Instant Pot Cooking: Cinnamon-Apple Strata

You wake up at 6 in the morning every weekday and today, you're extra exhausted. You drag yourself out of bed and go through the usual routine: brushing your teeth, washing your face, and getting dressed. When you go to the kitchen, you pour yourself a lousy bowl of cereal and milk. The only reason you make yourself this every time is because you're lazy and don't have enough time to cook anything. Cooking with an Instant Pot makes it way easier and faster for you. You don't even have to cook the typical breakfast such as eggs, bacon, and such. For this blog, I cooked cinnamon-apple strata.

Cinnamon-apple strata is a breakfast food. It reminds me of a casserole. It contains lots of bread, whatever you prefer: English muffins, waffles, or even plain wheat. "In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, then add the milk, salt, 2 tablespoons of brown sugar, and 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon and whisk to combine" (Zimmerman 44). You core and chop the apples, then create layers, changing from bread to apples and raisins.

If you want this recipe to work, you have to allow the bread to absorb the custard. After you finish preparing it, you have to lay aluminum foil over the top to keep moisture off the top. You don't want to crimp it down because the dish will expand. Using the Instant Pot, in my opinion sort of made it harder for me to cook it.

When you pressure cook the dish, you have to do a lot of technical procedures with the Instant Pot. You have to pour water into it, place a trivet with handles in the pot and put the dish on top, lock the lid, select Manuel, adjust the pressure to high, quick release, then lastly unlock and remove the lid (Zimmerman 45). In my opinion, simply putting a tray of the strata in the oven would be quicker and more efficient for someone clumsy like me. But I looked up online how long a normal apple strata would take to cook, and it said around one to one and a half an hour. The cinnamon-apple strata in Janet A. Zimmerman's book, Instant Pot Obsession, only took around half an hour. Instant Pot really does save up a lot of your time.

Lastly, I removed the foil and sprinkled extra cinnamon-sugar over the top! As a bread choice, I chose Eggo waffles because I wanted to see what role waffles would make in a dish like this. Overall, I loved the strata. It was a wasn't too much sweetness for breakfast, but it was way better than a sugary, cheap cereal.

What do you eat for breakfast and how many times do you eat it a week? If you eat it for more than half a week, what would you like to try as an alternative?