Frozen Chicken Thighs for Dinner

This has been one of my go-to meals this year. Mostly because I'm both tired and lazy; and after work, I just want something simple without a lot of prep. Thank goodness that the Ninja Foodi still works after two years. This uses the stainless steel rack insert that the NF comes with.

In the NF, insert stainless steel rack and add 1 cup of water.

On the rack, place frozen chicken thighs.

Season to your liking. I use sea salt, fresh ground black pepper, and garlic powder.

No pre-heating needed.

NF settings: 10 minutes on HIGH. Natural release 20 minutes.

Stab with meat thermometer in the thickest part of the thigh. Should read at least 165 F. If not, flip the thighs over and set NF to air crisp settings (390 F) for 5 minutes.

You can use the same prep time doing other things while the chicken is cooking; such as preparing a vegetable dish stovetop or a salad or whatever.

You can cook rice at the same time; though I have not tried this because the chicken needs that water to pressure cook & steam to perfection; the rice also uses the same amount of water to cook. The remaining liquid is essentially chicken broth and can be used or consumed.

Side note: when chicken thighs (bone-in with skin) are on sale ($0.99/lb or BOGO) at my local Fred Meyer grocery store, I buy . .  a lot. Half gets baked or grilled, then eaten in meals for the week. I freeze the rest in 2 thighs per resealable quart bag.

Let's say that you did nothing at meal time with the leftover chicken broth. You could add more water and add uncooked rice to make a congee for breakfast tomorrow. Or, you could add more water to that the liquid volume is back to 1 cup and make a batch of pressure cooked steamed rice (1 minute on HIGH, 10 minutes natural release).

Almond Pulau Rice

This takes ordinary steamed (baked or pressure cooked) rice up to the next level. I used 1/2 jasmine rice and 1/2 basmati rice; only because I am eating through the jasmine rice faster than the basmati. I subbed raw almonds for raw cashews because that's what I had on hand. Also, Indian pulau and rice pilaf are essentially the same thing, except with regional aromatic differences.

Aromatics

1 bay leaf

1/2 c fresh mint leaves (can also use a few dried mint leaves)

1 slice of fresh ginger

2 whole cloves

2 green cardamom pods

1/2 tsp cumin seeds (or 1/4 tsp ground cumin)

20 raw cashews or raw almonds

1/2 tsp turmeric powder

Rice

1 c (200 gm) basmati or jasmine rice, washed and drained

1 c water

Directions

For a rice cooker:

In a separate frying pan, toast the spices (cloves, cumin, ginger, bay leaf) and raw almonds in 1 tbsp of olive oil or butter. Add rice and water to rice cooker, add aromatics. 

For a Ninja Foodi:

Add oil to insert bowl and select the sauté function. Add aromatics and almonds. Toast for a couple minutes before adding the rice and water. Set NF "high" pressure and the timer for 2 minutes. Natural release for 10 minutes.

Note: Placing the whole aromatics in the center on top of the rice will make it easier to remove the spices before serving the rice.

This recipe is adapted from the book Vegetarian Indian Cooking with your Instant Pot.

Ninja Foodi: Moroccan Beef Stew

The recipe ratio is adapted from the April 2020 issue of Men's Health, which calls for lamb stew meat, and this recipe substitutes beef for lamb. While I really enjoy grilled lamb for the occasional treat, lamb meat is price prohibitive at nearly $12/lb at my local grocery store w/ a butcher counter. And, after wondering what made this beef stew "Moroccan", I added some dried apricots and raisins it as well. While it is peculiar that there's no added salt, there is salt in some of the canned goods used to make the stew. For the green olives, I am using green castelvetrano olives. At my local grocery store chain, it sells under the HemisFares label in a 4.2 oz glass jar. It has a radically different taste and texture than the generic brand canned green olives that one would use in a salad or cocktail.

TheFoodening Blog - Moroccan Beef Stew

Ingredients

1 lb beef stew meat, cubed
1 15-oz can organic garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed
1 15-oz can organic diced tomatoes
4 organic carrots, diced
4 oz pitted green olives, drained and rinsed
2-3 garlic cloves, minced
7 dried apricot slices
2 tbsp raisins
1 cinnamon stick
2 tsp Better than Bouillon Beef Flavor + 2 cups of water
2 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp ground coriander

Directions

Having a Ninja Foodi means that I can start with a lack of planning and preparation to make most beef-based recipes. I imagine that if I had fresh stew meat on hand, I would skip this step and go straight to browning the meat in the Foodi on its sauté setting. In the event that you are starting from frozen beef stew meat. Here's what you do:

In the Foodi, add to the cooking pot, 1 lb frozen stew meat plus 1 cup of water. Pressure cook on high for 1 minute and quick release. This is my half cooked and still raw but thawed method.

Remove the lid and add the rest of the ingredients.

Pressure cook for 25 minutes on high with a natural release.

Once you remove the lid, discard the cinnamon stick. Serve hot.

Sweet Potato Roti (flatbread)

I've been putting this recipe off for years and have only just gotten around to making it. It has a relatively short prep time, including pressure steaming the sweet potato (not the garnet yam, but the Japanese sweet potato with white flesh). The original recipe ratio comes from Lathi's Kitchen blog. The flatbread tasted a little doughy because I dredged the dough balls in some flour before rolling it out. It helped the dough from sticking to the silicone mat and rolling pin. The ground cumin adds much flavor to what would taste really bland otherwise. Lathi's recipe calls for 1.5 cups of wheat flour, I used half that amount including what I used to dust the dough with before rolling out. It could very well be due to the fact that it's been raining and indoor humidity is higher than normal.

TheFoodening Blog - Sweet Potato Roti / Flatbread

Ingredients

1 medium sweet potato, steamed and mashed
up to 1 c all purpose unbleached wheat flour
1/2 tsp sea salt
1 tsp ground cumin (optional)

Directions

If you have a Ninja Foodi, peel and cut the sweet potato into chunks. Use the crisper rack instead of the elevated stainless steel rack. Add 1 cup of water to the pot and add the sweet potato to the rack. Pressure cook on high for 6 minutes, then quick release.

I think this is how I ended up with a lower-moisture mashed sweet potato than if I were to use a slower, more traditional stove method of steaming a root vegetable.

In a food processor, pulse the cooked sweet potato until a paste forms. Gradually add the flour, about 1/4 cup at a time. Pulse until a soft and slightly sticky dough forms.

Use a dough cutter and split the dough ball into 3/4" to 1" chunks. Roll dough bits into balls.

On a lightly floured silicone mat, roll out dough balls to 5" wide and thin pancakes.

Heat a cast iron skillet or nonstick skillet over medium heat. You can add a neutral or high heat oil (such as coconut oil) to the pan if you are concerned about the first couple of roti sticking to the pan. The use of oil is optional.

This cooks quickly, so as soon as one side puffs up. Turn the roti over with a spatula and fry the other side.

TheFoodening Blog - Sweet potato roti cooking in a nonstick skillet

Ninja Foodi: Beef Stew with Lentils and Potatoes

This is a non-tomato-based beef stew. It is also a two-part recipe. I cooked the lentils separately then added them to the stew ingredients when cooking the beef. I also used two types of potatoes for this because that's what I had on hand: one gold potato and one sweet potato.

TheFoodening Blog: beef stew with lentils

For the lentils:

1/2 c dry green lentils
1 c Trader Joe's miso broth

Ninja Foodi: cook lentils on Hi for 20 minutes.

For the stew:

1 lb beef stew meat, cut into 1" pieces
2 organic celery ribs, diced
8 oz white mushrooms, cleaned
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 gold potato, diced
1 sweet potato (white flesh), diced
1 bay leaf, optional
freshly ground black pepper, to taste
sea salt, to taste

Ninja Foodi: cook stew on Hi for 25 minutes, natural release. Serve hot with bread or crackers.

Ninja Foodi Recipes Made in January/February

What recipes make it into being written up as a post? Dishes that were good enough to make me want to cook up again and aren't so simplistic as to be a direct copy from the instruction manual, such as making perfectly cooked jasmine rice (seriously, it's just a cup of water and a cup of rice, pressure cooked for 2 minutes with a 10 minute natural release). The end goal of this is more for me than you, dear reader. I hate blogs with ads with a passion. I don't want you to have a lower quality experience of reading a recipe blog chock full of ads. Frankly, blogs that autorun videos and popup ads are a turnoff to me. This is my online cookbook and I don't want to look at ads when I check it for recipe ratios. Also, I have skimmed through a lot of Instant Pot cookbooks. I even checked out a number of analog books from the public library and what is most annoying is that a third of each book contained recipes published by the manufacturer. How original. Anyways. Here's what I made in the Foodi.

Success!

• taro root dessert soup, pressure cooked
• dry, not soaked azuki beans, pressure cooked (taro + azuki beans + tapioca pearls = nice dessert)
• dehydrated wild pacific shrimp
• bbq baked beans
• frozen black sesame tan yuan, pressure cooked
• roasted marinated mushrooms
• reheat already cooked rice
• pork neck bones, for stock
• crispy bacon from raw

!Fail

• King Arthur fruitcake
• whole "baked" Japanese sweet potato
• chocolate pots de creme (overcooked)
• frozen ribeye steak (PC & AF), too raw using NF directions

Ninja Foodi Dehydrated: Wild Pacific Shrimp

Ninja Foodi dehydrated umami bombs.. dried shrimp. In my first batch, 10 oz cooked = 2 oz dehydrated. Except, by doing it myself, there are no preservatives (other than salt) and no food dyes. A win! Dried shrimp 🦐 are a key component of Chinese cuisine, such as turnip cake. This package of wild pacific shrimp comes pre-cooked and salted. Found it in the freezer aisle at my local Costco. At $15 per 2 lb package, I can probably make 6 oz of dried shrimp from this. It is on par with the cost for dried shrimp that you can get from an Asian grocery store. If only I knew how to catch shrimp in the wild. Also, WA state pink shrimp is harvested at the far northern side of the state in the San Juan de Fuca strait in the Puget Sound area. If I retired some day to one of the cities in the northern part of the Olympic Peninsula, I could take advantage of the annual shellfish/seaweed license.


Ingredients
wild shrimp, cooked
Directions
Temperature: 135 F




Time: 7 hours + more (if the shrimp isn't completely dried out)

The Foodening Blog - Ninja Foodi Dehydrated Pacific Shrimp

Ninja Foodi Recipes Made in December

For whatever reason, I started logging what I made in the Foodi. What has turned into a daily breakfast item are soft boiled eggs. After figuring out the right combination of time and which pressure setting, these are extremely easy to make. A lot better than the randomness by stovetop method.

The inaugural dish I tried in the Foodi was crispy fried BBQ chicken wings using raw, frozen chicken wings. Initially, it looked fantastic. However, the chicken wings were perfectly cooked at the pressure cooker stage. The amount of time that the Foodi recommends for crisping it up with the Crisper lid (air fryer) is way too long and the end result. I have divided this list into successes and failures.

Success!

• jasmine rice, pressure cooked
• soft boiled eggs, pressure cooked
• Tamari Garlic Roasted Almonds, air fryer
• Beef stew w/ Yukon potatoes, pressure cooked
• hashbrown patties, air fryer
• herbed lamb shoulder, air fryer
• whole roasted herb chicken, pressure cooked/air fryer
• dehydrated apple chips, air fryer/dehydrate setting
• quinoa chocolate cake muffins from box mix
• whole roasted salt and pepper chicken, pressure cooked/air fryer
• chicken stock w/ bay leaf, garlic, carrots, and celery from chicken bones
• pork bone broth using pork neck bones
• whole roasted garlic, air fryer
• reheated lasagna, air fryer

!Fail

• Sriracha BBQ chicken - overcooked & bland; remedy: don't use frozen chicken and marinate it first
• cinnamon apple sauce - too watery (don't use Instant Pot's recipe ratio)
• Air Crisp chickpeas - not crispy
• Air Crisp toasted baguette w/ gouda and garlic butter - cooked/dried out baguette, didn't have the golden brown toasted look of toasted bread
• steamed broccoli - so overcooked I could have blended it into a soup

Kitchen notes: Ninja Foodi review

I'd been thinking about getting an air fryer or a food dehydrator all year; but I couldn't quite get myself to commit on price for unit features for a single use appliance. The Ninja Foodi at my local Costco ($189.99 regular, $149.99 holiday sale) was already significantly below the retail price that can be found at Target ($229.99 regular), Amazon (currently $189.99 holiday sale), or my local Kroger-owned grocery store ($299.99 regular, $239.99 holiday sale). Shopping in Oregon saved me $12.60 in retail sales tax; and I picked up the unit a week before Thanksgiving. 

Item number: Ninja Foodi OP305CO

Product review:

The appliance itself is pretty big at 6.5 quarts. It's like having a columnar-shaped, medium sized microwave oven on the counter top. It stands tall enough to not fit inside nor under any of the kitchen cabinets; and the base unit is heavy enough to not want to move it from the kitchen counter. That said, if you can spare the counter space, it'll be a good complementary appliance for liquid-based cooking, "baking", air frying, and dehydrating. I have yet to try the dehydrating or slow cooker functions on the Foodi. And, I have no desire to make yogurt. That said, given the number of appliances that this replaces, it's good for homes or apartments with a small kitchen. Though, it might be a stretch to say that the Ninja Foodi is a multitool for your kitchen if you already have an oven/stove.

The hardest part about using the Foodi? Figuring out how the pressure cook lid fits onto the unit. like which way the lid turns and such. Probably took me a half hour to figure it out after unboxing.

Making food in the Foodi requires attention to detail and timing. Most pressure cooked or air fryer recipes need you to be attentive to timing for natural or quick release, and also to flip or stir the foods if air frying. It's not a single-use, set it and forget it appliance.

Time saved:

You are not going to save any time on ingredient prep. If you don't count that as part of how long it takes to make a recipe, you are deluding yourself into thinking that this appliance (and others like it, e.g., Instant Pot) will help you cook meals faster. 

It saves some time but not much; and it depends on what you are cooking. When you are making soft boiled eggs, it takes 7 minutes plus whatever time the unit needs to warm up and/or come up to low pressure. So the eggs that might take 10 minutes by stove method, might actually take 15 minutes in the pressure cooker. But you get perfectly cooked eggs in the Foodi and the eggs don't break or explode from the radical change in temperature from the fridge to boiling water like it does sometimes in a pot on the stove. Also, pay attention because even after the timer stops, the eggs will continue cooking as the unit cools down. Yes, you can burn eggs (in shell) if you leave the eggs in the Foodi and forget to quick release.

Beef stew by stove top has a cooking time of about an hour. In the Foodi, it still took an hour. 

Clean up:

The primary cooking bowl and air fryer basket are both nonstick surfaces and are easy to clean off with a soft rag and warm soapy water... if you wash immediately after removing food that has just been cooked. Clean the stainless steel racks that come with the Foodi if any food gets burnt or stuck on. Like most things in life, don't wait so long that cleaning becomes an actual chore.

Diversity of recipes:

Not so much. You would think there'd be more with Instant Pot debuting in 2010. Though, we have to thank the creative genius behind Instant Pot marketing for how popular these appliances are today. No longer are pressure cookers associated with the Boston Marathon or domestic terrorism. Now you can create delicious food in half the time with a pressure cooker. 

Just simple American recipes are out there, in cookbooks, on recipe blogs, and from manufacturer's websites.You can almost use Instant Pot and Ninja Foodi pressure cooker recipes interchangeably. You'll want to refer back to the food temp/cooking charts from Ninja. Apple sauce in an Instant Pot calls for more water than apple sauce in a Ninja Foodi. Also, most air fryer recipes will work with the Ninja Foodi Air Crisp settings. If using the crisping basket, this more volume than a standalone air fryer basket.

The Ninja Foodi is not a replacement for any food dish requiring the burnt/charred look for toast, baguettes, creme brulée, steak, or anything grilled via fire. Yes, it can do a frozen steak by pressure cooking and air frying; and it'll be cooked to medium-raw; but it won't have that just-got-off-the-grill look with the air fryer.

The more water-based your dish is, the more you're going to appreciate the cooking features of the Foodi.

Ninja Foodi Beef Stew

Taste-wise, this beef stew is spot on and comparable to what you'd get at a restaurant or knew what you were doing in the kitchen. Not sure what meat cut was used for this beef stew, typically leaner/tougher cuts are used for stew as it tends to cook longer. But, longer cooking does not make meat tender. It's the fat and marbling that makes that happen; and appropriate heat/time used to cook it. The texture of the beef is okay; cooked but not tender. 

TheFoodening Blog: Ninja Foodi Beef Stew

Ingredients

1 lb beef stew meat, cut into 1" pieces
1 tbsp olive oil
15 oz organic tomato sauce
2 Yukon gold potatoes, peeled and diced
2 organic carrots, peeled and diced
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 tsp beef bouillon (I use "Better than Buillon Beef Flavor")
2.5 c filtered water
2 tbsp Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce
2 tbsp dry vermouth, optional
dried herbs: parsley, thyme, basil, paprika
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Soup thickener:

2 tbsp cornstarch + 2 tbsp cold water, mixed together

Total cooking time: about an hour

Directions

1. Sear the meat in olive oil either stove top or using the saute function in the Ninja Foodi. Brown all the edges of the meat then transfer to the Ninja Foodi cooking pot.

2. As you are preparing the vegetables, set the Ninja Foodi to Saute. Add vermouth to deglaze the pot, carrots, potatoes, garlic, herbs, salt, and pepper.

3. Select "Pressure" and "Hi" on the cooker. Set the timer for 25 minutes.

4. Natural release 10 minutes, then quick release.

5. Stir in cornstarch mixture. It will thicken before serving.

Makes: 2 quarts

Ninja Foodi: Sriracha BBQ Chicken Wings (from raw frozen!)

This was the first item I made in the Ninja Foodi using both the pressure and air fryer features. In retrospect, it tastes as though I should have marinated the frozen chicken wings first, as they were bland and tasteless without the BBQ sauce that I added later in the air crisping step of this recipe. The crazy part is cooking frozen meat to perfectly cooked in the Ninja Foodi.

The cooking times on this recipe needs additional testing. After the pressure cooking phase, the wings were done. Any air frying would have added additional heat and time, making these somewhat dried out but "looking" the part of being broiled or fried. Total cooking time is too long if you want the outcome to be tender but crispy chicken wings.

TheFoodening Blog - Ninja Foodi Sriracha BBQ Chicken Wings

Recipe adapted from the basic Ninja Foodi cookbook that came with the unit.

Recipe: Fail

This is a fail because total cooking time is 40+ minutes -- the same amount of time that an oven-based recipe uses to get chicken to a minimum 165 F.

The original recipe calls for frozen chicken breasts which much denser than chicken wings. The cook time could have been halved for each step: PC and AF. And, the chicken, while frozen and raw, could have been marinated at least a half hour before cooking. The "fixed" directions, time, and temps are noted below.

Ingredients

2 lb raw chicken wings
1-2 c BBQ sauce (I used Trader Joe's Sriracha BBQ sauce)
1 c water
additional sriracha sauce, optional for more spicy

Add 1 c of bbq sauce and chicken wings to a resealable plastic bag or food storage container. Let the wings marinate for 30 minutes or longer in the fridge. In my first attempt, I did not marinate before cooking and applied the sauce at the Air Crisper step.

Pressure Cooker Directions

Place fry basket in pot. Add water to pot and chicken to fry basket. Select "Pressure" and "Hi". Set timer for 10 minutes. Start.

10 minutes natural release, then quick release.

Remove pressure cooking lid.

Air Crisper Directions

Select "Broil", Temp to 400 F, and Time for 10-15 minutes.

Toss or use a silicone pastry brush to apply more BBQ sauce to the wings.

Check at 5 minute intervals to see how crispy the wings are getting. Serve with additional BBQ sauce.