What's on your Tuesday Menu?

Happy Tuesday! I will be celebrating with tacos. I freaking love those Costco chicken street tacos. For $15 I get 8+ delicious low carb meals. Mmmm!

Massachusetts is dealing with an "impact weather day" today. We are getting somewhere between 1" - 24" depending on where in the state you are. Thankfully it looks like Grim and I are in the 1" - 5" range now, with high wind gusts. My parents (an hour away) are in the jackpot area, though and should see well over a foot of snow. I was able to reschedule the cookie class for a few weeks out, so everything can be frozen and salvaged. PHEW!

QOTD: Are you a hypochondriac? I'm not generally, but I definitely have been known to work myself into a lather about something scary when I go down the google rabbit hole. I am terrified of cancer because my family has a history, so I hate how google will list that as a possibility for literally every tiny ailment.

Accountability: Not great. I bought a giant bag of Parmesan Cheese Whisps at Costco and ate too many on the way home. Then I just ate naan bread for dinner. I wanted to buy a ton of treats to weather the storm, but Grim held me back.

B: Protein Coffee & Egg Bites

L: Chicken Tacos

D: Brisket (the sequel). We're trying again and hopefully this new marinade will be less salty.

p.s. If I don't post tomorrow, it's probably because the cats murdered me. I gave them a can of cat food that they didn't like and refused to eat this morning, and they are both just staring at me with glowing green eyes in the dark............ ahhhhh!

Wait. I stopped you from buying treats? I thought you stopped me from buying them.

Our last couple of trips to Costco were just as the store opened, and we were amazed at the clothing section. There are just rows and rows and aisles of perfectly sorted and folded clothes. Like they were ready for a drill sergeant's inspection. Every time we go later in the day, the whole area looks like the back room at Goodwill, after they've opened and dumped 100 bags of donated clothing.

QOTD: I am whatever is the opposite of hypochondriac. I tend to ignore things far longer than I should. Ignoring things until they go away does usually work. But not always.

I'll let you know how the brisket turned out, but have a question, for those who have Instantpot experience. Will more time at lower pressure make it more tender, or less? All of the recipes I've seen call for high pressure, which means less time. But all of the oven or smoking recipes call for low heat and longer times. I just don't know if that extrapolates to pressure cooking.

So far my IP experience has mostly been with "on" and "off". Between sauté, soup, and manual cook I haven't done much to fiddle with pressure outside of quick release at the end. But it did cook a frozen turkey breast perfectly fine and it's done great with dried beans. Good luck today! Yep, I'm helpful.

They are different methods and best used as designed -- if you want low and slow, oven or slow cooker (or slow cook setting on the IP); I wouldn't lower pressure and cook longer, I think you will end up tougher.

It will make it less tender. I've experimented on things and found some cuts of beef like brisket, chuck and round roasts need to be done on high pressure. They seem to be tougher cuts that require the higher pressure in order to make them tender like a tenderloin cut.

The oven and smokers are a different type of heat/cooking so you would need to do them at a lower heat and for longer times. I smoke brisket for a good 8+ hours in the Summer to get it nice and tender.

Thanks.

I usually use the high pressure but I think going lower for longer will make it more tender.

ETA- reading the other replies makes a lot of sense that it'd be tougher.

It's funny. I have only used my IP once with pressure. I usually use the slow cooker option. I find that the meats stay moister and more tender with that option. But maybe I didn't know what I was doing with the pressure cooker option. My meat did not turn out good when I did it.

Best, most tender beef I make is in a slow cooker. Long cookingntime, lower temperature. Pork - absolutely great in PC IP. Beef - only when I make tomatoes based meat sauce using ground beef, that has been browned. The ground beef "blooms" under pressure in the tomatoes sauce and is really easy to digest.

Some of my best memories of my life were snow days. I used to make a giant pot of soup and neighbors would come over for some after they shoveled snow. Everyone was unexpectedly at home, kids were making snowmen and adults were enjoying adult beverages. As long as we had power and plenty to eat and drink it was fun.