Prepare for a culinary revelation! This Instant Pot recipe introduces a truly unique and incredibly delicious twist on a classic stew. Imagine a rich, thick, sweet, and savory sausage and cabbage stew, where the secret ingredient creating its distinctive flavor is none other than Mountain Dew soda. This is not your grandmother’s stew, but it might just become a new family favorite!
Sweet & Savory Instant Pot Mountain Dew Sausage & Cabbage Stew: A Unique Pressure Cooker Recipe
When you think of stew, images of diced beef, carrots, and potatoes often come to mind. But what if we told you there’s a whole world of unconventional stew possibilities waiting to be explored? Our Instant Pot Mountain Dew stew, while certainly out-of-the-box, delivers an unexpectedly harmonious blend of flavors. The carbonated soft drink provides a subtle sweetness and a tenderizing effect, transforming ordinary sausage and cabbage into a truly remarkable dish that’s both comforting and exciting. This hearty meal, packed with potatoes, cabbage, and savory sausage, promises a culinary adventure like no other.
This recipe is not only simple to prepare in your electric pressure cooker but also incredibly versatile. Whether you own an Instant Pot, a Ninja Foodi, or a Crockpot Express, you can achieve the same fantastic results. The stew’s hearty combination of tender potatoes, flavorful sausage, and perfectly cooked cabbage, all bathed in a sweet and savory sauce, makes it an ideal meal for any night of the week. Many even find it tastes even better the next day, allowing the flavors to meld and deepen further, making it a perfect candidate for meal prepping.
Mastering Your Pressure Cooker: Essential Tips for Success with Kielbasa Stew
For those new to the world of pressure cooking, or even seasoned pros looking for a refresh, a few fundamental tips can elevate your culinary game and ensure perfect results every time. Pressure cooking is a fantastic way to prepare meals quickly, efficiently, and often with enhanced flavors, as the sealed environment locks in moisture and aromas. It’s particularly excellent for stews, making tough cuts of meat tender and infusing vegetables with rich flavors in a fraction of the time.
If you’re embarking on your pressure cooking journey, here are some basic guidelines to help you get started:
- Keep Your Recipes Handy: Make sure to bookmark our Instant Pot recipes page. We consistently add new, easy-to-follow, one-pot meal recipes each week, ensuring you always have fresh ideas for your pressure cooker.
- Understand Cooking Times: Then, print this —–> Instant Pot cooking times cheat sheet. This invaluable resource will help you understand precisely how long meat, vegetables, and beans take to cook in your pressure cooker, eliminating guesswork and ensuring perfectly cooked ingredients every time.
- Invest in a Quality Pot Liner: I highly recommend you buy this non-stick inner pot. While most pressure cookers come with a standard stainless steel pot, a non-stick liner can significantly enhance your cooking experience by preventing ingredients from sticking and making cleanup a breeze.
- You should also know how to deglaze a pressure cooker after sautéing. This technique, which involves adding liquid to scrape up any browned bits from the bottom, is crucial for preventing “burn” warnings and for incorporating rich, caramelized flavors into your stew. A good liner will naturally reduce issues, but deglazing is always a good practice.
For reference, the model I typically use for all my recipe creations is a versatile 6-quart Instant Pot, which offers ample capacity for family meals like this stew.
You may just think of diced beef, carrots, and taters when you envision a classic stew, but it’s time to expand your culinary horizons! Once you begin to think outside of the box, a world of flavorful and exciting options opens up, transforming your perception of what a stew can be.
Frequently Asked Questions About Unique Stew Preparations
Exploring unconventional stew ingredients and methods often brings up a few questions. Here, we address common queries to help you confidently prepare your Instant Pot Mountain Dew stew.
Creating a stew in the Instant Pot is wonderfully efficient. You typically start by sautéing your chosen meat, then layer in vegetables and add your liquid. Finally, you pressure cook everything to perfection and thicken it at the end to your desired consistency. While many stews feature beef and carrots, ingredients like cabbage are fantastic additions that cook quickly, often requiring no more than 5-6 minutes of pressure cooking time.
Sausage and onions form a robust and flavorful foundation for many dishes. We found that potatoes and cabbage pair exceptionally well, adding both heartiness and a fresh textural contrast. We’ve also prepared smoked sausage and cabbage with onions using traditional methods, but those often take considerably longer to achieve the same tenderness and flavor depth that the Instant Pot offers.
Yes, you can certainly use plain flour to thicken a stew. However, I personally prefer cornstarch for its ability to create a smoother, more translucent sauce without a floury taste. With either flour or cornstarch, the key is to create a “slurry” by mixing it with cold water until it’s completely smooth and lump-free. This slurry should be added to the stew at the end of the cooking process while on the sauté setting. Stir continuously until it thickens. Remember, the stew will continue to thicken slightly more as it cools.
This unique approach to stew requires only a few ingredients and a quick 6 minutes on high pressure to achieve a surprisingly rich and complex flavor profile.
The Stars of Our Mountain Dew Stew: An Ingredient Spotlight
This recipe relies on a carefully selected combination of ingredients that, when brought together, create an unforgettable flavor profile. From the hearty vegetables to the unexpected liquid, each component plays a vital role in crafting this sweet and savory masterpiece.
Cabbage: More Than Just a Filler
You’ll only need about half a head of fresh cabbage to make this stew, which typically yields around 4 cups when cut into 1.5-inch cubes. Cabbage adds a wonderful texture and a mild, earthy flavor that beautifully complements the richness of the sausage and the subtle sweetness of the Mountain Dew. It cooks down perfectly in the pressure cooker, becoming tender yet retaining a pleasant bite when cooked for the recommended time. Don’t let the rest of your cabbage go to waste, though; it’s incredibly versatile! Consider making one of our other Instant Pot cabbage recipes with the remainder.
Smoked Sausage (Kielbasa/Andouille): A Flavor Powerhouse
For this recipe, we prefer using pre-cooked smoked sausage, such as the kielbasa or andouille varieties you see pictured. These types of sausages are packed with savory flavor and provide a substantial, meaty component that holds up well during pressure cooking. I typically slice the sausage into bite-sized “dials” so that when it’s served, no additional preparation is needed. Sautéing the sausage first creates a lovely caramelization and enhances its inherent savory notes, building a rich flavor foundation for the entire stew.
Is smoked sausage already cooked?
Yes, most smoked sausages, including kielbasa and andouille, are fully cooked during the smoking process before they reach your grocery store. This means you’re essentially just heating them through when you add them to the stew, so there aren’t any concerns regarding them being underdone and unsafe. I choose to sauté the sausage first not for cooking purposes, but specifically to get a bit of caramelization on the outsides and to really bring out those robust, smoky flavors, adding another layer of complexity to the dish.
What is the best smoked sausage for this stew?
The “best” smoked sausage often comes down to personal preference and regional availability. Generally, grocery stores carry a few popular brands, usually with varieties like traditional kielbasa (which is typically milder) and spicy andouille (known for its Cajun-inspired kick). I prefer the kielbasa or andouille varieties for recipes like this stew and our Instant Pot sausage and rice because they offer a robust flavor that can stand up to the other ingredients. If you wanted to make your own smoked brats, you certainly could; just be sure to finish cooking them, slice them into dials, and then you can skip the initial sautéing step in the recipe.
Now let’s talk about potatoes. Why? Well, because we’re in Idaho, there’s a natural affinity! 😉 No, but really, I don’t have a strong preference regarding which type of potato you use for this stew, as most varieties will work well.
On this particular occasion, a bag of russets was conveniently in the pantry, so that’s what I went with. However, I truly do love red potatoes for stew because they tend to stay a bit firmer and don’t fall apart as much during cooking. Be mindful of your cooking time; if you cook them for too long, they will become more like mashed potatoes rather than distinct pieces within the stew. For the onions, keep them in larger chunks so they retain their structure nicely, adding both flavor and texture. And now, for the exciting part – the soda!
Why on Earth would I ever choose to use Mountain Dew for the liquid in a stew? This intriguing idea originated from a friend who makes a similar dish while camping. I later added the tomato paste at the end to achieve a more traditional stew consistency. He swore that 1 liter of this particular soda made the dish absolutely amazing, so I decided to go with it, and it was a resounding hit! The unique citrus notes and sweetness of the Mountain Dew tenderize the meat and vegetables while infusing the stew with an unexpected depth of flavor that is both intriguing and delicious.
More Than Just a Drink: The Versatility of Mountain Dew in Recipes
If you’re surprised by Mountain Dew in a stew, you’ll be even more astonished to find its broad use in various recipes. A quick search online reveals that people have created all sorts of culinary delights with this iconic green soda pop. From rich cheesecakes and moist brownies to numerous cocktails, Mountain Dew lends its unique sweet and citrusy flavor to a wide range of dishes.
You can even use it to make our incredibly simple 2-ingredient cake! Yes, if you use a white cake mix, the cake would indeed turn a festive green, which could be particularly fun around Christmas time as a whimsical “Grinch cake!” This versatility highlights how adventurous cooking can lead to truly surprising and delicious results.
After the pressure cooking and thickening steps, this is what the stew looked like. It continued to thicken even more as it sat and cooled, reaching a perfect, hearty consistency. If you prefer your cabbage to retain a slightly firmer texture, you might consider adjusting the high-pressure cooking time to 4 minutes instead of the recommended 6 minutes.
Time needed: 10 minutes
Instant Pot Mountain Dew Stew
Instant Pot Mountain Dew Sausage & Cabbage Stew
This incredibly unique Instant Pot Mountain Dew stew combines thick, sweet, and savory flavors from sausage, cabbage, potatoes, and a surprising soda pop liquid for an unforgettable meal!
- Prep Time: 15 mins
- Cook Time: 6 mins
- Servings: 8
Equipment
- Pressure Cooker
Ingredients
- 1 sausage link (we used andouille 13.5 oz package, sliced into dials)
- 1 onion, sliced
- 3 medium potatoes, sliced into chunks
- 4 cups cabbage, cut into 1.5″ cubes (about half a head)
- 1 liter soda (Mountain Dew, used half a 2-liter container, approximately 4.5 cups)
- 1/2 cup tomato paste
- 3 tablespoons cornstarch
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
Instructions
- Saute Sausage: Prepare all vegetables by slicing. Put about 1 tablespoon of olive oil into your pressure cooker. Set the cooker to sauté mode. Add the sliced sausage “dials” and sauté for approximately 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, until they begin to brown just a bit and caramelize.
- Layer Ingredients: Turn the pressure cooker off. Begin layering the remaining ingredients: first, arrange the sliced onions evenly on top of the sausage. Next, add your cubed potatoes (remember, the smaller they are, the softer they’ll get, so don’t cut them too small or they’ll just fall apart). Then, layer in the cubed cabbage squares. Make sure to not pass the overfill line inside your pot.
- Add Liquid & Pressure Cook: Carefully pour your entire liter of Mountain Dew soda on top of everything. It is crucial not to stir the ingredients together at this point. Close the lid and set the steam release valve to the sealing position. Set the pressure cooker to high pressure for 6 minutes. (Note: It will take a bit longer for the pot to reach pressure since there is a significant volume of liquid and ingredients inside, which is perfectly normal.)
- Release Pressure & Prepare Thickener: Do a quick release of the pressure when the cooking cycle is done by carefully turning the steam release valve to the venting position. Once the floating valve drops, lift the lid. Set the pressure cooker back to sauté mode. Scoop about 1/2 cup of the hot liquid from the pot into a separate measuring cup, then add your 1/2 cup of tomato paste. Whisk these two together until the mixture is smooth and lump-free. Add this tomato paste mixture back into your pot and stir well.
- Thicken Stew: To further thicken the stew, add 3 tablespoons of cornstarch and a bit of cold water into a small dish, just enough to whisk together until it is completely smooth and not lumpy (this is called a slurry). Pour this cornstarch slurry into the pot, stirring continuously. The stew will begin to thicken as it heats. Continue to stir gently until it reaches your desired consistency. Once thickened, turn the pressure cooker off.
- Serve: The stew will continue to thicken slightly as it cools and sits. Serve this delightful Instant Pot Mountain Dew Sausage & Cabbage Stew hot, perhaps with some crusty rolls and a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese on top if desired.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Additional Info
If you love trying new and adventurous things in the kitchen, you’ll undoubtedly love this stew and our swamp cabbage recipe too. You know I won’t share anything that wasn’t a complete hit in my own house. As much as you might be thinking, “ehhhhh, Mountain Dew in stew?”, you’ll truly have to taste it for yourself to understand just how surprisingly delicious it is!
Conclusion: A Must-Try Culinary Adventure
This Instant Pot Mountain Dew sausage and cabbage stew is truly a testament to the exciting possibilities that arise when you dare to defy culinary conventions. It’s a dish that sparks curiosity, delivers on flavor, and provides a surprisingly hearty and satisfying meal that will leave a lasting impression. If you enjoy experimenting with new tastes and are open to a delightful sweet and savory experience, this recipe is an absolute must-try. We wouldn’t share anything that wasn’t a complete hit in our own home, and despite the initial skepticism some might feel about soda in a stew, we promise this one will earn a resounding thumbs-up from your family and friends. Embrace the adventure and discover your new favorite unique stew!