easy Archives | Winstead Wandering

Easy Instant Pot Seasoned Chicken

February 22, 2018 by Abby

Did you know you can make Easy Instant Pot Seasoned Chicken? It’s great for eating as-is, but it’s also wonderful for using in recipes or freezing for later!

Did you know you can make Easy Instant Pot Seasoned Chicken? It's great for eating as-is, but it's also wonderful for using in recipes or freezing for later!

It took me a long time — like, nearly a year — to really find a groove with my Instant Pot. I just didn’t take the time to figure it out. Even during that time, though, I was still using it regularly to make chicken.

We eat a lot of shredded chicken. While we rarely have it as a main dish, I use it often as a condiment of sorts, an ingredient in our meal, like these Baked Green Chile Chicken Taquitos. You’ll almost always find a container of seasoned shredded chicken in our fridge for use in recipes or just for whipping up a chicken and cheese quesadilla.

You might also like: Honey Balsamic Chicken Marinade

In the last year, all of that chicken has been prepared in the Instant Pot. Here’s the beauty of Easy Instant Pot Seasoned Chicken: it’s easy (I know, I said that already), it’s flavorful, it’s fast, and it’s totally customizable. I love that I don’t have to tend the chicken like I would if it was cooking on the stovetop, and it’s ready much faster than if I baked it. The pressure-cooking of the Instant Pot seals in the flavor, and I swap out spices to develop any profile I’d like.

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Easy Instant Pot Macaroni and Cheese

February 15, 2018 by Abby

If you aren’t using your Instant Pot to experience the creamy, cheesy, gooey goodness of Easy Instant Pot Macaroni and Cheese, what are you even doing with your life?

If you aren't using your Instant Pot to experience the creamy, cheesy, gooey goodness of Easy Instant Pot Macaroni and Cheese, what are you even doing with your life?

I remember the moment I knew I was in love with J. It was my freshman year in college, sometime in the fall after we’d talked on the phone every day during the summer and spent the first semester of school hanging out on campus. I remember texting him often during those months (from my camera-less flip phone because this was 2005), saying things like, “I really like you.” It hadn’t occurred to me yet that I more than liked him.

You might also like: Creamy Sausage Macaroni & Cheese

And then one day I headed to the mail room to check my tiny mailbox. I don’t even remember if I had mail that day, but I do know I was leaving the building because I was headed up the stairs that led back to the center of campus and toward my dorm. I had my phone out, texting J, and I tripped on the stairs. That part doesn’t have anything to do with my epiphany; I tripped at least once on every set of stairs on campus. But sometime during that walk from the mail room back to my dorm, I thought, “I think I love this guy.”

If you aren't using your Instant Pot to experience the creamy, cheesy, gooey goodness of Easy Instant Pot Macaroni and Cheese, what are you even doing with your life?

What does all this have to do with Easy Instant Pot Macaroni and Cheese? Not much, really, except I’m writing this on Valentine’s Day (busy few weeks + blog issues = tight post turnaround) so I’m feeling a little mushy. Also, even though there are a ton of things J and I don’t have in common — he loves Top 40 music and I’m all about 90’s/early 00’s hip hop; he loves sci-fi, action, and comic book movies, while I want light and happy; he’s an incredibly picky eater, but I’m more adventurous — macaroni and cheese is something we agree on. We both love the stuff, including this super simple recipe.

You might also like: Five Cheese Macaroni & Cheese

If you’ve never made homemade macaroni and cheese, this recipe is the perfect place to start. It doesn’t require you to make any cheese sauces, and it certainly doesn’t call for any of that neon processed cheese junk (I love a good helping of Rotel Dip as much as the next Southerner, but please keep that fake stuff away from my mac ‘n’ cheese). The Instant Pot does all the noodle-boiling work, and they don’t even need to be drained. Just add the cheese and other ingredients to the cooked noodles, stir everything together, and everyone will think you spent a ton of time making a mouthwatering side dish.

If you aren't using your Instant Pot to experience the creamy, cheesy, gooey goodness of Easy Instant Pot Macaroni and Cheese, what are you even doing with your life?

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How to Make Frozen Fries Taste Good

January 29, 2016 by Abby

How to make frozen fries taste good: with a couple ingredients and few minutes of work, you can transform bland frozen fries into a side dish even grown-ups will want to eat.

How to make frozen fries taste good: with a couple ingredients and few minutes of work, you can transform bland frozen fries into a side dish even grown-ups will want to eat.

One of our favorite easy weeknight meals- heavy emphasis on the easy– is grilled sandwiches. Somehow, you can take an ordinary sandwich with ordinary bread and ordinary toppings, slather the outside with butter, toss it in a skillet to toast both sides, and suddenly everyone thinks you’ve made a creative meal.

One of the bigger challenges with that scenario, though- because we all know there’s nothing challenging about the sandwich-making process- is what to serve the sandwich with. Many of our preferred side dishes, even the easy ones, require more work than I’m usually willing to put in on a grilled sandwich kind of night. On those nights, I often turn to frozen fries.

We almost always have a bag of these guys in our freezer. We don’t eat them more than once every several weeks, but they’re just too easy to not have on hand. J doesn’t much care how they’re prepared, or what, if any, extra love goes into them, but I do. I just can’t quite get on board with the throw-on-a-baking-sheet-and-call-it-good version, even when the theme of the evening is easy.

My mom taught me this insanely clever trick for making frozen fries taste good. I don’t know that you could call this a recipe, but I’m putting it out there for those who prefer to have precise instructions to follow. My go-to seasoning for frozen fries is seasoned salt (because I love potatoes + Lawry’s), but I also enjoy any combination of garlic, Parmesan cheese, and Italian seasoning. You could really spice things up by trying chili powder, cumin, or paprika.

How to make frozen fries taste good: with a couple ingredients and few minutes of work, you can transform bland frozen fries into a side dish even grown-ups will want to eat.

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Sausage and Tortellini

January 20, 2016 by Abby

Meet your family’s new favorite easy weeknight meal: this sausage and tortellini isn’t just mouthwatering, it’s also a super easy one-pot meal.

Meet your family's new favorite easy weeknight meal: this sausage and tortellini isn't just mouthwatering, it's also a super easy one-pot meal.

Does your family have a meal that’s always available as a backup? A recipe that you make sure to keep all the ingredients on hand for? If you’re a fan of easy weeknight meals, you’ll want to add this one to your arsenal.

If you open our refrigerator and don’t find a package of tortellini and a hunk of sausage, it’s probably because I made this meal in the last few days. There are several reasons why we eat this sausage and tortellini a couple times a month, with the main reason being that it’s just so good.

Beyond the fact that we love the hearty sausage and the rich tortellini, I also like that this meal is quick. It comes together quickly, in about 20 minutes. It’s made all in one pot and the pasta isn’t boiled separately, it’s just tossed in with the other ingredients and simmered there.

A supper that’s quick to prepare, only requires one pot, and brings together smoky sausage, garlic, and cheese-filled tortellini? I’m not sure what else you could ask for.

Meet your family's new favorite easy weeknight meal: this sausage and tortellini isn't just mouthwatering, it's also a super easy one-pot meal.

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Easy Weeknight Sausage and Potato Skillet

January 6, 2016 by Abby

Hearty sausage and potatoes come together with the vegetables of your choice to make an easy, crowd-pleasing weeknight meal. Plus, you’ve got to check out the mouthwatering breakfast-for-dinner recipe you can make with this leftover sausage and potato skillet.

Hearty sausage and potatoes come together with the vegetables of your choice to make an easy, crowd-pleasing weeknight meal. Plus, you've got to check out the mouthwatering breakfast-for-dinner recipe you can make with this leftover sausage and potato skillet.

When I’m looking for or brainstorming easy dinner recipes to make for my family, there are few different things that will make me stop and take notice. First and foremost, I’m always on the lookout for easy weeknight meals. I don’t want complicated ingredients or dozens of steps. Sure, there are times I enjoy more involved recipes, but weeknights aren’t one of those times.

If a recipe can be made using one pot only, I’ll definitely give it a second look. I hate making a twenty minute meal and then spending just as long on clean-up. If the process can be streamlined by using the fewest pots and utensils, I’m much more likely to consider trying it.

Lastly, I love when leftovers lend themselves to a recipe redo. For example, I almost use leftover chicken and salsa from easy weeknight chicken tacos to make nachos or quesadillas. The ingredients may be similar, but the flavors and textures are different enough to feel like a new meal. What I especially love about this recipe is how a hearty dinner becomes an easy, filling breakfast.

As you might can imagine, this sausage and potato skillet recipe checked off all the above boxes for me. It’s ready in less than 30 minutes, and it requires only one pot. You could easily speed up the prep process by using two skillets and cooking the sausage and potatoes at the same time, but I prefer to use the cooking time of one ingredient to prep the next.

The round two sausage and potato skillet recipe is super simple. Just add salsa, a little shredded cheese, and a fried egg to a serving of the original recipe and you’re good to go! This would obviously make a quick and filling breakfast, but it’d also me a crowd-pleasing way to serve these leftovers for supper. Basically, when you take a recipe that was delicious to begin with, add the trifecta of cheese, salsa, and an oozing egg, you can’t go wrong.

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Easy Holiday Dessert Recipes

November 23, 2015 by Abby

This year, don’t waste time trying to impress everyone by replicating your grandmother’s famous recipe; knock their socks off with something new, like one of these easy holiday dessert recipes.

Do you have a signature holiday dessert? If so, by all means, stick with that this year. You wouldn’t want to disappoint the people who’ve spent 364 days looking forward to it.

But maybe you don’t have a go-to holiday dessert recipe? Maybe you’re the one who always volunteers to bring paper products to the gathering. Or maybe your idea of “homemade” is arranging store-bought cookies on a platter. Maybe you’re banned from the kitchen ever since the fire incident of ‘o9.

Whatever your reason for foregoing holiday baking, it’s time that changed. The easy holiday dessert recipes compiled here are all easy and mouthwatering. Some of them don’t even require you to use the oven. Be careful, though; you just might find a new signature holiday dish.

Easy Holiday Dessert Recipes

Brown Sugar Pound Cake with Caramel Icing

This pound cake is a decadent alternative to even the most indulgent pie. The cake itself is moist, buttery, and flecked with melty toffee bits. The whole thing is smothered with the kind of rich, gooey caramel icing that you haunts your dreams in all the best ways.

Peanut Butter Cup Bars

If you don’t think it was possible for a four-ingredient dessert steal the show at a holiday gathering, give these bars a try. They’re ridiculously easy to put together- no baking!- but your friends and family will go crazy.

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10 best crescent roll dinner recipes + 3 desserts

March 23, 2015 by Abby

I try my best to create meals for my family that include more whole ingredients and fewer canned and processed foods. A lot of nights, I’m successful.

There are plenty of nights, though, that I’m mostly concerned with just getting something on the table. For the nights when I don’t have anything to pull from the freezer, I try to keep a tube of crescent roll dough in the fridge.

While crescent rolls may not be the most nutritious choice, they’re a super convenient way to pull a meal together quickly. Here’s a roundup of some of my favorite crescent roll recipes.

1. sausage, egg, and cheese crescent roll bake from Winstead Wandering

2. Ranch Chicken Club Roll-Ups from Life With the Crust Cut Off

3. Pepperoni Pizza Crescents by Mess for Less

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mexican pizza {a taco bell copycat recipe}

March 5, 2015 by Abby

Confession: I’ve never had a Taco Bell Mexican Pizza. Now that I make this fresh version at home, I’ll never need to.

The recipe calls for refried beans- I make mine using this recipe– and taco meat, but I often make mine with just beans and my husband’s with meat only.

Just as with regular tacos, this recipe can be adapted to fit the preferences or dietary needs of just about anybody; in fact, it practically begs for it.

Mexican Pizzas
adapted from here
(recipe makes 4 pizzas; quantities as needed)

8 6-inch tortillas
1 – 1 1/2 cups (1 can) refried beans (you may want more if you’re omitting the meat)
1/2 pound taco meat (prepare your ground beef or turkey as you normally do for tacos)
1/2 cup taco sauce (salsa works, too)
1 cup shredded cheese
cooking spray or 4 tablespoons of vegetable oil

Additional optional toppings:
-diced tomato
-shredded lettuce
-sour cream
-diced avocado

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Brown your tortillas on both sides in a saucepan, either in hot oil or by spraying both sides with cooking spray. Spray a cookie sheet lined with foil.

On the foil, layer beans and meat on top of a browned tortilla. Cover with a second tortilla and spread that one with taco sauce and sprinkle with cheese. Repeat until you’ve built four pizzas.

Bake for 8 to 12 minutes.

What fast food favorite do you make at home?

baked spaghetti

February 26, 2015 by Abby

This baked spaghetti is my default the-labor-intensive-meal-I-had-planned-is-so-not-happening-tonight meal. It can be thrown together in just a few minutes more than the time it takes to cook the pasta, and it’s made with ingredients we almost always have on hand.

Don’t let the recipe’s simplicity fool you, though. This spaghetti is cheesy and gooey and saucy and just about everything you could want in a pasta dish. Plus, the way it bakes with the cheese and the sauce holding everything together makes it much easier to eat than a traditional spaghetti.

I love that this recipe is completely adaptable. You can use any type of noodles and cheese you have on hand, and you can totally toss in a handful of your favorite fresh or frozen veggies. Even my picky eater husband devours this dish and asks for seconds.What more can you want?

Baked Spaghetti

1 lb. whole grain spaghetti
1 1/2 c. spaghetti sauce
2 c. cheese, divided (I usually use half cheddar and half mozzarella)
1 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp parsley flakes
1/4 tsp salt
pinch of red pepper flakes (optional)

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