Easy Instant Pot Shakshuka with Mushrooms

by Fungified Farm August 22, 2022

Tomatoes! Tomatoes! The gardens and farmers markets are overflowing with a rich bounty of delicious and juicy tomatoes. The question then becomes what to make with all of these wonderful yellow and red delightful vegetables. There is only so much spaghetti sauce and salsa that any one person can stand making. Don’t get me wrong. I love some good marinara sauce and I do can tomatoes, but I want to enjoy them now and not just in the future. I had over 4 pounds of ripe tomatoes that needed to be used this week. I also had some fresh oyster mushrooms that made everything taste better.

Low and behold I received an email for the Minimalist Baker, who creates easy to make dishes from whole foods that are often vegan. She had Easy Shakshuka as a new recipe for this week. It looked really good and I liked that it didn’t have a million seasonings. I am all for 15 different spices, but the kids often won’t eat my more exotic creations. They can handle 3 spices.

With temperatures reaching into the high 80s and 90s cooking over a hot stove or even simmering a dish on the stove for that long was not desirable. I decided to adapt the recipe for my pressure cooker, which I am totally in love with. I actually have a Crock Pot brand rather than an Instant Pot, but the recipe should work well in either one. I also add mushrooms in place of peppers for a heartier meal. Also, I just like mushrooms.

I served it with rice and it was a nice, tasty and easy meal.

Chopping and picking Tomatoes

Be sure to chop your tomatoes into small even pieces so that they cook evenly. A few of my chunks were a little too big and I had to use my potato masher to break them down before I started the high-pressure cooking.

I had really big tomatoes that were so ripe and juicy that they made a pool in the bottom of my bowl while I was chopping them. The more juice that they have the longer you can cook them. I like my tomatoes to be as cooked as possible, but if they are too dry they can stick. Cherry tomatoes in particular don’t have a lot of juice.

Tip: You can either buy tubes of tomato paste or you can use canned tomato paste. Recipes never seem to use all of the can so I put 1 tablespoon portions into my silicone trays and then freeze them. Yes, they are shaped like snowflakes and it makes me happy every time I use them. I then put them in a bag and keep them in a freezer until I need them.