- You know that moment when it's dinner time
but everything is frozen?
What if I told you you can cook chicken, beef or fish
from frozen and have it ready to eat in 30 minutes?
Hey, everyone.
It's Yumna from FeelGoodFoodie,
and I was really skeptical about using the Instant Pot first
until one day, I cooked frozen chicken in it,
and I was an instant believer.
Then I tried it with frozen beef and frozen fish,
and I couldn't believe how easy, efficient
and tasty the results were.
Today I'm gonna share with you my methods
for cooking the three kinda proteins, some useful tips,
some watch-outs, and some great dinner ideas
your family's going to love.
I think once you see how effortless this is,
you'll be an instant believer too.
So let's get started.
We're gonna start with frozen chicken.
The Instant Pot Duo can look pretty intimidating
the first time you use it,
but there's a guide for everything,
from making beans, to chicken, to yogurt, to even cake.
And I'm gonna share with you today how easy this is
so you won't be intimidated at all.
After using it just a couple times,
you'll realize it can really help your weekday cooking
and meal planning routine.
The Instant Pot Duo comes with this trivet.
You won't need it for the chicken,
but we will need it for the beef and the fish.
So I have here three eight ounces of chicken.
If your chicken is a big block, you should go ahead
and run it through some water just to kinda separate them,
but if it's kind of lined up like this,
you don't need to do anything.
You just take it and dump it right into the Instant Pot.
You'll have the same cook time
whether you have one chicken or 10 chicken breasts,
but don't fill it more than two thirds of the way up.
This is so great because it's practical
whether you're cooking for yourself or for a large family.
And now you can go ahead and season it.
I like to keep it pretty simple with some salt and pepper,
and you can use any seasoning you want here.
I really like to add some garlic powder
and sometimes either paprika or oregano.
And finally, you wanna add some broth
or water to the chicken.
For a six-quart Instant Pot Duo,
you'll need one cup of liquid.
If you're using the three-quart, and you can use 1/2 cup.
Now we're going to place the lid on.
lock it, and move the valve to Sealing.
Now press Pressure Cook,
and set the timer to 10 minutes at High pressure.
The Instant Pot will first come to pressure,
which should take eight to 10 minutes,
and then the timer will begin.
When the cook time is up,
let the pressure release naturally for five minutes,
and then do a quick release for any remaining pressure.
It looks juicy, tender, and fully cooked,
but it's very important right now to check the temperature
of the chicken just to make sure it's at 165.
Now you can go ahead and remove the chicken
from the Instant Pot Duo and place it
on a cutting board to cut, slice
and use however you want in a recipe.
The inside of the chicken is perfectly cooked,
and it looks so moist and delicious.
I'm gonna slice it up, and I'm gonna show you how we like
to have it for dinner.
And whether you use chicken broth, vegetable broth
or just water, don't toss the liquid
at the bottom of the pot.
It's actually really delicious,
and I highly recommend straining it and using it for soups.
And what I like to do is just add a little bit
of this chicken broth right on top of the chicken
just to keep it nice and juicy
when you you're serving it or restoring it.
And if you are just serving it like this, you can garnish it
with a little bit of parsley right on top
and even some lemon slices.
And here's a fun way we like to eat this chicken.
So I like to take a few on some pita
with some garlic sauce or any kinda sauce you want
and then just add a couple of pickles,
some tomatoes, and lettuce.
We make sandwiches like this very often for the kids,
just kind of, "Here's some cooked chicken.
"Here's a bunch of toppings.
"Help yourself."
Let's give it a taste.
Perfectly juicy and delicious.
So that's frozen chicken.
I'm gonna show you next frozen beef.
We're doing the same thing now with ground beef.
So I have here one pound of ground beef
that's completely frozen,
(taps meat)
as you can see.
I get this at the butcher,
and I just kinda put it in my own Ziploc bags.
So this is what it looks like,
and what we wanna do is we wanna go ahead
and place the frozen ground beef
right in the trivet of the Instant Pot.
And you wanna make sure to use a trivet
because it's just gonna keep everything together,
and it's gonna keep the beef away from the liquid
in the Instant Pot.
For the six-quart Instant Pot Duo,
make sure to add one cup of water to the bottom of the pot.
You can also season the ground beef,
which I highly recommend just because it cooks
into the beef and it just tastes better that way.
So I like to keep it simple with salt, pepper,
garlic powder, and a little bit of oregano
or any kind of extra spice,
depending on what I'm using the beef for.
And what I like about this method
is there's actually no need to use any oil whatsoever,
so it ends up actually being a less fatty dish.
You're gonna place the lid on,
move the valve to Sealing, press Pressure Cook,
and set the timer for 20 minutes.
The Instant Pot will first come to pressure,
which should take eight to 10 minutes,
and then the timer will begin.
When the cook time is up,
let it release naturally for 10 minutes,
and then you can do a quick release
for any remaining pressure.
So carefully open and remove the lid.
And what you wanna do is use a fork to check
for doneness in the middle of the ground beef.
So let me show you what it looks like on the inside,
and you can see that it's fully cooked.
'Cause ours looks perfect,
I'm gonna use the trivet to pull this out
and place it on a plate.
And unlike the frozen chicken,
we wanna toss the water that was cooked in here
because it's just gonna contain a lot of grease,
and it's just not as flavorful as the chicken broth.
And now what you can do is you can use a meat chopper,
a spatula or just two forks
and just kinda break apart the beef.
And the seasoning we added earlier
is giving the beef all the right flavor.
It smells so aromatic, and the garlic powder is just perfect
with the ground beef.
Now that the beef is cooked,
there's so many different ways to serve it
for easy weeknight meals.
We like to add it to tacos, make sandwiches with it,
add it on top of rice or even add it to spaghetti.
I'm gonna show you how we do
a one pot spaghetti version right now.
So we're gonna press the Saute button
and add between a cup and two cups of marinara.
And before you add the marinara,
you can also saute some onions, green peppers, mushrooms
all right in the Instant Pot Duo.
But we're just gonna make it quick and easy today.
We're adding some marinara sauce.
We're gonna add the ground beef we cooked right on top,
and I'm gonna add to it some cooked spaghetti.
Now just give everything a mix
until it's well combined and warmed through.
And that was so easy.
You can cook the spaghetti while the beef is cooking
and then just assemble everything together.
And there you have it, easy weeknight meal
made in the Instant Pot Duo.
This was no active time at all.
Just the Instant Pot did all the work,
and now we can enjoy easy dinner.
So let's do a quick little taste.
The beef is perfectly cooked and moist,
and the whole thing is so flavorful.
Next, it's time to cook frozen fish in the Instant Pot.
Cooking fish in the Instant Pot is even quicker
than cooking beef and chicken.
Let's go ahead and open up the cod,
and you can do this method with any other kind of seafood
like salmon or mahi-mahi or tuna.
And because the fish can get flaky,
it's important to use a trivet when cooking frozen fish
in the Instant Pot.
So same drill.
We're also gonna add a cup of water to the bottom
of the Instant Pot Duo, and you can season it
with some salt, pepper, and any other kinda seasoning,
depending on what you're using the fish for.
I'm keeping it simple today with just some salt and pepper.
Place the lid on.
Close it, and move the valve to Sealing.
Pressure cook on High for two minutes.
The Instant Pot will first come to pressure,
which should take eight to 10 minutes.
Then the fish will cook in just two minutes.
When the cook time is up, you wanna do a quick release,
and then carefully open the Instant Pot Duo.
With fish, you can check the internal temperature's at 140,
or you can just look at it and make sure that it's flaky.
To me, it looks perfectly cooked and flaky,
and the two minutes is the perfect temperature.
So I'm gonna go ahead and remove it
with the trivet very carefully and place it on a plate.
And you can just see how flaky the fish is.
Look at that.
And just like the beef,
I also like to just toss the cooking water
that the fish cooked in
because I don't think it tastes very good.
So you can just go ahead and discard this.
So now you can have this as is.
We love having it with some rice and veggies,
or we also love having it with some tacos.
So I'm gonna show you how to assemble a really quick taco
with the fish.
All right, so I've got some items here for some tacos.
You can have so much fun with this.
I'm just gonna put some lettuce,
some of that fish right on top,
and we can add some salsa to it and some first cilantro.
And again, this is a great idea for a family
where you can just cook the fish,
have a bunch of different toppings,
and everyone can assemble their own tacos.
So here's what it's looking like.
And how good does that look, you guys?
Such an easy fish tacos for a weeknight.
Doesn't have to be complicated.
The Instant Pot Duo cooked the fish in just two minutes,
and you've got dinner on the table in no time at all.
So I'm gonna do a little taste test
just to see how that fish is.
The fish is actually buttery and flaky
and just perfectly cooked.
I am loving this recipe.
I love the way the fish came out, and it is just so good.
See, I told you guys it was gonna be easy.
When you're in a pinch and you've gotta get dinner
on the table, I hope you remember these tips
for how to cook frozen chicken,
frozen beef, and frozen fish in the Instant Pot Duo.
It's such a great time-saver
and a perfect hack for weeknight meals.
Let me know in the comments
if you try any of these methods,
and if you found this video helpful or fun,
please share it with some friends and family.
I'll see you guys next time.