The Nourishing Gourmet

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Tender Instant Pot Carnitas (shredded pork for tacos)

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One of my kids told me after my last tweaks to this recipe, “Mom, this is so good! I feel like I’m at Chipotle!” and that was highest praise from this particular child. My kids usually grow tired of recipes I’m testing for this blog. But this was one they happily ate as I continued to perfect it.

This recipe for carnitas has been on our table repeatedly in recent weeks. Cooked to perfection in a pressure cooker, carnitas can be used for tacos, burritos, burrito bowls, or taco salads. 

Our kids enjoy their carnitas in tacos with all of the toppings, while I make mine into a grain-free carnitas bowl using my Simple Mexican Coleslaw recipe, along with guacamole and salsa. When I’m eating dairy, I’ll also add sour cream and cheese. So good! This makes a Trim Healthy Mama “S” meal.

I tested this recipe in a pressure cooker, the large Instant Pot. This is where pressure cookers really shine, as they cook meat quickly, and it comes out so tender. However, I also have provided notes on how to make this in a slow cooker, or stove/oven. 

It’s worth noting that traditionally carnitas were slow-cooked in lard until tender and crispy, with not quite as many spices as this recipe has. That is a lovely way to enjoy a traditional recipe. But this recipe is easier for me to put together, and I find it plenty fatty enough just from the fat produced from the roast. 

Related Recipes:

Tender Instant Pot Carnitas

  • 3-6 pound pork butt roast or shoulder roast
  • Salt and pepper
  • Avocado oil, or oil/fat of choice
  • 2 teaspoons onion powder (optional)
  • 1 heaping tablespoon chili powder
  • 1 heaping tablespoon ground cumin
  • 8 garlic cloves, peeled, and minced
  • 2 heaping teaspoons dried oregano
  • 1 cup chicken broth 
  • ½ cup lime juice (orange juice is more traditional, and delicious as well, but we preferred lime).
  • 2 teaspoons salt and generous amount of freshly ground black pepper
  1. Cut roast into, roughly, largish two-inch squares (mine were very irregular, and that’s fine). If they are very wet, pat dry, salt and pepper generously.
  2. Using the sauté function, heat enough oil in the Instant Pot until hot (but not smoking), and using tongs, place some of the squares into the bottom of the pan. Don’t overlap, and do multiple batches. Turn once, browning both sides. Remove to plate, and then repeat until you have finished all of the meat.
  3. Turn the sauté function off, add meat back into the IP, and add the rest of the ingredients.
  4. Put lid on, and hit “manual” and set for 40 minutes on high. Once done, let it release for 10-15 minutes.
  5. Remove lid, and remove meat into a large bowl. Shred with two forks (my kids like doing this!). We also remove any fatty pieces.
  6. Put into a serving dish and pour some of the sauce over it, and serve.
  7. OR, if you would like it browned, you can place on a large sheet pan, and brown it in the oven on broil for around five minutes. The other options would be browning it in a large frying pan on the stove. My kids prefer it straight from the IP.

Directions for slow cooker: Brown meat in a pan in as many batches as needed. Place in slow cooker, and add the rest of the ingredients. Cook on low for 6-8 hours, or on high for 3-5 hours, until the meat is fork tender.

Directions for stovetop/oven: In an oven-safe dish with a lid, brown meat in as many batches as needed. Add the rest of the ingredients, put the lid on, and place in a preheated oven at 300F, and bake for 3 to 4 hours until the meat is fork tender.

Cassava Egg Noodles

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I love these noodles in a rich homemade chicken noodle soup. But my family also enjoyed them in a variety of noodle dishes. They are tender, grain-free, gluten-free, and delicious. Homemade noodles are the perfect comfort food, and who doesn’t need a little comfort food right now? We happily ate our way through various adaptations of this recipe. 

Cassava flour is made from the whole cassava root and as such is grain free. It should not be confused with tapioca flour, which is its refined counterpart. Cassava flour is loved for its more neutral flavor, and its ability to be used more readily in replacement of wheat flour. 

What brand to buy? While I haven’t tried all of the brands out there, I do know that different brands may result in slightly different results. I had success using Otto’s Cassava flour, Thrive Market Cassava flour, and Pamela’s Cassava Flour. (By the way, I love ordering from Thrive Market! You can sign up with my partner link if you haven’t already.)

Are these noodles like wheat noodles? 

In short, no. They are going to be more fragile. I still miss the days of making regular noodles, as gluten makes a strong noodle. You are going to have to use a light touch when handling these, and don’t get frustrated if they break into smaller pieces. That said, they are delicious when cooked, and with practice, I’ve been able to whip these together quickly. 

Ways to Enjoy Cassava Noodles: 

  • Delicious in soup, such as the classic chicken and noodle soup
  • Scrumptious served with melted butter and parmesan
  • Serve with a traditional tomato meat sauce

Cassava Egg Noodles 

2-3 servings 

  • 1 cup of cassava flour
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1 large egg
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil (or oil of choice)
  • 1 tablespoon water
  • Salt for boiling water

(This recipe can be doubled, just boil in a large pot.) 

1. Bring a medium-sized pot of water to a boil on the stove while preparing noodles. 

2.  In a medium-sized bowl, stir together flour and salt. Add the egg, oil and water, and whisk together until the mixture forms into a dough. Gently knead with your hands. The dough should be fairly firm, but not dry (or wet). You can add more flour or water, as needed.

3. Roll out on your largest cutting board (can do in batches if needed): Dust surface with extra flour, place dough on top, and dust flour on top of the dough. Using a gentle touch, roll out the dough into a rectangle, until it gets between ⅛-¼ inch thick. 

4. Cut the rolled-out dough into desired size strips using either a sharp knife or a pizza cutter. I’ve cut them into tiny strips, and also into wide fettuccini sizes trips (around ½ inch). 

5. Salt the boiling water well, and add noodles to the pot. You want to keep the water at a gentle simmer. Cook for 3-4 minutes, until the noodles are just soft and cooked through, but still a little firm. Pour through a heat-safe sieve in the sink and give a quick rinse with cold water. 

6. Serve right away as desired.

Why I’m Spatchcocking My Turkey This Year

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This method has many advantages, including a super fast cooking time, and moist, delicious meat.

Turkey is the centerpiece of most Thanksgiving tables, yet it’s also the hardest to cook correctly. If you undercook it, food poisoning is a possibility, but if you overcook it, the breasts can be dry and unappetizing. 

My solution for the past five years or so has been trying out different forms of brining. My go to is this dry brine – I love not having to deal with a lot of liquid (as well as not having to find a large enough container for said turkey and brine). A dry brine still gives you the flavorful benefits of a brine as well as a juicy turkey. 

However, I think spatchcocking makes my recipe even better. Spatchcocking is when you remove the spine of the turkey, and roast the turkey flat. This has significant benefits, the biggest that it cooks very fast. I cooked a 16 pound turkey in a little less than an hour and a half. Wow! But it also gets the turkey’s skin delicious, crisp and brown, and even better –roasts the turkey evenly – so the legs and breasts get done at the same time. 

While you won’t be able to stuff your turkey this way (an option that many experts say not to do anyway), the benefits far outweigh that fact. 

But before I send you all scurrying to try this out yourself, I do want to honestly share our experience testing this method out. 

  1. It’s not at all hard to spatchcock a chicken with a sharp knife or kitchen shears. I had a harder time with a turkey. My husband, with his stronger hands, ended up helping me out with this part. I prefer kitchen shears, but do expect to have to use some oomph on this part. 
  2. When I pressed down on the turkey to flatten it after the backbone was removed, a large squirt of turkey juice sprayed across the kitchen floor. Oops. 
  3. Most recipes I found used a very hot oven for this method. This ended up causing a lot of smoking. For Thanksgiving, I plan on turning the oven down a bit after the first 20 minutes, and also adding water to the bottom of the pan to hopefully prevent that from reoccurring. 
  4. Our turkey was hefty at 16 pounds, so it just barely fit on our sheet pan once flattened. I would say it needs to be 16 pounds or less, so this method won’t likely work for larger birds unless you split the turkey in half and roast on two pans. 

Despite those disadvantages, our “test” turkey turned out so well cooked and delicious we all decided this was a method we simply had to do again. Paired with the salt brine? Amazing. 

I don’t want to give my own directions yet, as I still want to experiment with this method, but here are a couple of recipes showing how to spatchcock: Example one, two, and three.

And here is my dry brine recipe! 

Roasted Frozen Broccoli

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This is not only a simple recipe, but it's delicious and kid-friendly too. Yes! Even frozen vegetables can taste good!

We have a problem. If we don’t like how I prepare vegetables, they are pushed around on our plates and barely touched. This is no good, as I believe that vegetables are not only important for our health, but they can also be a delicious part of our daily diet as well. 

So when we made our big move to South Dakota, I faced a new problem. Back in Portland, Oregon, I had a large array of options for vegetables. Here? Not so much. Don’t get me wrong, there are still plenty of stores and some good options, but I found that I was eating less vegetables, they were costing a little more, and I wasn’t getting as good of a variety into our diets. Because of the climate here, we simply don’t have as many local options for produce. 

I needed to change my game plan, and that meant being willing to try more frozen vegetables. I have, admittedly, long eschewed frozen vegetables, and we mainly used them as a stop-gap. But I realized that there were many great frozen vegetables options here and I needed to figure out how to make them a little more delicious. I’m proud to say that we now eat them on a regular basis and all of us love them. Why? 

Can You Roast Frozen Vegetables?

Well, it turns out that you can roast them just like you do fresh vegetables! Why does roasting make fresh and frozen vegetables so much better? For a number of reasons: It helps crisp vegetables while they cook and if you leave them in long enough they will start to caramelize and give you a savory depth of flavor. 

Steamed frozen vegetables can sometimes have a mushy texture once cooked, or be very bland in flavor. I did find that the recipe I used for my cooking like a Roman day, using a spiced wine sauce with frozen broccoli, was really delightful. So you can absolutely have good steamed frozen vegetables. 

However, roasting them is a more fail-safe way for delicious vegetables that takes very little hands-on time. 

It’s also very versatile. We’ve done frozen Brussels sprouts, a carrots, broccoli and cauliflower mix, and both cauliflower and broccoli. The only thing we haven’t really been fans of is the frozen carrots. They were far better when roasted than steamed, but we found we preferred the other vegetables. 

Basic Method for Roasting Frozen Vegetables

Basic Method: Roasting vegetables is very easy. The basis concept is to toss frozen vegetables (don’t defrost) with oil, salt and pepper and roast in a hot oven until they are browned and crispy. I often don’t even set a timer. 

Additions: You can also toss them with dried herbs, fresh garlic before they go in the oven, or toss with a splash of balsamic vinegar and fresh herbs right after they come out of the oven. Or, roast with chopped bacon. This is the type of recipe where knowing the basic method is helpful, and then you can have fun trying a variety of vegetables and herbs and spices. 

But to get you started, here is a basic recipe for Roasted Frozen Broccoli

Roasted Frozen Broccoli

1 package of frozen broccoli (16 oz) 

2-3 tablespoons of oil or melted fat of your choice 

Salt and pepper 

  1. Preheat oven to 425F. I use parchment paper because I use sheet pans that are aluminum, but you can an unlined sheet pan as well. 
  2. Toss broccoli with oil/fat and salt and pepper. Place in oven and cook until browned to desired doneness. (between 15-35 minutes). 

Variation: My favorite variation is adding some sliced fresh onions to the broccoli before it cooks and then tossing with chopped fresh basil and a splash of balsamic vinegar once it’s out of the oven. Fabulous!