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10-minute Mixed Berries Sauce (Sugar-free)

by Jackie Miao
written by Jackie Miao

Hidden Sugars in your Food

I love the flavor of berries in baked goods, desserts, and breakfast items. I like them especially in yogurts, and oat bowls. What I don’t care for are the diabetic-inducing amounts of sugar in store-bought processed and baked goods. In general, things like single-serve yogurt, and bakery items are often just too sweet to be nutritious.

Just how much sugar is in our breakfasts?

To illustrate, did you know that a typical cup of flavored-yogurt usually packs between 18-24 grams of sugar per serving? A teaspoon of sugar is 4 grams of sugar.

24 grams of sugar, translates to as much as 6 teaspoons!

Diabetes, anyone? This is not what I want to have in my body first thing in the morning on an every day basis. It is also way too much sugar for my son, or anyone for that matter.

A Sugar-free Alternative

For this reason, I came up with a better way to enjoy berry breakfasts without all the unnecessary sugar. By doing this 10-minute hack, we could avoid consuming 25-30 teaspoons of sugar a week, if we ate berry yogurt every day.

This recipe so easy! It really is just a country-style chunky jam recipe, without the addition of sugar and pectin. My 2-year-old son asks for blueberry oatmeal all the time, and this is mama’s secret 10-minute sauce. The berry sauce can be added to yogurt, overnight oats, baked goods, and even smeared on bread as a healthier alternative to jam.

What Kind of Berries To Use

Any kind of berries that disintegrate well, like blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries. Technically you could use strawberries too, but you’ll have to cut them into smaller pieces. I usually just want to keep the berry sauce super simple, with as little prep work as possible.

Enjoy!

Sugar-free Berry Sauce

A quick, clean and healthy berry sauce recipe for busy cooks.
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Course: Sauces
Keyword: Berries, Dessert, Fruit sauce
Cook Time: 10 minutes
Author: Jackie Miao
Cost: $6-$8

Equipment

  • A sauce pan

Ingredients

  • 1 bag organic raspberries frozen (8 oz.)
  • 1 bag organic blueberries frozen (8 oz.)

Instructions

  • Heat a heavy-based sauce pan on medium high heat.
  • Add the berries into the pan, and cook on medium heat until disintegrated. (About 10-13 minutes)
  • Remove the sauce into a glass bowl, and cool completely before use.

Notes

You can use any combination and ratio of berries. Fresh berries work too, but it’ll cook faster. This recipe uses 1lb of frozen berries for a week’s worth of flavor.

HOW TO USE THE SAUCE

  • Fruit yogurt – Stir a heaping tablespoon of the cooled berry sauce in a cup of plain yogurt.
  • Berry Overnight Oats – Add a heaping tablespoon of cooled berry sauce into your overnight oats base mixture.
  • You may use this sauce for sugar-free danishes and fruit fillings too.

 

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Instant PotGluten FreeBasicRecipes

Instant Pot Forbidden Rice

by Jackie Miao
written by Jackie Miao

A BOWL OF SUPERFOOD

Anthocyanins… you get them from foods like blueberries and blackberries, but did you know that black rice, or “forbidden rice” (as it is called here in America) has more concentrations of the anti-oxidative flavonoids that help fight free radicals? Moreover, it may offer anti-inflammatory, anti-viral, and anti-cancer benefits.

That is why I love making and eating black rice. It also tastes great! When I was a child growing up in Borneo, my grandparents would make black rice congee and eat it with the family for nutritional value. Black rice is a crop that is grown in Borneo by small farms in Sabah, and the Bario area in Sarawak. We just call it “kampung rice” or “wu mi” in Hakka.

Taste-wise, it has a very floral fragrance that is different from Jasmine rice. Now that I live in the U.S., instead of congee I just make it to eat in place of white rice every now and again for the nutritional benefits.

I TRY NOT TO BE A RICE SNOB, BUT…

As a paddy-country native and person of East Asian descent, I’ve eaten my fair share of the best quality rice as a staple since I was a toddler. When I first got the Instant Pot, I scoured high and low for pressure-cooked rice recipes. I tried a few recipes from IP blogs to IP cookbooks. Alas, I was disappointed ALL TIMES, because the rice was either too dry, or too wet for my liking. The cooking times and water to rice ratio was just all wrong.

The following recipe is my own, and a quick way to make black rice in the Instant Pot or electric pressure cooker. I prefer to pressure cook my rice now, because of the uniformity of texture and consistency in bite. With a regular rice cooker, the heating element cooks the rice on contact, and the steam produced isn’t pressurized. Therefore, you end up with softer/mushier rice on the lower half, and chewier rice on the upper half. With the Instant Pot, you don’t get that. The rice is cooked on high pressure, and so the whole pot of grains are just perfectly cooked from top to bottom.

P.s. Make sure you get regular black rice, and not sticky or sweet black rice. They are different!

As always, if you make it using my recipe, let me know your thoughts below.

Instant Pot Forbidden Rice

Quick and easy perfect morsels of steamed black rice for your health and happiness.
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Course: Side Dish
Cuisine: Asian
Keyword: Rice, black rice, forbidden rice, anthocyanins, antioxidants, flavonoids, healthy
Prep Time: 5 minutes
Cook Time: 30 minutes
Quick release at: 15 minutes
Total Time: 35 minutes
Servings: 8
Author: Jackie Miao, DiningHappy.com

Ingredients

  • 4 cups forbidden or black rice organic
  • 4 1/2 cups filtered water

Instructions

  • Measure out 4 cups of rice into the inner cooking pot of the Instant Pot.
  • Wash the rice by rubbing the grains firmly, but gently in generous levels of water over the sink. 
  • Drain the water, and repeat the process 3 times. Wash the rice in 3 changes of water, or until water is clear.
  • When you drain the last change of water, make sure you drain all of it before the next step. The Instant Pot cooks the rice using high pressure, and does not evaporate moisture like a regular rice cooker.
  • Measure 4 1/2 cups of filtered water into the inner pot, submerging all the rice grains. (Wipe the base of the inner pot with a tea towel for safety, before placing the pot inside the heating pot. You don’t want to short the heating element).
  • Close the lid, and set the valve on the “sealing” setting. Then press the “pressure cook” button, and set the time to 15 minutes. (It will take a while for the contents to come up to pressure).
  • Let the Instant Pot do its thing. When the timer goes off, you have 2 options. Either you can do a quick release at 10 minutes if you need dinner ASAP, or let the pressure release naturally for about 15 minutes.
  • Serve black rice with any Asian dish that goes well with rice.

Notes

WAYS TO USE COOKED BLACK RICE
In Korean gimbap, salads, soups, with Chinese or any South East Asian dish requiring rice. It’s excellent with curries and stir fries.
 
 
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RecipesBasicPork30-minute

Easy Crispy Bacon Recipe

by Jackie Miao
written by Jackie Miao

Are you one of those people, who peel two slices of bacon, fry it on a pan and make a greasy mess of your kitchen?

I was that person, until I found a better way. It’s time to stop doing this the hard way! Today I’m going to teach you how to make crispy bacon so that you are bacon happy for your BLTs. This recipe is so insanely simple, you would never make bacon any other way anymore.

Here’s an easy, fast, and cleaner way to do it!

In fact it’s so easy, it’s totally fool-proof. Comes out perfect every time!

Start with 12 oz. of bacon. I like the Apple Smoked Bacon from Trader Joe’s, as it does not contain added nitrates and nitrites, though bear in mind that as it is still a smoked product, you would want to limit your consumption of smoked foods if you care about your health. Then again, I realize this is a BACON, not a LETTUCE post, so yea, just follow the rule of moderation!

Next you would want to heat preheat your oven to 400F.

Then, line a baking tray with some foil like this (For ease of clean-up later).

Then lay your bacon slices on top of the tray like this. You do not need to oil the sheet as the bacon already has plenty of fat! When your oven reaches 400F, shove your tray in there and bake it for 20 minutes.

After 20 minutes, rest your bacon for 5-10 minutes. Then it is ready for you to blot off the excess oil with paper towels, eat or store.

That’s it! SO EASY!

They are great in BLT sandwiches, chopped into Cobb salads, as a topping on chowders, on English muffins, in English Breakfast plates, or as a quick protein snack. To reheat, just simply toast it in a toaster oven lined with some foil, or in the oven. It gets crispier as you reheat it.

Easy Crispy Bacon Recipe

Ingredients

  • 12 – 16 oz. streaky bacon

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 400F.
  2. Lay bacon on a foil-lined baking tray.
  3. When oven reaches 400F, insert tray on the bottom rack and bake for 20-25 minutes for crispy bacon.
  4. Remove from the oven, and cool. When it is cool enough to handle, blot bacon with paper towels and store it in a container for up to a week.
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