Dump & Go Instant Pot Meals | Easy Weeknight Dinners

Dinner doesn’t have to be complicated! These dump-and-go Instant Pot meals are perfect for busy nights when you need something easy, hearty, and fast.
We’re making Instant Pot Chicken and Rice, Instant Pot Pasta and Meatballs, and Instant Pot Pork chili — some family favorites that come together with almost no prep. Just dump everything in, let the Instant Pot work its magic, and dinner’s ready in no time!
These meals are budget-friendly, comforting, and perfect for meal prep or busy weeknights.

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Chapters:
0:00 Instant Pot Chicken and Rice
4:47 Instant Pot Pasta and Meatballs
10:49 Pork Chili – https://amandacooksandstyles.com/slow-cooker-pork-roast-chili/

#InstantPotMeals #DumpAndGoRecipes #EasyDinners

Welcome back. I am going to show you some quick, easy, convenient meals for those days when you really don’t have time to think about food or cooking or any of that. So, I am going to use my pressure cooker for most, if not all of these. And I am going to start with a very simple meal. I’m going to add a cup of rice into the bottom. We are a family of two, so I’m trying to not overload us with food. I’m going to get that rice rinsed, and we are going to make ourselves some chicken and rice with zucchini. And then this Caribbean style jerk marinade. This is the marinade that was left from when we were doing our pantry challenge. I also have zucchini from 2023 that was part of pantry challenge. So, we’re done with pantry challenge, but today I didn’t have it in me to think. So, I was like, let’s just use up what we need to use up. The pressure cooker is my favorite way to cook rice or noodles. Actually, I’m going to put a cup of water in there. So, what I did was I rinsed the rice and then I let a little bit of the water stay in there. Then, I added a cup. So, instead of needing two cups for one cup of rice, I only needed one. So, we’ve got the rice in there. And I love using the pressure cooker because I can add everything else from frozen right on in there. So, I am going to add in the zucchini. I did take them out of the freezer a little while ago and put them in a cold water defrost. They’re not quite defrosted yet, actually, because there’s so much liquid in them. I’m going to remove some of the liquid from my rice. Normally, I wouldn’t put something in that has so much liquid, but in this case, we are. Oh, 2025. I picked the wrong year. That’s okay. We can survive that. I also grabbed out chicken and had it cold water defrosting. It’s only been like 30 minutes maybe, since I’ve done this. But I really like to prep my chicken in bags how I want to use them. So, in this case, this is diced chicken. I also do sliced and I do butterfied. I just find that so much easier because I didn’t have to cut chicken today. I didn’t have to wait for it to defrost and then figure out how I wanted to slice it. I just picked this version that I wanted, which was dice and throw it in. Now, I’m going to add some spices to this. And you can add whatever you want. I’m going to do some salt and pepper and then garlic and ginger. And I got out my ginger, but I actually have ginger pucks in the freezer that I want to use, but I grabbed out the ginger so I would remember to use them. So, I’m going to put the last two of these in and use these up as well. Had I thought about it, I would have used white pepper instead of black pepper, but that’s okay. The only other thing that I need to add to this is this marinade, which I think I’m going to add a tiny little bit now, but I’m really just going to use this as a sauce. I’m trying to figure out if I’m going to thicken this sauce. So, let’s put a little bit in here. Oh, it smells good. Well, wait. Does it? Okay. Yeah. Uh, it’s a little confusing the smell of that. Interesting. I’m going to just put a little bit on top of the chicken there. And then we will add some of this when it’s done. I don’t think I’m going to need to thicken it. I think it’s thickened enough. quick and convenient to use a pre-made sauce, but it’s also really easy to make your own sauce. You’ve done that quite a few times. So, I’m going to get this on the rice setting. That’s all I use. And we will be having dinner shortly. I did a quick release on this as soon as it was done and now I need to open it, give it a stir. Let me bring you in to show you what it’s looking like. Okay, so it’s not looking like much yet. I do want to temp it and just make sure. And yes, we are past 165. So, I want to give it a little bit of a stir and then we will add our sauce on. And we have ourselves some dinner. Okay, I got that mostly mixed together. Let’s add the sauce. Give it another mix. This isn’t going to use up all of that sauce. It’s just going to use up some of it, which is fine. We’ll just have to use it again. There’s a funny smell to that sauce that I don’t think I’m loving. But you know what? It’s going to be dinner. It was quick. I didn’t have to think much about it. And there you go. And to make it a little bit more cute, we can add Woo! A little bit of sauce. That was a lot of sauce. And some sesame seeds. Lots of those, too. Okay. So, in trying this, it has a little bit of a bitter flavor that I don’t love, but that’s just because of the specific sauce that I used. I do love this process, though. Just maybe try a different sauce with it. Today’s recipe is going to be so different for me. kind of say that, but it’s actually different and exactly the same because I’m going to make some rietoni in the pressure cooker, which is something that I do often, but I’m going to add meatballs that are pre-made that I didn’t make myself, which is not normal. And I have some spaghetti sauce, which is also not normal. I recently bought the what is that? Rayo or Rouse, and it was delicious. I haven’t had Prago in a long time, so I figured let’s try it. It’s the same price. Was like the same cost as how much it cost to get the other one, but the other one had significantly less. Like the jars were half the size and they’re only two instead of three. So, I figured let’s go with this. Now, this is so different because I usually make everything from scratch and this is not from scratch. I’m going to get half of the box of Briatonian. There’s only half the box left, so that’s good. And then I’m going to cover that with water just like we always do. Now, I’m going to add meatballs directly in with this while it cooks. So, let’s get those out of the freezer. If you missed the end of the pantry challenge video, I mentioned that right now meatballs are cheaper than ground beef. How am I going to get this spot open? So, that’s why I bought meatballs instead of buying ground beef, which is what I usually do. Um, actually, I ended up getting ground beef, too, cuz I found a deal on some of it. But I figure I would prefer to not spend more money than I have to. So I decided to buy these. Now we’re going to try it out today. Did I Well, okay. That cut it right through. I was trying to separate it to be able to get to the this part. Totally missed. It’s fine. Okay, that might be too many meatballs. That’s okay. These meatballs have Pecarino Romano in them. And hard cheeses like that haven’t been doing me so good recently, but maybe they will now that I don’t have the histamine issue that I did. So, I’m going to try it for the first time today. And now I need to get these into a bag that’s not this bag, unfortunately. I’m hoping that that doesn’t affect me poorly and that I don’t have any weird reactions to meatballs cuz if I don’t, I’m going to go buy a bunch of them and stock up because they’re cheaper than ground beef right now by a lot. I don’t think there’s any way that’ll all fit in there. So, I’m also interested to see how the Prago tastes compared to the Rayo or Ralph sauce because that one was so good. Now, the reason that I bought sauce, so yeah, I’m buying all these things I normally don’t buy. The reason I bought meatballs, of course, they’re cheaper. The sauce though is my tomatoes didn’t really grow this year, so I only have one jar of tomato sauce left and so I bought some. That’s it. Nothing too crazy. Now, I also just remembered that I have some store-bought garlic bread in the freezer and that I can take that out and get that in the air fryer and we can have garlic bread, too. I feel like I’m like, “Look at this meal. This is so different.” And it’s like everybody’s standard meal that I just don’t ever make. So, we’re going to get this on preheating. And yes, I am in pajamas because it’s just a cozy weekend day and this is all I’m doing today. And I figured I just took a shower. There was no reason to like get dressed and put makeup on just to come and make dinner. So, we are going to make dinner just like this. Let me go grab the garlic bread. I don’t remember how long it needs. Preheat that while I grab it. Okay. Get out some storebought garlic bread. I guess today is like how can we make a meal really quick and half homemade, semi homemade, any of it homemade is just throw a bunch of ingredients together. Do we still call that cooking or is it just throwing the ingredients together? Okay, I’m going to let that preheat then get these in there. And then all that’s really left is throw the sauce on it once it’s done. And then if we want to add cheese to our own, you can. Okay, this just finished. Let’s add some sauce in there. And I haven’t even tasted this sauce. Interested to see what we think of it. Oh, that’s probably good. That’s Well, oh, that’s good. I tasted it off of my finger. Okay, let’s mix this. We’ve got to get that sauce heated up. Oh, there’s decent amount of water in there. So, we’ll let it sit for a while. Just soak that up as well cuz noodles will hydrate for quite a while still after after they’re done cooking. Definitely think we need more sauce. And I think I need to give it probably a good 5 minutes. So, like half of a jar. That’s a half of a jar for one dinner. Then we’ll add the other half of the jar for another dinner. Okay, this has sat for a little bit. It soaked up all the extra liquid nicely. Still a little bit like soupy just from the sauce, but going to get some dished up. And then I did get the garlic bread finished. [Applause] And there is the dinner of the night. We are at it again this evening with a very quick meal. What I’m making is a pork chili. So, I have some pork that I canned in 2024. I’m going to get that in here. Now, the recipe calls for a pound and a half. This is about a pound. And it calls for two jars of beans. I’m only going to do one because I don’t want to have a crazy ton amount of food. A lot of times I have way too much. So, we’re going to be not going crazy on the quantities. It called for just pinto beans, but I’m going to use these reffried beans, which is like a chili bean. I feel like it has all the right spices in it for this recipe. So, this is another just dump and go, which is of course my favorite for a night where I haven’t put any prep work in. It did call for a can of crushed tomatoes or diced tomatoes. I’m going to just use a frozen block that I have. And then I’m also going to use frozen onions. It couldn’t get any simpler than this. Just like frozen and canned items just going in. I also need to add some garlic. And I’m going to use just this garlic, which is probably too much cuz there was already a ton of garlic in there. And then other than that, we need quite a bit of spices. And I’m realizing that two of my spices are empty. So, I’m going to go refill those and then we’ll get them in. Okay, we are in business. I am going to add some salt. Pepper. Just a little bit of pepper. I’m not a big pepper fan. oregano, paprika, chili powder, and I did get a new chili powder, and I like this one a lot better than the other one that I had, so that’s great. Cumin, and the recipe called for a little bit of chicken broth. There was a little bit of pork broth in there and I know that my tomatoes are really soupy. So, I’m going to add a little bit of a chicken bullion. And then I think we’re good. I don’t think I’m going to need any extra liquid. Debatable though. Hopefully, it doesn’t have a burn on it. We’re going to just try it. But I’m only going to put it on for like 5 minutes. I mean, all this stuff I don’t know. It doesn’t need to do like the whole rice setting like I normally do. So, manual, let’s do less. And it’ll be longer than five minutes for this to actually cook. It’s just 5 minutes once it’s up at temperature. Okay. Okay. Let’s see how this did. Okay. It’s definitely soupy. So, I’m glad I didn’t add any extra liquid. I wonder maybe I can add some cheese to thicken that up. Oh, this is the cheese that’s in the fridge. mozzarella. So, we’re going to just use that. Cheddar probably would be better, but it’s okay. I mean, realistically, I’m probably going to add Velvita to it regardless. Nick won’t want that, though. Okay, let’s see here. They’re still melting. I think I might eat it with saltine crackers. Are you someone who likes to eat your chili with crackers or with chips? We don’t have any chips. Like a tortilla chip. All right, let’s see. I probably should taste this for flavor. Tastes good. Actually, that’s super mild. I’m going to add Well, okay. Maybe it’s fine. Oh, that’s empty. Okay, I’m going to add some garlic salt to it. I think really what it was just needing was some salt. Also, this is thickened up a little bit just with that cheese. Beautiful. Might as well refill this. Oh, yeah. That’s looking really nice. Oh, that’s very good. Okay. And here’s what it’s looking like. This is actually really delicious. I’m very happy that I finally went and bought chili powder that I like. I’ve been missing good chili powder, which just isn’t great. All right, so I’m going to go sit down, eat this, relax for the rest of the evening. If you enjoyed this video, please give it a thumbs up or hype it, which is a new feature. And if you’re interested in other videos like this, I will leave some up here for you. And I will see you next time.