Homemaking on the Homestead

I love how fast and easy it is to make chicken stock in the Instant Pot. I have recipes, tutorials and videos on how to make stock on the stove or the crock pot as well. But unless I'm making a huge batch of stock my go-to method nowadays is making it in my IP.  It takes 1 hour of cooking time to yield the most delicious stock! The overall process takes a bit more than 1 hour. There is the time needed for the IP to come up to pressure and the time needed for the pressure to drop on its own.  I often purchase Costco rotisserie chicken. It's a bargain in my mind. For $5 I get a whole chicken seasoned and cooked. For the two of us I can end up easily with 3 meals from this. And then I also get the bonus of being able to make chicken stock from it as well. I think it's a lot of frugal mileage for my $5.  Below the recipe I have a video of how to make chicken stock Here is how you make chicken stock in your IP... Chicken Stock Ingredients Bones from 1 chicken – adding any le...

In today's video I'm sharing an easy and delicious potato salad recipe.  I use hash browns to make this and cook them in my Instant Pot.   If you don't have an Instant Pot you can cook them in any way you would like.   https://youtu.be/dse4IHnGmE0

Good morning Friends!! If you are looking for a quick and simple gift idea you might want to consider making some homemade vanilla.  It's so easy to make!  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HV3PszwkP0

I love chili and it's one of my husbands favorite foods too. I have a lot of chili recipes on my blog and actually could not remember if I had already posted my IP chili recipe. I had to go and do a search and see! I could not find it. I love making chili in my IP because it's so quick and easy. Quick and easy is my favorite theme nowadays when it comes to cooking! Ha, ha.. :) The ingredients needed for this are basic. You can have almost everything except the hamburger in your pantry making it a good last minute choice for a dinner if you find yourself looking for something quick to make. Aside from 1 pound of hamburger which I did not get a picture of, you'll need beans, spices, onions, celery, diced tomatoes, and green chilies. Cut up your onion and celery. Turn your IP to “Saute”. At first it will say 'on'. Wait for it to say 'hot'. Add the hamburger, onion and celery and cook until the hamb...

Good morning and happy Friday! I was not able to get last weeks grocery haul posted due to recovering from my eye surgery. I'm going to give totals for last week after posting this weeks. This week the first stop was at Winco.    Fruit and veggies were a big portion of the haul. Oranges, apples, bananas along with romaine hearts, cabbage, broccoli, sweet potatoes and garlic cloves. And a couple bags of tortilla chips that were on sale.  Ketchup was on sale so I picked up a couple extra bottles for the pantry and grape jelly was also on sale and I did the same. I bought a bottle of Italian sweet creamer, half & half, milk, a couple yogurts, a can of biscuits, 2 bags of frozen steak fries and an 18 count carton of eggs. Total for Winco was $43.00 Next stop was Costco.. They had fish sticks on sale and Costco's fish sticks are the only ones I like so I picked up a bag of them. I also restocked us with p...

  This week in Friday in the Kitchen I'll show you how to make super moist and simple stuffing in the Instant Pot. Instant Pot Stuffing Last week I made a turkey breast in my Instant Pot (IP) and then made stuffing to go with it. A little pre - Thanksgiving dinner for us. Instant Pot stuffing is easy to make and is so moist. If you have an IP, this might be handy in your dinner meal preparations.  I started by chopping up a small onion and about half of a red pepper. I usually also add celery, but did not have any.  I then put my package of stuffing cubes (I believe it was about 14oz in size) in a bowl and sprinkled the seasoning packet on it and added about a teaspoon of salt. In a frying pan I melted 6T of butter and sauteed the onions and peppers until they were soft and added this to the stuffing cubes... The turkey breast I bought had a gravy packet with it so I poured this into m...

This week in " Friday in the Kitchen " I'll be sharing my afternoon of cooking up a few meals all at once to save me time in the kitchen the rest of the week.    Last Sunday afternoon I had a little extra time and decided to make a few meals up at the same time. This has been great to have this week and I hope to be able to do it again. I picked simple and easy to put together meals. I wanted enough for us to eat at home and enough to pack my husbands meals for the following work week. I made: BBQ Chicken (for sandwiches) Mexican Chicken Soup Chili Spaghetti I used my Instant Pot for these meals because it makes cooking much quicker. I started by cooking 2#'s of chicken breast in my IP. When that was finished I divided the meat into two bowls and shredded up the chicken. I strained the liquids left in the IP to use in my chicken soup.  While the chicken was cooking I made a small batch of cornbread muffins to ...

This week in "Friday in the Kitchen" I'm sharing my recipe for Instant Pot Chicken & Dumplings. This was delicious! We all enjoyed it so much. And it was super easy to make. I started by putting carrots, celery, onions and boneless, skinless chicken thighs (chicken breasts would work too). My chicken was still mostly frozen. I added water, and seasonings. I don't use store bought chicken broth because my hubby has reactions to MSG. I did not have any homemade broth, so just used water and extra salt and it was perfect.    I cooked the chicken & veggies for 15 minutes on “manual”. When it was done I let the pressure release on its own for about 10 minutes and then did a quick release. When I opened the lid I shredded the chicken added some milk and butter.  I then made the dumplings using Bisquick. It was quick and simple. Dumplings are basically drop biscuits, so you can also make them from sc...

This week in Friday in the Kitchen I'll be sharing a couple recipes I've this week that we really enjoyed. French Dip Sandwiches I tried THIS recipe and it was so good. I did make a couple changes due to the fact that my hubby has MSG sensitivities and I can't use store bought beef or chicken stock. Any time I do, he has a reaction. So I only use homemade. Unfortunately I did not have any homemade beef stock. I replaced the beef stock with water and added 1 ½ teaspoons of salt. The other change I made was to put all ingredients in the Instant Pot. I did not saute the onions first. I put them in, added the water, salt, and seasonings and then added my cut up beef roast. This made the meal extremely quick to put together.   My broth was not as dark colored as the original recipe shows, but the taste was fantastic. Corn & Sweet Potato Salad ...