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

Apricot Oatcakes

Makes: 8 oatcakes

Ingredients

3 c old-fashioned rolled oats
2 c all purpose flour
1/4 tsp baking powder
1 egg white
1/3 c plain yogurt
1/2 c sugar
12 c honey
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 c dried apricots, chopped
1/4 c roasted nuts, chopped (optional)

Directions

Preheat oven to 325 F

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Pulse oats in a food processor until coarsely chopped. Add flour, baking powder, and pulse to combine.

In a bowl, whisk egg white until frothy, then add yogurt, sugar, honey, and vanilla extract.

Add oat mixture to wet ingredients. Add apricots and/or optional nuts.

Divide into 8 portions. Roll into balls and flatten slightly on the baking sheet.

Bake for 15-20 minutes.

Enjoy warm or cold.

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

Hunan Style Cauliflower Pork

Two days before Chinese New Year is not the time to go to the local large Asian grocery store hoping to find holiday ingredients still on the shelves. It was exceptionally hard to find fermented black beans, which is weird, because it's an ingredient for specific dishes. Though, it is winter and these salted, fermented black soybeans are typically paired with chili oil, garlic, and ginger. It brings a level of umami (savoriness) to a dish that you can't easily replicate just by adding more salt. Anyhow, I had to go there to get fresh pork belly because I didn't want an enormous package of pork belly that one could get from Costco. The only way to do that in this metro area is to go to an Asian store with a fresh meat counter.

I first tasted this dish at a restaurant in southern California called Dong Ting Spring which features Hunan cuisine. It took some web searches to find a recipe ratio that looked comparable to what I ate, having only "Hunan" and "cauliflower" as keywords to go on. Sometimes this dish is called "Hunan Spicy Cauliflower" but the restaurant named it "Big Wok Cauliflower".

Another first? Yeah, first time buying cauliflower. Anyhow. Onto the recipe.

The Foodening Blog - white cauliflower and you should probably cut these smaller

Also, if your pork belly comes with the "skin" part still attached, slice that chewier part off before frying.

Ingredients

1 cauliflower head, florets cut into half or quarters
1 lb pork belly, cubed and/or sliced thin
2 tbsp olive oil, for frying
2 dried chili peppers, seeds removed if you don't want it spicy
2 tbsp fresh ginger, peeled and thinly sliced
3 garlic cloves, chopped
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp rice wine
1 tbsp fermented soybean paste
1 tsp sugar, optional

Directions

0. In a large pot of boiling water, blanch the cauliflower florets for 1-2 minutes, then set aside in a colander to drain.

1. In a wok or large frying pan, heat olive oil and add garlic, ginger, and dried chili peppers. Fry for a few seconds. Add pork and fry until slightly browned and no pink remains. You can remove one of the chili peppers at this point if you want. I removed one, but only because it was starting to burn.

2. Add soy sauce, rice wine, and fermented soybean paste. Stir fry until the pork is coated in the sauce.

3. Add the cauliflower and fry until the cauliflower is tender.

4. Remove from heat and serve hot.

The Foodening Blog - Hunan Cauliflower Pork