An Instant Pot Experiment - Hard-Cooked Eggs!

I've been using my Instant Pot for a while now, but I'm no expert!  I do ribs, roast beef, chicken breasts - nothing exciting but I have several things I want to try, so I keep experimenting.

One of the first things many people try is hard-cooked eggs.  They say it's fast, brainless, consistent, and the eggs are always easy to peel.  Boiling eggs on the stove always worked fine for me - until I started buying super-fresh organic eggs from my church's chickens.

There are several tricks to make sure they peel relatively easily, but what a pain to jump through those stupid hoops, and which ones to use?  Don't try to hard-cook them until they're at least 3 or 4 weeks old; add salt to the water; add baking soda to the water; add vinegar to the water; bring the water to a boil before putting the eggs in;  put the eggs in the water before heating it up.  It's enough to drive you nuts!!!

An experiment was in order!

I got out the Instant Pot and six eggs - three white jumbo, and three brown of assorted sizes.  According to many sites on the internet, the standard method for hard cooking eggs in the Instant Pot is 5-5-5, which means you set the pot to cook at pressure for 5 minutes, let the pressure release naturally for 5 minutes, then open the pressure valve to release the rest of the pressure, remove the eggs and place them in ice water for 5 minutes.

That was what I'd INTENDED to do, but I got distracted during the second 5 - the natural pressure release - and so it ended up as 9 minutes instead.  Well, I keep my refrigerator just above freezing because I like my drinks COLD and I want to keep the food in there fresh as long as possible, so I figured I didn't goof up too much.

When I opened the IP, one of the organic brown eggs had cracked, but unlike a cracked egg in boiling water, the white hadn't oozed out and made an ugly egg.  Rather, the egg was still egg-shaped, but with just a little ridge where the shell had cracked, and half of the shell slipped off when I put it into the ice water bath.

After 5 minutes in the ice water, I pulled out one of each kind of egg and peeled them - perfectly!  No special procedures - just cracked them, rolled them on the counter, and peeled from the larger end.  The brown egg peeled as cleanly as the white egg.

But did I overcook them?  Here's the picture - perfection!  I guess I'm ready to make deviled eggs - YUM!!!

Notice how yellow the organic egg
yolk is compared to the white egg's!

So here's the official procedure:

Hard-Cooked Eggs in the Instant Pot (Basic 5-5-5 Method)

Eggs (whatever number you want to cook)

Water (the minimum amount required by your Instant Pot - 1 1/2 c for a 6-quart, 2 c for an 8-quart)

Pour the water into the inner pot.  Place a trivet or steamer basket inside the inner pot.  Stack the eggs on the trivet or in the steamer basket.  Close the lid, set the pressure release valve to sealing.  

Press the Pressure Cook button, making sure the pressure is set to "High."  Set the cook time to 5 minutes.  The Instant Pot will beep and start heating up.  Prepare an ice water bath for cooling the eggs after they have finished cooking.  When it gets up to pressure, the Instant Pot will beep again and start counting down.  

When the cooking time is finished, the Instant Pot will beep again and start counting up.  When it reaches 5 minutes, turn the pressure release valve to "Venting."  When the pressure has completely released, open the Instant Pot lid, remove the eggs and put them in the ice bath for 5 minutes.  

Toys in the Kitchen Part 5, and Blender Quiche

My friend Karen, whose blog I follow, posted a recipe for quiche a few weeks ago (see it here) and I was inspired!  Oh, her recipe sounded so good, but it makes too much for my measly 9-inch, 1-inch-deep aluminum pie pan, as compared to her monster 11-inch, nearly 2-inch-deep ceramic one.  I guess I could scale it down to my size pan.

But then I thought - duh!  I have two perfectly good quiche recipes in my card file.  I haven't made a quiche in years.  I have two Real Men living here in the house, and as those of us of a Certain Age "know," Real Men Don't Eat Quiche!  LOL!  But they like eggs and cheese and onions and BACON (bacon makes everything better), so...

I got out my trusty old Black & Decker Crush Master blender and went to town.  Because this quiche is mixed in the blender, lots of air gets incorporated into the mix, which makes the quiche light and puffy instead of heavy and dense.  That Boy even ate his entire serving without picking out the vegetables!

I got in a hurry and forgot to
flute or crimp the pie crust!
It still tasted good!

Blender Quiche

4 eggs

1 c milk

1 T flour

1/2 t salt

1/4 t pepper

1/4 t nutmeg

1/2 bunch of green onions, cut in 1"-2" pieces, including tops

1 1/2 c (6 oz) shredded swiss cheese

4 slices cooked bacon, cut into 1" pieces

1 unbaked pie crust

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees and set the rack in the middle position.  Put the first six ingredients in the blender and mix well.  Stop and add the onions, cheese, and bacon.  Pulse until the pieces are about 1/2" in size (6-10 times).  Pour into pie crust.  Bake 35-40 minutes.  Remove from the oven and let sit 10 minutes before serving.

TIPS:  You can just spray the pie pan or dish if you don't want the calories from the crust, add mushrooms, use a medium onion cut into eighths for the green onions, substitute light or whipping cream for the milk, or substitute cheddar cheese for swiss. 

For Quiche Lorraine, use 12 slices of bacon (1/2 pound before cooking), 1 c swiss (Gruyere) cheese, 1/3 c onion, light or whipping cream for the milk, no nutmeg, 1/4 t sugar, and 1/8 t cayenne red pepper.  Keep the eggs, flour, and salt.

My Seventh Communitty Supported Agriculture (CSA) Box - What I Got

I picked up my produce box at Teter Organic Farm, and on the way home, it started to rain - a real frog strangler!  I was glad I got my stuff loaded into the car before all THAT started.  We've had a lot of rain the past few days, and I'm tired of it - UGH.

So this week, we got some mixed salad greens (two bags!), some assorted small sweet peppers, more new potatoes (YAY!), slicer tomatoes, cherry tomatoes (I didn't take any since I'm not a fan), beets (double-YAY!), and some bonus bell peppers.

I'm looking forward to making wilted lettuce again - break out the bacon!!!  And more roasted potatoes.  Or, I have a recipe to try for roasted chicken breasts, potatoes, and carrots that sounds REALLY good.

And the beets - one of my favorites.  I'm afraid that when I cook these, they'll bleed all over the place and look pale and washed out.  To prevent that, you're supposed to leave a couple of inches of the stems on, but alas, there are no stems on these lovelies.  Maybe roasted they won't do that.  I'll need to do some research!

This is also the first week of  EGG SHARES!  For the next eight weeks, I'll pick up a dozen eggs every other week.  The new chickens have finally started to lay, so now we can not only provide eggs to families who attend the free Thursday night dinners at the church and donate eggs to a local food pantry, but we can sell shares.  The idea is for the shares to cover the costs of keeping the chickens, making them a sustainable part of the farm.  Of course, I'm super excited to get my paws on some "fruit of hen" because I help care for the lovely ladies.  Some of their eggs are beyond jumbo, so it will be fun to watch for double yolks!