Instant Pot Bison Roast

On Saturday I went to the Farmer’s market with my friend, Steph. I wasn’t planning on buying anything. I just needed to get out of the house for awhile. Of course that meant I came home with a Bison chuck roast and about 5 pounds of yellow baby potatoes. I have never eaten Bison before, much less cooked it so I had no idea what I was going to do with this roast. Why do I do this to myself?

As always, when I have an ingredient I haven’t cooked with before, I search the internet to see the possibilities. This time the internet failed me there just aren’t many people posting Bison meat recipes on their blogs. So I decided to crowdsource some ideas from a tea group I belong to on Facebook. What does Bison have to do with tea? Absolutely, nothing, but the group is a supportive community that posts about everything not just tea. I got some great information and links to information.

One of the links was to a site called Rock River Bison that had a recipe I adapted using what I had on hand as I didn’t have the specific rubs they used in the video. I had decided to use my pressure cooker before I saw the video. Bison is very lean so it overcooks and dries out easily. You need to cook it low and slow in in the oven or crockpot for hours to prevent that or use a pressure cooker that makes it more difficult to over cook. I didn’t have hours. I was hungry now so pressure cooker it was.

It was so worth the wait. The meat was very tender and juicy, not dry at all. It would be very easy to adapt this recipe to use other sauces and spice rubs. How about teriyaki sauce, 5 Spice powder and rice vinegar or salsa, taco seasoning and apple cider vinegar?

I added a little sauce to some of the shredded meat and served it over a bunch of the baby yellow potatoes I baked. I have also served the shredded meat and sauce over pasta lot in a sandwich like the picture.

• Difficulty: Easy
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Adapted from Rock River Bison

2-3 TBS of your favorite meat rub, I used Primal Palates BBQ Rub

1 cup of your favorite BBQ sauce, I used 8.5 oz bottle of Primal Kitchens Classic BBQ sauce

1/4 cup apple cider vinegar

2 lb Bison chuck roast.

If your pressure cooker has a saute setting, set it to high and let it preheat. If it doesn’t have a saute setting, heat a frying pan over high heat. While the pan is heating, cut your roast into steaks, season both sides with the whatever spice rub you are using. When your pan is hot add a little oil and sear the roast on both sides.

Add the seared roast to the liner of the pressure cooker. Add more spice rub to the meat and use your hands to coat the meat evenly. Add your BBQ sauce and vinegar. Close the lid and turn the vent to the closed position. Set the pressure cooker to high pressure and cook for 45 minutes. When the meat is done cooking. Natural release until the pin goes down. Remove the Bison to a plate and shred with two forks.

Slow Cooker BBQ Pulled Pork Sandwiches and a review

Guys, I have a new cooking for two resource for you. Its called Fix-It And Forget-It Cooking For Two. Thats right, its a crockpot for two cookbook. I was really excited to find this cookbook for you all because I know you wanted crockpot recipes. It seems especially appropriate now that fall is here.

Things I Like:

1. The recipes are not complicated.

2. The recipes are submitted by real people so they are recipes for how real people eat.

3. The cooking times are realistic. Gone are the days you can plug in your crockpot and let it cook for an unlimited number of hours while you are gone to work. Modern crock pots run too hot to do that. The cooking times in the book reflect that and as long as you follow them don’t over cook your food.

4. The recipes I have tried taste good.

5. The recipes make a decent amount of food for one or two.

Things I Don’t Like:

1. The recipes use more processed ingredients then I like to use, especially cream of somethings soups. It is fairly easy to find less or unprocessed substitution using the recipes on my blog if that concerns you.

BBQ Pulled Pork Sandwiches

• Difficulty: Easy
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From The Fix-It and Forget- It Cooking For Two Cookbook

1lb pork loin

1/4 cup thinly sliced onion

1/2 cup ketchup

1 TBS apple cider vinegar

2 tsp dry mustard

1 TBS brown sugar or molasses

1/2 tsp onion powder

1/2 tsp garlic powder

1/2 tsp cumin

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp chili powder

Spray the liner of your slow cooker with non stick cooking spray. Place the onion and pork loin in the liner.

In a small bowl. Combine the ketchup. Apple cider vinegar, mustard powder, brown sugar, onion powder, garlic powder, cumin. salt and chili powder. Pour the mixture over the pork. Cook on low 7 hours.

When the pork is done, remove from the slow cooker and shred with 2 forks. Serve on buns.

Whole30 Day 14 — No Sugar Added BBQ Spice Rub For Pork

Melissa Hartwig, the co-founder of the Whole30, says that the majority  of people who quit the program do so between days 9 and 10. I am on day 14.  Let me repeat that because I can’t believe it myself, I am on day 14.  Not only did I make did I make it through day 9 and 10 without quitting, I made it through 2 weeks of the program.   I am so proud of myself, I could just cry.

Have I seen any changes yet?  Yeah, I have.

1.  The dark circles under my eyes have almost disappeared.  I don’t know if this is because I am sleeping better or for some other reasons.
2. I can breathe through both of my nostrils.   I am always completely stuffed up, sneezing, dealing with runny nose, all the time.  I am not completely symptom free yet but as I can’t remember the last time I could breathe through my nose at all I count this as a win.
3.  My work pants went from fitting comfortably to almost being too loose.  I’ll never know how much I have lost because I didn’t weigh myself or take measurements before I started.  Weight loss was not my purpose for doing the Whole30. It is   just a bonus.
4. I definitely have more energy through out the day.  I don’t come home from work so exhausted I am ready for bed at 630 pm.
5. I am sleeping through the night.  It is too early to tell if this is totally because of the Whole30 because I go through cycles where I sleep just fine.  However, before I started I was in a particularly nasty cycle of sleeplessness, where I was up two or three times a night for hours at a time so, again, I am counting sleeping through the night a Whole30 win.

Last weekend I made some bbq sauce for pulled pork. I had a little sauce left over from that so I decided to make some ribs. I usually use a spice rub on my ribs before  I cook them but all my rub recipes have sugar in them so  I needed to find a new rib rub recipe.  I dare you to say that 10 times fast, ha!  I had the same problem finding a no added sugar rib rub recipe as I did finding a no sugar added bbq sauce recipe.  Every recipe said no sugar added then had honey, molasses, maple syrup or some kind of artifcial sweetner in it.  I did eventually find a couple to try.  I will post them as I try them.

No Sugar Added BBQ Spice Rub

• Difficulty: Easy
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2 TBS paprika

1 TBS garlic powder.

1 TBS onion powder

2 tsp kosher salt

2 tsp cinnamon

1 1/2 tsp black pepper

1 tsp cumin

1 tsp allspice

1 1/2 tsp oregano

In a small bowl, mix all the ingredients together.  Store in an airtight container in a cool, dark place.  

BBQ Dry Rub for Pork

I have been working so hard getting my new blog, Cooking Under Pressure, up and running, I am running a little dry on inspiration for A Solitary Feast’s posts.  I still wanted to share this great little spice rub I tried on my pork chop last night.  I really enjoyed it and I hope you do too.

• Difficulty: Easy
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2 TBS paprika

2 TBS chili powder

1 TBS brown sugar

1 TBS white sugar

1 tsp celery seed

1 tsp ground black pepper

Mix all ingredients and store in an airtight container. To use rub the spices  all over both sides of the pork and cook however you like. 

BBQ Dry Rub

John Lennon said “Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans.” Last week was  a perfect example of that.  I planned a series of posts for the week as I always do but a glitchy computer, a very ill rat, and several nights with about three hours of sleep a night kind of put an end to that.

I felt about bad not posting last week.  I cooked every day but it was just everyday comfort food. Not food that was not at all blog worthy or had already been put posted on the blog.  The only new, remotely interesting thing I tried  was  a new dry rub.

I was skeptical this rub would work with the large amount of salt and sugar but it is a very pleasant rub. The recipe has a large quantity left over. This is because I have decided to make this my general, all purpose rub.

• Difficulty: Easy
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Ingredients
7 TBS kosher salt
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
1 TBS onion powder
1 TBS garlic powder
1 1/2 tsp smoked paprika
3/4 tsp crushed red pepper
3/4 tsp ground mustard
1/2 tsp chili powder
1/4 tsp ground white pepper
1/4 tsp black pepper

Combine all ingredients together, mix well. Store in an airtight container
In a cool, dark place.