Lentil Chicken Soup in the Instant Pot

 

Month 15, Wednesday, June 9, 2021 DC (during Covid)

Agenda for the day:

• Virtual conference 1 (NCORE - National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in Higher Education, via Zoom, day 2) starts at 5:30 am HST
• Virtual conference 2 (REMOTE faculty summit via a non Zoom online platform) starts at 6 am HST
• Walk to the laundry room and do a load of laundry 7:30 am
• Hang laundry on hangers and apartment clothes dryers I picked up at the local Marukai 8:00 am
• Toggle between conferences based on the schedule that keeps pinging on my calendar 5:30 until 2:00 pm
• Work, grading, prep for summer session 2, in between/during sessions without breakout rooms and 2 pm on
• 1:30 scheduled nap because from experience, Zoom fatigue WILL/HAS set in and my eyes are burning by then
• Try in between to cook and feed myself so that I do not have to realize it is 9:30 pm and I have only eaten things I could grab from the refrigerator or pantry.

Here is my reality. Although this is today, 12:21 as I am Zooming in to a session on "Education as a Practice of Freedom": Facilitating Liberation. Unless I drive the half hour to work, this is my life in the apartment. I go from the room, to the bathroom, to my desk in the living room, to my kitchen and around and around on that route. I have started to put the deadbolt on my front/only door in the apartment not because I am afraid of someone breaking in while I sleep, but more as a daily practice that keeps me present and marks time in the same way that I make my bed every morning and take my high blood pressure medicine before I go to sleep. 

I also lock my deadbolt so that at night when I go to lock the door and find that it is already locked, then I will know that I have not left the apartment this one day. It is a way to force me to leave the apartment the next day, which is why I went and did a load of laundry today. Yesterday was not a good day. I also found that I was feeling a little run down and realized that at 9:30 pm I was run down because I had not eaten since an early lunch/late breakast, so besides not leaving the apartment, I did not eat. To be fair, I did eat. I ate a partial snack bag of chips, a yogurt, a zucchini couscous frozen bowl heated up in the microwave and eaten about an hour later, coffee and lemonade. 

Today is a better day, and I wanted something I could throw in the instant pot with very little prep and no going to the store. This lentil soup is it. I actually had lentils because I am making baby food for my grand daughter so about 1/4 cup of the one pound of lentils was ground up into lentil flour in my coffee grinder and I use that to make her cereal to add protein to her cubes of veggies. I also think if you have a couple chicken thighs in the freezer, that would be good. I did not have chicken in the freezer as I used it for the braised daikon and chicken wings last week. Instead I used a can of chunked chicken breast and on and on. 

What I am saying is that you can make this recipe with fresher ingredients, healthier alternatives, more lentils, less canned goods. I just am writing down what I had but I think this will work with whatever you have. This is a during Covid recipe. So if you don't have something, substitute. If you are substituting big things (like any ingredient in the title), just adjust your time accordingly on the Instant Pot. For example, if you are putting fresh or frozen chicken, then put it in with everything else and cook it. I added it to the end because it is canned and already cooked and shredded. The time is still fine for chicken so you do not need to adjust. I would not put a lot of chicken. Maybe like 2-3 thighs or 1 breast is plenty. If, like me, I had one pound of lentils minus 1/4 cup, I did not adjust the broth. The only thing I would say is a must have is the Better than Bouillon paste for broth. If you do not have that, actually, don't even bother trying to cook in the Instant Pot. You need a broth with a depth of flavor otherwise, with the fast cooking time, if you do not use good broth, you may as well just use water or cook it slow so the flavors can build over time. 

Ingredients:

• 1 lb. dried lentils (I had brown, but green is probably ok - red is too soft in IP)
• 7 c. water
• 2 T Better than Bouillon paste (it would be logical to use chicken, but I had beef. . .however, my favorite is vegetable)
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 2 stalks green onion, chopped (I don't know if it made a difference, but it was rotting in the bin so I salvaged it. I like the whites)
• 1 generous tsp chopped garlic (maybe that is 3 cloves, not sure)
• 1 medium ripe tomato, diced (or like me, I had half a tomato and added a handful of grape tomatoes whole)
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1/4 tsp oregano
• 1 tsp Old Bay (I wanted the parprika, salt, other spices that would not clash with the cumin and oregano so went that way)
• 12 oz. can chunked chicken breast (so if you are using fresh/frozen chicken keep the weight about the same so you do not need to adjust)
• salt to taste (I used garlic salt)

Directions:

Throw everything but the  canned chicken and extra salt into the Instant Pot liner. Put on soup or manual for 30 minutes, quick release when the beeper goes off.

Add the drained, canned chicken while the soup is hot, stir and taste. Add salt if necessary.

Optional add ons:

cilantro

cheese

raw onion

roasted squash or zucchini

croutons

bacon bits

I have not idea if anything but the cheese would be good on it. But I think it will be good. It won't be poison and that makes for a good day.