Instant Pot Chicken Tortilla Soup (and Other Adventures)

Recently I’ve seen lots of friends requesting favorite Instant Pot recipes.  I’m going to guess that many of my friends (like me) got an Instant Pot for Christmas and are still learning how to use it.  I always want to respond to my friends but my response (surprise, surprise) is longer than I really want to type out in a Facebook comment.  So tonight when I pulled out my Instant Pot to make my favorite chicken tortilla soup I decided that I would share that recipe (because it’s yummy) as well as some of my other adventures in Instant Pot-ing in hopes that it might help someone else find good uses for theirs! (skip to the bottom if you just want the chicken tortilla soup recipe)

So I sorta knew that I was getting an Instant Pot for Christmas because… it was the only thing I asked Eric for, and I even sent him an Amazon link to it when it was on sale.  It wasn’t a demand… but I hadn’t given him a lot of other ideas so it seemed like a likely guess 😉  I have a hard time coming up with things to give Eric for Christmas though because most of the things he wants are technology – and he knows what he wants better than I do.  So I make him put together an Amazon wish list, but since I don’t work outside the home it feels a little arbitrary to buy (or not buy) things from his list, with money he earned.  Just my own weird hang up.  Anyways, because of that I try to find things that I can give him for Christmas that really are more from me – gifts of the heart if you will.  This year I decided that something I could do for Eric that he couldn’t do for himself was find a recipe for his favorite soup that he would eat all the time on his mission in Taiwan, and the ingredients for it… that could be made in the Instant Pot 😉  So, here’s the recipe I came up with – https://www.tablefortwoblog.com/instant-pot-taiwanese-beef-noodle-soup/ .  It’s kinda like pho … But yummier   I was really glad that I came up with this as a Christmas present for Eric because it forced me to pull out the Instant Pot immediately and not let it languish in its box until I got the nerve up to pull it out 😉

Eric also got me this cookbook as a supplement to go with my Instant Pot!  So far I’ve made the chili and cornbread.  The chili was really good – and done super fast which was amazing.  The cornbread was fine, but nothing to rave about, and it was tricky finding a pan that fit inside the instant pot to make it in.  I’d probably skip using the Instant Pot for that.  I’d recommend the book, but I won’t share those recipes here since that’s someone else’s copyright.

I also used it to make tri-tip, and the kids have requested it frequently since (I mean, it’s tri tip, who can blame them).  I just put the frozen tri tip in with salt and pepper and ran the meat cycle twice and served with bbq sauce – SO good! I made fajitas once using this recipe – it was easy and yummy but there was a LOT more liquid than I expected that I didn’t want to drain because it had all the flavor.  I’ll probably try it again but try draining the tomatoes first or something to see if I can get up to pressure without so much liquid.  Finally I used my Instant Pot to make pulled BBQ chicken vaguely following these instructions – although really I just put as much chicken as I could reasonably fit in the instant pot with a bottle of BBQ sauce and used their cooking times, but it worked out great.

As far as basic things, I’ve used my instant pot to make rice and felt like it wasn’t any faster than my rice cooker, and the rice didn’t turn out as good (but I was cooking more rice than I probably should have been).  I think if I was cooking brown rice it might have been faster, but for regular white rice, I’ll stick to my rice cooker.  However I’ve used it to make hard boiled eggs and it was AWESOME!  I used these instructions and it was super easy and fast, and most importantly the eggs peeled SO cleanly and easily.  I’m a fan for sure.

So, there’s my full report so far of things I’ve made in my Instant Pot!  I’m sure there are many fun adventures ahead.  The thing I’ve found I like the Instant Pot for most is making slow cooker meals at the end of the day.  I’m really good at planning slow cooker meals, but I’m not always as good at actually putting everything in the crock pot at the beginning of the day… and when I realize at 2pm that I meant to do that in the morning… it’s a little late.  I like having the option to resurrect my plans just before dinner time 😉

That’s basically how this chicken tortilla soup recipe came to be.  This is my favorite crock pot soup, but with the times adjusted for an Instant Pot.   I love this recipe because not only is it so yummy but the prep is really simple – dump several ingredients into the pot and let it go.  The only real “prep” is chopping up an onion and rinsing the black beans.

Pretend there’s a can of enchilada sauce in there too… I forgot about it until after the picture was taken and didn’t have an extra can just for the picture, hopefully you have a good imagination 😉

I was going to post that my kids really like it too, but let’s face it, it’s not pizza so it’s not their favorite 😛  But they will generally eat it and enjoy it – especially if they can eat the tortilla chips.  Sam though was disappointed last night that it wasn’t fajitas and told me, “well it’s not my favorite, so you can’t expect me to eat it un-pickily”.  Danny was not excited about the soup either until he started to actually eat it, then he said, “Oh!  This isn’t that spicy soup (chili)?  I like this soup!”  They all ate a decent amount of soup and were pretty happy with it.  I asked the kids to pretend that they liked the soup and smile for me to take a picture… this was as close as we got in a few attempts 😛

Regardless of my kids’ reactions, I really like this soup and I’ve served it several times to other people with positive reviews.  If you’re looking for a good excuse to bust your Instant Pot out of its box give this a try!

(This recipe adapted from AllRecipes.com)