This is a story of how I am definitely not a professional cook and got myself into a bind.

You know how you know you should do something and you think of it, sideline it, and then think of it, and sideline it…. and think of it and sideline it. You get the idea. That’s what I did. I knew I needed to start thawing the ribs two days ago. I just kept forgetting whenever I was actually in a place (ie Home) when I could get them out of the deep freeze. You see, I’m supposed to be taking delish short ribs to a friends house tonight as the entree for our shared meal. Pressure is on. Pun totally intended.

So this morning I’m thinking how in the world am I going to get this done and maybe that rotiseree chicken from HyVee isn’t such a bad option after all. Then I remember, hey, pressure cooker. Those are supposed to speed thing up and breakdown tough meat right? After looking around on the wonderful internet, I found this recipe for How to Make Instant Pot Short Ribs. Unlike Mila who has countless recipes and experiences with using a pressure cooker, I’m a total newbie. I make rice. I tried to use it as a slow cooker and pretty much just made a pot of really good tasting mush. Unfortunately Jason and Lucy are not fans of mush.

First step in my mad dash for short ribs – thawing in the microwave – yikes. I hate having to do that. But well, I’m in a pinch and this is what it’s come to.

Second step. Salt and pepper. Then I seared it in batches.

Check. So far so good.

Go a little choppy with onions, garlic, some carrots (lucy loves carrots). Saute those in the seared fat drippings in the instapot.

Deglaze. Of course I didn’t have 3 cups of good wine. I had 2 cups of crap red wine (I’m a fan of a good $2 bottle of merlot, but wow, this stuff was bad to the point I couldn’t finish a glass even). And some veg broth with some beef better than bouillon in the mix.Making a pile, I sort of coated all the beef in the wine/broth/onion mixture, sprinkled in some Bouquet Garni (excepting the bay leaf chunks because I don’t have a culinary sachet), Rosemary, and Parsley. Wondered at the sanity of what I was attempting and how full the pot was (“Is this going to explode? hmmm…. I’ll find out soon enough I guess”).

And now I wait…

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It worked! what a reliefI took all the solid stuff out and put the pot in the fridge to make it easier to skim the fat off the top. Then I reduced it down by about half or as much as time allowed before we headed over to our friend’s house.Voila.

Served over rice with the carrots on the side it was delicious. All together it took about 2 1/2 hours, a much shorter timeline than my usual 14 hours of cooking for short ribs.