Photographically, this meal needs some color. A few cherry tomatoes will do. So will some fresh herbs. My photography self, and my food stylist self reject this set on the basis of color. It's easily fixed but I'm hungry.
Know what's amazing about napa cabbage? When you chew the white part the cells burst and fill your mouth with water, a pleasantly mild cabbage flavored water, this time with pineapple flavor and faint smoky sausage flavor included. It's awesome.
This time the Instant Pot is used for sautéing and for slow cooking, with the venting valve open so pressure does not build up.
I did not show the three kielbasa sausages or the fresh pineapple or the large napa cabbage. But I should have. They're simple straightforward ingredients. The spices are inside the sausages.
It takes a bit of fiddling around imaging how you'd like this done the regular way without an Instant Pot stovetop and basting inside the oven.
Without an Instant Pot, you get the water and sausages boiling first then put the regular pot in the oven and let it baste for hours. How many hours? I don't know. I've always overdone it to four or five hours to turn the sausages into near marshmallows.
When the sausages are done then add the vegetables to cook but not turn to mush.
Same thing with the Instant Pot.
The pot is turned onto sauté for four minutes with water and sausages to get the steam going inside the pot. With the venting valve open so that pressure does not build.
Then cancel.
Then set slow cook for four hours.
It will shut off by itself and keep the sausages and liquid warm.
Four hours later the sausage failed to turn soft as marshmallows. They still had resistance in their casings. So the timer was set for 4 more hours and I fell asleep.
The pot stops cooking at four hours and holds on warm.
Wake up and add the pineapple, which doesn't need to be cooked, and the napa cabbage. Sauté for ten minutes to cook the cabbage and overcook the sausages with valve open so pressure doesn't build up. The napa cabbage is cooked as I like it, and I don't care how the pineapple fared, but it actually did fine, held its shape and imparted its pineapple flavor to the broth. The pineapple affected the broth more than the smoked sausages affected the pineapple.
Here's a side-by-side taste-test for you to do for yourself.
These pineapples were $1.00 at the grocery store but they are all rather small, hard and green. I picked out the two with the most gold color and that had a faint amount of give when pressed.
They say to smell their bottoms, but come on, they all smell the same. This is Denver, not Thailand, not Maui.
They will not get more ripe on the counter. They will not develop more sugar. They will only soften and ferment, and they'll start doing that within a few days.
Also buy a tin of pineapple. It will last forever in your pantry.
Cut the pineapple into chunks and open the tin of pineapple and taste both one after the other.
Behold the difference in quality. In texture, in flavor, in acidity and in fresh bright happy goodness.
Goes like this: Pineapple Comparison
Tinned <--------Vast expanse of difference in quality --------> Fresh
Honestly, there is no reason to buy that tinned crap for anything. What are you a survivalist prepper?
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