Chicken Mexicali

Add olive oil to your pressure cooker and let it heat up a bit on medium-high heat before adding the rest of the ingredients.

Add the chicken first, then the spices, then the salsa and water. Don’t worry too much about stirring it around.

Make sure the chicken isn’t stuck to the bottom of your pot before you put the lid on. Oh and wipe the rim where it seals if there is any oil, condensation or gunk you spilled. The seal likes to be clean and dry to pressure up.

Over medium-high heat, bring your cooker up to a medium rock. (Which means, it isn’t rocking like grampa, but it isn’t rocking so hard that it’s about to rock itself into next week either. If it’s going like gang-busters, turn down the heat. If it’s barely moving, turn the heat up a bit.) Let it cook for 20 minutes.

Turn off heat and either let the pot pressure down on its own or carefully pick it up and set it in the sink and run cold water over the lid until it depressurizes (which takes about 30 seconds).

At this point, I like to start some rice.

Last night, I toasted 1 1/2 cups instant rice in a couple tablespoons of olive oil for a few minutes, then added 1 1/2 cups water and removed it from the heat. Before I put the lid on, I add a dash salt, garlic, pepper, cumin and onion powder. Put the lid on and let it sit for 5 minutes.

You can make regular long grain rice too, but I was starving and didn’t want to wait.

(You’re probably getting the clue by now that Im very impatient.)

Remove the cooker lid and take out the chicken from the sauce and place on a surface that you can shred the meat on. Throw some of that sauce (I used about a cup) in with your rice.

Voila! Spanish rice for your Chicken Mexicali!