September 24, 2021
Friday night 9:30 pm.
I really messed up today making soup. I put my Instant Pot on sauté while chopping vegetables. Added some butter and olive oil, then dumped the veggies in. I opened a new bag of baby spinach and dumped half of it in the pot. Something told me to taste the spinach so I did. Yuck. It had a musty taste and luckily I'd only put it on top. So I scooped it out and put it back in the bag. I poured the chicken broth in and added my spices. But I forgot to push the steam valve toward the back. I pushed pressure for 9 minutes and left the room.
Next thing I heard all this hissing. Being in the middle of something on my iPad I decided to wait a bit. Bernie came in and said, "Is the Instant Pot supposed to be hissing like this?" I hurried into the kitchen and steam and liquid was coming out like it was natural releasing. The silver button was up but the pot wasn't counting down. Hmm, I thought, what do I do next? I turned it off, pushed the hissing valve back and turned on the pot again. But it still didn't count down. So I carefully pushed the valve forward again and let it release all the steam. Liquid was still coming out making a mess on the lid. Finally I was able to open the pot and the soup looked ok. I'd sautéed the stuff a while before and the pressure did build. Nothing was raw and one can drink the broth right out of the carton.
So I decided I'd serve the soup anyhow. Some of the vegetables were a tad more crunchy than usual but on the whole the soup was good. This was the first time in 3 years that I forgot to push the steam valve back so I didn't beat myself up.
Thank you for reading.
