

Photo credit Emily Bir

This is why I'm delighted to spread the word about the Ohio Pork Council's recent donation. Ohio farmers have donated 17,400 pounds of pork to feed needy Ohio families. The Foodbank in Dayton received 3 tons of pork, enough to make 30,000 of the 87,000 total meals donated in the Pork Power program this month. That's huge and I want to shout it from this rooftop.

A pound of ground pork is a convenient source of protein. It can be cooked on a grill, stovetop, hot plate, or even a microwave. After the holidays donations to the food banks are down so an influx of healthy and useful products like pork is much appreciated. Providing wholesome meals to Ohio families is a thoughtful and compassionate endeavor, and I'm glad to draw attention to the efforts of Ohio farmers and the Ohio Pork Council.

The next food occasion on my personal radar is Cinco De Quatro Mayo so my mind is naturally turning in a fiesta direction. I'm checking the basement stash of home-canned salsa [no need to ration--yet] and craving more guacamole than usual. When the Ohio Pork Council asked me to share a recipe using ground pork, I immediately started thinking pork tacos. I didn't want to just substitute a pound of ground pork for a pound of ground beef or turkey and use my usual jar of taco seasoning.

Pork & Leek Dumplings

Asian-inspired pork and leek dumplings simmered in seasoned stock and served with rice. Leftovers were also good served in the stock as a dumpling soup.

This is not Polish pottery. This is from the Inker pottery in Croatia. I got it while I was deployed.

When I get leeks in the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share they usually come in big bunches. I can't use them all up in a week, so I will chop them in half long ways, then chop into a useful dice, soak to remove grit, and spin in my salad spinner. After they are clean I spread them out on a tray to freeze before popping them into a zip top bag. During the winter I'll add leeks to whatever looks good. Like these dumplings.

This post is an example of letting go of the quest for perfection, because less than perfect-looking food still tastes good. Sure, I'm going to try and get a photo that looks as good as I can style it because you can't smell or taste through the screen, but I'm also going to show you how we really ate these dumplings--off plastic plates, without a healthy green vegetable side dish in sight.

Where to start? I suppose with the dumplings. I picked up a package of dumpling wrappers without a plan. They got shuffled around the fridge, stuck into the freezer, forgotten then rediscovered during a freezer reorganization. Finally I got the idea for dumplings. This recipe comes primarily from Mark Bittman's app How To Cook Everything. I won the app years ago in a giveaway from The Naptime Chef. I have the app on my phone, and if I'm sitting waiting for a kid and dreaming up recipe ideas I can search for inspiration to fan those flames. I had some Thai turkey stock on hand, so I figured I'd give the dumplings a Thai twist then simmer them in the turkey stock.

After mixing up the filling, my son and I spent an enjoyable afternoon assembling the dumplings. [Ok, it wasn't the entire afternoon, but it wasn't 10 minutes of work. There's a big reason I don't list preparation times on this blog--I AM SLOW IN THE KITCHEN. If I read that it takes 10 minutes to prep the ingredients for a recipe, I can guarantee that it will take me easily 30 minutes. I'm just slow, and I'm OK with that.] We chatted about life, as folks typically do when working together towards a common goal, and didn't really focus on creating the perfect photo-worthy dumplings. We weren't in a hurry, it was a Sunday, and we were just enjoying the moment. The dumplings don't look perfect, and that's OK. After all that time crimping and chatting I just wasn't into fixing a side dish, so we ate these dumplings with rice my daughter started in the rice cooker. Not every meal has to meet the perfection of whatever meal ideals are currently in vogue.