Pressure Cooking - Chapter 6

Here is a One-Pot meal I made in the pressure cooker for supper tonight.  It was delicious! Everything turned out very nicely - but next time I will make a couple of changes, which I will explain below:

Pressure Cooker Meatloaf, Carrots and Mashed Potatoes

In a 6-quart pressure cooker - pour in two cups of water and place the trivet.

Scrub potatoes and add them in one layer on top of the trivet.

Combine for the meatloaf: 1.5# ground meat (I had lamb so that's what I used), 2 eggs, 1 medium onion, finely chopped, 1 cup soft whole-wheat bread crumbs, 1 teaspoon salt, 1/4 teaspoon freshly-ground pepper.  Stir together with a fork and then finish up the mixing with your hands so the ingredients are thoroughly mixed.

Butter another trivet.  Next time I will use the steamer rack that I show you below, to make it easier to lift the meat from the pan.

Form the meat mixture into a squat donut shape.

Place it on the buttered trivet or steamer rack.

Here is 3/4 cup tomato sauce.

Pour it over the meatloaf.

Peel some carrots and wrap them tightly in foil.  NEXT time I will slice the carrots as they were not quite done enough.

Place the packet of carrots on top of the meat. Put on the lid, bring up to pressure.  Reduce heat until the petcock is rocking gently.  Cook, at pressure, for 15 minutes.  Remove from heat and cool quickly under cold running water until the pressure is gone.

Open the cooker, remove the carrots.  Check the internal temperature of the meatloaf with a thermometer.  It needs to be at least 155 degrees F.  If it is not, after you remove the potatoes, place the steamer basket back in the cooker, put the lid on loosely and put the cooker back on the stove and steam the meat for a few more minutes.  Check the temperature again.  

While you are steaming the meatloaf, remove the skins from the potatoes and prepare mashed potatoes.  I like to add butter, cream cheese, milk and salt to ours.

Here is the meal.  We ate it all!  (There are 6 of us.)

This was easy and economical, and as I said above, next time I will slice the carrots and use the steamer basket for the meatloaf instead of the trivet.